Best Tips to Motivate Your Team

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships” – A well-known quote by Michael Jordan radiates the power and magic of teamwork, teambuilding, and team motivation.

A top editor of a B2B publication giant in Mumbai hardly asks prospective employees to get their bio-data. He asks them only what their hobbies are and what they are interested in.  That is the secret of his loyal staff. He has never lost a good worker unless a very tempting offer comes in the way.

At a time when attrition is the buzzword in many top multinational companies, BPOs and even smaller companies there are lessons beyond the manuals that help leaders to motivate your team. Whether it is your sales team, finance team, or project categorization, or any other department of your business, they all starve for the best being happen to them.

Sometimes what a bio-data cannot achieve, a motivated employee can work wonders despite lack of experience on the job. There are no secrets of keeping the staff motivated to do their work. Yes, increments, words of encouragement and regular picnics do help. Nevertheless, inspiring staff is much more than that. Little things make a great difference to the way people work for each other and that too not under strain. Like children, even adults need regular praise and recognition in their work. People spend more time in their offices than at home. So getting to make the office atmosphere more amiable and encouraging proves to be useful. Most employees moonlight on the sly so they really do not want to see the color of money every now and then as a raise. What they want is appreciation and praise. How many managers or employers are expressive enough to do little things that make a difference?

Here are the simple yet effective tips for team motivation:

·         Do realize the worth of your employees and pay them accordingly. Research has revealed that majority of the employees resign from their current job just for a 5 to 10% hike in their salary package and this is certainly not a good sign for doing a great business.

·         Provide your employees a comfortable, safe, and pleasant work environment that keep firing their work senses every now and then.

·         Gift your employees’ freedom of thoughts and expression in order to pave way for self-development and self-confidence. Thin in turn will boost their knowledge and give them a sense of belonging to the work they perform.

·         Foster friendly connections with your sales team or any other team of varied different departments to ensure that you share their success, invite their suggestions, listen to their problems, and implement perfect solutions.

·         Celebrate the success of your employees at equal intervals while sharing with them their respective performance metrics.

·         Many companies have innovative ideas to keep loyal employees on their payrolls- Seasonal and annual gifts during festive season, mention in the corporate news letter on achieving targets, even taking them out for movies for great team building!

Here are some of the key advantages of team motivation:

·         It works to improve employees’ productivity

·         Strengthens industrial relations and business associations

·         Improves business reputation and recognition in the market

·         Increases employees’ commitment to work

Some more highlights on the advantages of team motivation:

·         For starters, the sense of achieving targets, creativity and improving results can keep everyone on a high.

·         Young leaders have inspired their old employees to work for them. This has virtually made the Birlas a force to reckon with when a young Aditya Birla walked in to take charge from the old vanguard from illustrious G K Birla.

·         A dynamic leader and a good communicator have helped many employers to keep a team stimulated at work and this goes on like an unending chain of success. In the last several years, Reliance Industries has remained motivated despite the demise of the patriarch Dhirubhai Ambani.

The equations have changed in today’s world. Independent thinkers are capable of putting in their papers for more lucrative landmarks in their careers.  Office politics can get vicious and boring after a time and in turn result in high attrition rate and low productivity. Gone are the days when a hire and fire policy worked. Today raise and praise empowers the business market. 

What are Market Challenger Strategies?

The Market Challenger Strategies are various strategies and marketing techniquesadopted by business associates, firms, and organizations to attack their respective competitors’ occupying a larger share in the market. Either a start-up or an established company, you only have two options in business: one to flow with the waves of the ongoing business and the other to launch challenging attacks for your competitors. What option would you opt for? Flow with the waves or launch an attack? Of course, majority of you would go with the option of launching an attack and aggressively work towards expanding your market share and earning high revenues.

Frontal Attack

“Dudh si safedi Nirma se aaye, Rangin kapda bhi khil khil jaye,Sabki pasand Nirma”. You all must be aware of this advertising tagline by Nirma. With a mission to provide better products, better value, and better living to customers, Nirma introduced a low priced washing powder about 20 years ago for middle-class homemakers. That was a time when Nirma was available at Rs 3.5 in competition to Hindustan Lever Surf that was available at Rs 15.Twenty years ago Rs 15 was certainly a high amount for detergent and only upper-middle class families could manage to afford it but Nirma’s low-priced detergent created a revolution with a price tag of Rs 3.50. Over a period, the detergent became the most popular household washing powder across the country, even amongst high-income segments. This is what we call frontal attack, a direct attack to your competitor after analyzing its loopholes.

Flanking Attack

Have you heard about Ajit Bakery? This is a highly reputed bakery store in the Central India known for offering quality bakery items. At a time when the company was struggling to create a niche in the market, it tried researching on all the weak points and blind spots of its competitor capturing the largest share of the market in the Central India. Ajit made a thoughtful attack by opening all its stores about 1 ½ early as compared to the opening hours of its competitor.

Encirclement Attack

“SEIKO Moving ahead. Touching hearts” is an inspiring caption by Seiko driven with the motto to touch human hearts with amazing watch technology. To further expand its market share and earn increased revenue, the company exploited the microchip technology and made its range of watches visible by tapping all distribution channels and as much possible shelf space from up-market jewelry shops to local watch showrooms. This is what we say encirclement attack where a company launches various offensive campaigns impelling its competitor to have a defensive approach.

Bypass Attack

How many are you aware of Skype? How many have you actually used Skype? If you have ever used this technology, were you aware what was the driving technology behind Skype? Skype came up cloud telephony known as ‘Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)’, a term that was not even known when Skype was introduced in the year 2003. It was a time when Airtel and Vodafone were ruling the market with telephonic services but Skype with an idea to bypass their technologies came up with VoIP system while creating a niche in telephony services. This is what we call the bypass attack where the challenger bypasses the competitor by expanding its reach into untapped markets or by diversifying into innovative products.

Guerrilla Attack

What do you say about the dominance of LG TV on Samsung TV? How was Whirlpool able to overthrow its competition with Godrej in the refrigerator segment? The answer to both the questions is the Guerrilla attack where the companies did a thorough research on the untapped territories and then adopted all possible measures and marketing tactics to create a meaningful impact. The efforts that LG and Whirlpool made were small but meaningful and did make a difference in helping them gain a larger market share in their respective markets.

What are the Most Effective Business Growth Strategies

Have you ever thought why only 1/3rd of the start-up companies are sustainable? Why only 0.01% of that 1/3rd startups manage to climb the competitive ladder and turn into big business brands? The statistics are depressing but this is the truth hard to accept. The only reason behind turning start-ups to fully thriving large companies is effective business growth strategy. The owners or the designated professionals of successful brands have clear insight into their respective companies, functionalities, line of products or services, and are well attuned to the market trends. They constantly explore and execute innovative and beneficial business growth strategies for increased growth and higher profit margins.

Business growth strategies not just cater to envisioning organizational goals but also inculcating substantial plans to compete with all the competitors on your journey towards your long-term goal. You may face failures, there may be risk, you may have to overcome challenges but you should be deliberate and determined not to lose yourself or your business to your competitor.

Here are the 4 effective business growth strategies defined by the Ansoff Matrixintroduced by Igor Ansoff:

Strategy 1: Market Penetration

Market Penetration is a risk free business growth strategy that works with an approach to penetrate the existing market with the existing product. For example, a watch company slashing down its price as a promotional offer to attract more buyers and increase sales.

You can implement the strategy in the following ways:

· Increasing market share of the existing product

· Reducing prices of the existing product

· Enhancing the distribution channel

· Increasing marketing and promotional initiatives

Strategy 2: Product Development

Product development is a strategy with an approach to introduce a new product or infuse innovation in the current market with a clear understanding of the current market trend. For example, the growing two-wheeler market introducing e-scooters to fulfill the need of the existing auto market where environment-friendly means of transport has become an asset.

You can implement the strategy in the following ways:

· Investing in research to come up with innovations fulfilling the needs of the existing market

· Acquiring competitor’s product and infusing the same with your research, analysis, and resources to come up with a completely new and useful product

· Undergoing strategic partnership to have better reach with increased distribution

Strategy 3: Market Development

Market development strategy works with an approach to enter new markets with your existing product. For example, an Indian shoes company venturing into foreign countries for distributing its line of product to a new demographic.

You can implement the market development strategy in the following ways:

· Venturing into new domestic regions to have a firm establishment in the domestic market

· Expanding internationally with your existing product to have a strong global presence

· Fulfilling the needs and aspirations of various customer segments

Strategy 4: Diversification

Diversification strategy is a strategy that works with an approach to diversify your products and your markets in the following ways:

· Introducing related products and entering into markets that synergize with your existing line of business. This is also known as backward diversification. For example, a leather bag company introducing leather shoes is related or backward diversification.

· Introducing products and entering into markets that have no connections or synergy with your existing market. This also known as forward diversification caters to strengthening the future prospects of your existing business. For example, an investment company venturing into tourism sector is an unrelated or forward diversification.

“No” is a great answer in Sales

It is customary for salespersons to equate a “No” from the customer as a rejection. Series of such reactions frustrate and demotivate a salesperson. I however have contrary views to this.

Let us make note of the following truths of sales related to this topic:

• 95% prospects that finally become customers actually started responding to the salesperson with a “No”.

It happens very seldom that customer starts interacting with a salesperson with a positive “Yes”. The few occasions where it happens, it is said that the customer bought the product (not that the salesperson sold the product)

• Only 8% of customers mean a “No” when they say “No” to a salesperson.

When a customer says “No” to a salesperson he may mean any one of the following

• Not right now
• Not until I discuss the matter with some one else
• Not till I feel that I have the money for the said purchase
• Not till I decide what to do with the existing product
• Not till I convince someone else who is also a party to this decision
• Not till I consume all the consumables that I have in stock for my existing product
• Not till I make full use of the present AMC with my existing supplier
• Many more
• When a customer says “No” to a salesperson, 11% of the order is closed.
• Mostly, only customers who are really interested in a product will raise questions
• Customers have 4 questions to ask to any salesperson and the percentage of closing the order keeps on increasing as the question no increases, viz.
• No, I am not interested in buying the product (11% chances of closing the order)
• The price is too high. (33% chances of closing the order)
• I do not trust you. (66% chances of closing the order)
• The discount is not good enough. (99% chances of closing the order)

Why do we say that Sales process begins when the customer says “No”?

• “No” is the first question that customers raise when they are serious about considering buying a product.
• “No” is an investment which a customer makes with a salesperson because he knows that the latter is going to take more time to explain.
• “No” from customer gives an opportunity to the salesperson to understand the customer better.
• “No” from the customer should be read by salesperson as “Why not?”
• “No” from a customer gives an opportunity to the salesperson to respond

What should the salesperson do when customer says “No”?

1. Thank the customer for his valuable opinion
2. Ask Relevant Questions which helps you conduct a need analysis around the question “No” (The Technique of From – To Analysis)
1. What product do you use right now?
2. Since when are you using this product?
3. What is the cost of solution from this product?
4. How does the customer take care of preventive maintenance of the existing product?
5. What is the consumption of consumables on the present product right now?

How do you respond to “No, Thanks.” from the prospect?

1. Check out whether you are sitting with a customer or consumer. In case you are talking to a customer, try reaching the consumer so that the latter will appreciate your offering more.
2. Organize a no obligation demonstration of your product.
3. Share testimonials of good consumers with the prospect.
4. Promise to share some thought provoking literature on the concept behind the product or service that the salespersons wishes to sell
5. Periodically engage the customer through
1. Whatsapp
2. SMS
3. Email
6. Create a slot on your calendar to follow up with the prospect after some time to see whether the prospect has changed his mind.