When I’m at parties and people find out that I am a motivational speaker and sales training seminar leader they often say something like, “That’s fab, can you motivate me?” Flippant questions aside, motivation is a huge part of what I do when I am consulting with companies to increase sales results and is essential if you want to build a high performance sales team or if you want to be a successful salesperson.

Understanding how to motivate yourself to be proactive, positive and focused is critical if you want to be a sales superstar. Check out this email I received…

Thank you for sending me the newsletter, it really helps. I am having a particularly horrible time at the moment as I work in…… and the whole thing is a mess. I am losing the will to live rapidly and I feel like I want to leave. My boss has cut commissions, rightly, so I suppose, but with the financial worry and the ever decreasing market I really don’t know how to stay positive……

Please help with some advice. We have been on two of your seminars and they were brilliant. I would love to come on another one, but have no money, and the company is not spending at the moment.

I run whole sales training sessions and give sales conferences talks on motivation, but here, in a nutshell, are my top 10 sales training tips for getting and staying motivated to sell more, even in the most competitive of markets.

Motivational sales tips 1: Remember that motivation is internal.

Many salespeople treat motivation as if it is something that happens to them. They allow themselves to be buffeted by difficult prospects, client challenges, lost sales and poor market conditions. This leaves them out of control of their personal motivation and out of control of their sales destiny.

Motivation is something that you do (or don’t do) for yourself. It is a set of mental processes. It is something that you can remain in control of irrespective of market conditions and irrespective of what happens to you. I’m not saying that staying motivated to sell is easy but it is inside of your control. And what’s more, the more that you work on controlling your personal sales motivation, the better you will become at harnessing it to get the sales results that you want.

Motivational sales tips 2: Take the daily motivation challenge.

Many salespeople career through their lives unaware of their lack of motivation or their “average” levels of motivation. It might be ok to do some jobs whilst operating from average levels of motivation but not selling.

Salespeople need to be up for it and motivated.

One good way of staying motivated is to set yourself a daily challenge to keep motivated so here’s my challenge for you…

Take your “motivational temperature”, so to speak, several times a day. Simply stop and ask yourself honestly, “How motivated am I right now?” Just stopping momentarily to check your motivational temperature will make you more aware of your habitual levels of sales motivation and will awaken you to the possibility of doing something about it.

Motivational sales tips 3: Remind yourself “WHY”.

Many salespeople and many people in general spend their lives “going through the motions”. They get up, they go to work, they go home, they watch the TV, they go to bed, they get up, they go to work, they go home, they watch the TV, they go to bed…

Same old, same old, over and over, day in and day out.

Now don’t get me wrong here, I have no problem with routine; what I do have a problem with is that same routine blunting your hunger, that same routine dulling your passion, that same routine killing your spirit…

Top salespeople have passion, drive and hunger and one way they maintain this is by waking themselves from their “going through the motions” reverie by reminding themselves “WHY” they are here and “WHY” they are following the path of a sales superhero. When I am sales training and consulting, helping individuals to know “WHY” something is important to them helps them get and stay motivated more easily.

Motivational sales tips 4: Fizz it up.

One of the quickest ways to change your mental state is to change your physical state. Your physical state is hard wired to the way that you feel. Every physical state has an emotional state associated with it. Conversely, changing your physical state will change the way that you feel – fast.

Feeling short of energy? Get some air in your lungs, punch your arms in the air, stand up straight, jump up and down, run on the spot, yell out loud, smile stupidly, breathe more quickly…

Remembering to take control of your physical state can work wonders for your motivation on a moment to moment basis.

Motivational sales tips 5: Be your own internal sales coach.

We all talk to ourselves, the question is not whether you do or not but what you say to yourself. Many salespeople have an inner critic who deserves shooting! Many salespeople berate themselves in a way that they would never allow anyone else to. Many salespeople get beaten up by their own inner sales critic on a daily basis.

It doesn’t have to be this way. By taking control of our self-talk and training our inner critic to be our inner sales coach we can change our persistent internal dialogue from destructive to constructive and from cynic to coach.

Motivational sales tips 6: Set BIG goals and go for them.

Demotivated salespeople do not set ambitious goals. Lack of ambition when goal setting will not motivate you. Lack of ambition when goal setting will not drive you. Lack of ambition when goal setting will not set you on the path to sales success. Lack of ambition when goal setting will not help you to perform in the sales super league.

Demotivated salespeople do not set ambitious goals because they think, “Well, hey, I won’t hit it anyway so why bother?” or, “I’ll set it low because I’ll manage that”.

Top salespeople set BIG goals to motivate, stretch and focus themselves. Top salespeople set BIG goals knowing that even if they don’t hit them they will develop and improve along the way. Top salespeople set BIG goals because they expect success.

Motivational sales tips 7: Reward yourself.

Reward yourself for a job well done. Reward yourself when you deserve it. Reward yourself when you work hard. Reward yourself when you work long. Reward yourself when you win. Reward yourself when you learn.

Rewards motivate so make sure that you reward yourself for the sales behaviours that you want and need to do more of. Reward yourself for doing what you told yourself that you’d do. Reward yourself even when others don’t.

Motivational sales tips 8: Hang out with top sales superstars.

Hang out with sales superstars. Spend time with sales rock stars. Roll with top sales aces. If you spend time with demotivated, uninspired losers they will suck the sales juice right out of you. Spend time with motivated winners however and they will teach you how to be more motivated, how to stay more motivated and how to create the life that you want.

Motivational sales tips 9: Get the sales edge.

One of the best ways of motivating yourself is to invest in yourself and your personal development. Enrol yourself on a sales training seminar, buy a sales training book, listen to a sales training audio or watch a sales training DVD.

When you invest in your own personal development you send a message to yourself that you are worth investing in and that makes you feel good about yourself and that, in turn, builds motivation. Don’t know what to do? Stuck for choices? Check out my sales training seminars and products.

Motivational sales tips 10: Get your buddies involved.

Misery likes company. Losers like support. But then, so does motivation. Get yourself upbeat and motivated and then enrol your buddies into your “motivated” group. Run competitions, create energy, encourage, cajole and persuade each other to go the extra mile and make selling more fun. Teams that motivate and support each other in being more motivated, up beat and up for it are more effective and make more sales.

So there you go, 10 motivational sales tips for getting and staying more motivated. Where are you going to start?