Motivation – The First Principles A Manager Should Never Forget

Being a poor motivator is something no manager will admit to, so why is it when we survey participants on our training courses the poor quality of their managers motivation techniques is always in the top three of ‘my manger’s weaknesses’’?

What is also interesting, most experienced managers say they know about some theory around motivation, but what seems to be lacking is any practical application (assuming the basic understanding has been achieved).

Below we have pulled together what we consider to be the key principles that a manager needs to really understand and be able to apply in their interactions if they want to win the label of being a good motivator.

• Motivation is achieved by the promise of satisfaction of individual Needs, Wants and Desires (NWD).
• Everybody is motivated differently (because of their unique NWD profile).
• Each persons’ NWD is made up of a unique blend of Intrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an internal requirement like job satisfaction) and Extrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an external requirement like having a big boat). These two types of motivation can act on each other in dynamic ways. A large Extrinsic reward can displace an Intrinsic motivation.
• Each individual will demonstrate different levels of drive depending on their NWD profile.
• To be a motivator it must relate to the acquiring of something in the future.
• To motivate someone you must first remove any causes of demotivation. If someone is frustrated and angry with the poor work tools they have they are not going to be motivated to take part in winning a top prize in any incentive scheme.
• Removing the causes of demotivation does not motivate someone. When you have achieved an unmotivated state, a person becomes suggestible to being motivated.
• When someone’s NWD is satisfied their motivation will decrease.
• Money itself is rarely a motivator, think of it as mechanism for satisfying a person’s particular NWD. Someone with a highly aspirational or expensive lifestyle will be more money motivated than someone who has enough money to meet all their present and future lifestyle requirements.
• There is a level beyond which any further motivation won’t work.

You will notice a key underlying requirement. Knowledge and empathy of, and for, the people you are looking to motivate. The key to effective motivation is about understanding a person’s NWD profile. Without this you will see ‘one size fits all’ motivation attempts and money being used in very clunky (and expensive) ways. What is the key attribute of manager’s who can do that? - a high level of self awareness and insight into their own NWD. You cannot sensibly and sustainably motivate others if you don’t understand what motivates yourself.

Effective motivation is covered on all Structured Training’s Open Management Courses and is often designed as an in-company tailored programme.

Click here for more details on our open programmes or contact Claudine McClean to have an informal chat about how we can help your organisation’s mangers became better motivators.

Generating New Business

How do top sales people generate new business in a tough economic market?

In all the conversations we have with sales people recently their biggest challenge is winning new customers. So much so that many simply don’t do it and purely focus on their existing customers and hope they have built enough relationship equity for when the market picks up again. It’s a strategy – of sorts – but it’s dodging the real issue. The uncomfortable issue of ‘cold calling’. In a market where most customers are risk averse, and focused on reducing their costs, how do sellers break through this cycle?

And therein lies the rub. Whilst ever sales people see the market as ‘difficult’ and making those dreaded ‘cold calls’ there will always be something more ‘important’ to focus on. Sales people are by their nature resourceful and can always find ways of not doing the ‘unpleasant’ bits of their job.

However, given that customers are cutting back on their spending, it is those sales people who are pro-actively generating new business who will be in the most advantageous position as the market recovers. So what are those pro-active sales people doing to win new customers?

Stop ‘cold calling’ - this is a mind-set problem; top sales people don’t do cold calling, they have conversations with people they’ve not spoken to before to establish whether they are customers who would benefit from doing business with them.

Have a vision - top sales people have a very clear idea about what they have to offer and how it benefits their customers. They can articulate their value proposition in compelling terms. They know where they want to take their business in the long-term and which customers they want to be working with.

Have a plan - it is essential that they have a strategic focus to whom they’re targeting; why do they want to work with this customer? Is this an organisation that is known to use their type of product/service? How would this organisation benefit by working with them?

Have a reason for contacting them - top sales people do their research first and ensure that when they do make that first contact with a new customer; that they have something of interest to talk about, something that the customer will see as ‘insightful’ and a benefit to them

Use the tools available – what did sales people do before computers, spreadsheets and databases? They used index cards and diaries – that’s what! There are now many excellent tools to help sales people plan and track their activity and help to manage their pipeline. There really is no excuse now for not getting organised.

For further ideas on generating new business see our Selling...The Essentials For Success course.

Rotting Or Growing?

At this time of year, when the gardens are closing down for winter and the roses are being dressed with compost, it's worth reflecting on the similarities between a refreshing dose of well rotted vegetable matter and the resources of businesses looking to emerge from tough times!

After a spell of healthy growth and blooming results, things can turn a little flat; making use of well developed people, changing their utilisation a little and applying them liberally to the roots of success can give us a spur which energises and refreshes the product for the next season. Which of your staff are rooted in the business and would you ideally not wish to lose? How adaptable are they to the changing environment and different approaches that you find you need? How might you inspire them, put them in a slightly changed role and see their raw power give a kick start to the business?

To see how we can help you lead people through the change process, inspiring and motivating them to commit to your business performance, please contact us.

What Is The Difference Between The Average And The High Performer?

A recent project revealed some interesting perspectives which we share with you below. We looked to profile a wide range of executives, both managers and senior specialists, across the whole performance spectrum and looked at six approaches they use to inform their work style.

As you can see the differences are quite marked. The High Performer (HP) has a very different perspective compared to the Average Performer (AP). Our summary came down to three major conclusions:

1. The HP puts themselves at the centre of things. They are prepared to own their circumstances and then seek to influence them. The AP seems to be more controlled by their circumstances.


2. The HP has an agenda, not simply to survive in the role but to achieve something more. We found this a more complex issue than simply calling it career ambition. Many HPs don’t seem to be overtly interested in that definition. It seemed to be more about wanting to transcend their environment in some way, to make it better, more productive, more enjoyable, more something; but never to just accept it. Changing not maintaining their environment was a key driver.


3. The HP was more self confident about their ignorance and lack of understanding. The AP either tried to disguise it or to hold up their lack of knowing something as a badge of honour.

What is interesting, is when these differences are articulated, indentifying people by these approaches can become a predictor of performance as much as reflection.

If you would like to find our more about Structured Training’s work on developing high performers contact us on 01789 734300.

University of Life (UoL) – Does It Mean Anything?

This is often talked about as either a defensive statement made by people who didn’t attend university, or as a slightly pejorative term by people who did attend. In our work we meet many successful people who did and didn’t go to university, we thought it would be interesting to see if we could indentify any connecting traits or differences. You might like to cross reference this with the sister article in this newsletter here.

1. If people use the UoL phrase about themselves it’s usually a bad sign for the reason covered in the intro paragraph.
2. What is interesting about education is how it connects (or not) to learning. From our experience there is no correlation between how much formal education somebody has received and how much learning they continue to absorb and apply.
3. Next up is experience. Does the experience of going to university beat the experience of not going to university? Given how many students also hold a job down to help fund their degree this distinction is blurring. Also, a lot of people who are 18+ and not at university are unemployed which is not an experience rich environment.
4. The UoL track is supposed to be more character building. Again that depends on what people do. If you travel the world striving for world peace I guess character is being built, but if the time is spent working (or not) whilst living at home the character is not being necessarily built.
5. A circumstance where UoL wins hands down is where someone who has been to university thinks and acts in a superior manner simply because that is what they did. They believe they don’t have to learn anything else, or as one of these types put it recently on a workshop “I’ve done with learning, I now want to earn some serious money”. What is interesting is whether they would make such stupid statements anyway, university being a non-contributing factor.

In summary, we could find no general factors that supported the idea that the UoL route made someone a more successful person. In fact, all the data shows is someone who has a degree has much greater earnings potential over their career, but we could find no evidence it made them a better or more successful person in teams where both cohorts existed.

Our (perhaps not very profound) conclusion is University of Life is an empty phrase.

Structured Training Open Courses 2010

Structured Training have released their 2010 Open Courses calendar, allowing you to schedule your training for the upcoming year. When budgets are tight it pays to make the most of them and by selecting the right open course for each individual you can make sure your training budget delivers against its objectives.

To view the 2010 calendar click here, where you’ll see all the courses and the available dates. Don’t forget if you have a group of participants all looking for the same course we can run an in-house version for you.

2009 dates are still available and can be found here. We currently have a special offer on Operational Sales Management running in November, and if you book now, quoting the ST Newsletter, you’ll receive a 20% discount on your booking. To reserve your place call 01789 734300.

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