A. Brad Rosser writes:
We got our sales team members to achieve both their individual and team goals, and make sales of £2.5bn in four years using the following techniques:

Using team leaders: Identify your star sales staff and make them team leaders, with responsibility for ensuring individual sales staff hit their targets and that the whole team delivers on its overall objectives. Your team leaders should be paid an “override” commission on their team members’ sales to incentivise them. This is also a great way to offer staff career progression. 

Offering individual and team incentives: You must offer individuals incentives so as not to discourage star performers, but there is also value having them for the team too. We offered both individual commissions based on property sales, and team bonuses for selling an entire scheme in a certain time. Also, if we were hosting a special sales event, we would offer a team commission “pot” so that staff were focused on selling and were not spending their time trying to undermine each other to better their own sales.   

Ensuring incentives offered reflect difficulty of the sale: If you have larger, longer term projects, then you need to offer commissions and incentives that reward your staff for the longer pay-off and harder work.     

Constantly reviewing and refreshing incentives: Regularly review your commission structure to make sure it is achieving your original objectives. If it isn’t, then tweak it.   

Setting milestones and reviewing progress regularly: If your  sales staff are neglecting longer-term deals, ensure you have allocated clear responsibility for that lead to a specific person(s) and set up regular review points to monitor progress. Discipline them if they have not made sufficient progress.

Brad Rosser is a serial entrepreneur behind companies such as Instant Access Properties Group, Rpoints and Cashback Kings. www.rpoints.com