7 Ways to Motivate your Sales Team Without Money

Motivate your sales team without tapping into your compensation budget line, using these seven strategies.

Good compensation and commission bonuses will always be great motivators for your insurance sales team. Keeping your sales team motivated not only helps your bottom line but helps you retain great insurance agents. Think of the time spent in hiring and training new agents. Happy agents will stay on your team and you won’t have to waste precious time due to staff turnover. When you motivate your sales team, you build group morale and work toward a common goal of growing the agency’s business. There’s more you can do to motivate your sales team besides just giving them extra money. Here are seven strategies to ramp up team motivation without adding to your compensation budget line.

1. Offer regular feedback

Checking in with your agents is an important step to motivate your sales team. Regular feedback encourages professional growth and helps identify areas for improvement. Feedback can be in the form of formal annual reviews, as well as quarterly and monthly check-ins. Depending on your supervisory structure, regular one-on-one meetings with your sales team can be beneficial for building team motivation.

2. Celebrate wins publicly

Motivate your sales team by creating opportunities for public recognition and celebration for big and small wins. Some offices have a large bell on the wall and encourage anyone who makes a sale to ring it publicly. If this is too disruptive, try other visual recognition like signage or emails. Start off each of your team meetings with team members offering “shout-outs” to fellow agents who’ve helped them recently.

3. Create a friendly competition with team building

Pair your agents up into teams and build some friendly competition around a sales goal. For extra benefit, pair veteran agents with newer agents to encourage a mentor-mentee relationship. Establish a prize for the winning team that isn’t necessarily money-driven. It could be a free day off or a relaxed summer schedule.

4. Offer wellness perks

When thinking about how to motivate your sales team, don’t forget about wellness. It can be easy for month-end quotas and other sales deadlines to amplify stress around the office. Boost motivation by investing in your team’s health and wellness. Hire a masseuse to give chair massages during peak stress weeks. Bring a yoga instructor into the office to lead a mindfulness meditation and gentle yoga session. Partner with a local gym and offer membership discounts. Seeing your employer invest in your health and wellbeing can be a real motivator for some agents.

5. Be transparent and ask for feedback

In addition to offering feedback to your sales team, it’s important to seek out feedback as a manager, as well. If there are big decisions to make, be sure to involve your team in the decision-making process, when appropriate. Invite team members to join meetings and discussions regarding agency-wide decisions and solicit anonymous feedback, that allows team members to give honest impressions. When your sales team sees that you are willing to hear their concerns and be transparent with agency-wide initiatives, they’ll be more motivated to participate.

6. Find out what motivates each team member

Ask your team what works best for them in terms of motivation. Some people like to be acknowledged publicly while others prefer a private conversation or email. For some agents, an afternoon off for achieving a sales goal is a major motivator. Other agents may prefer a better parking spot. Find out how your team members like to be motivated and try to incorporate them into your management style.

7. Offer flexible work schedules

With many more agents working from home, flexible work schedules are almost a given. It’s important to find a balance that will work for you and your sales team. Motivate your sales team by trusting them to come up with flexible work schedule options for you to approve. Having face-to-face time in the office can be important, but it’s worth considering options that can help team members create a more balanced work-life.

To motivate your sales team, you’ve got to listen to their feedback and concerns. It doesn’t always have to cost money, though that certainly helps! Spend more time working with your sales team to improve motivation and morale by leaving the lead generation up to HBW Leads. HBW Leads will provide your team with exclusive, double-verified leads so they can hit the ground running.