By John Chapin

There are four forms of motivation: external negative, external positive, intrinsic, and peer. The best and potentially most powerful is the third one: intrinsic (internal), otherwise known as your “why.” Why do you get out of bed in the morning; why do you go to work? Answers might be to provide for your family, to buy a dream house or car, to go on a dream vacation, or to stay healthy. As a bottom line, what do you want out of life that your sales career will provide the money for?

You can use external positive motivation to get you moving. External positive motivation is a reward you give yourself for hitting a goal of any size.

Another form of external positive motivation is to realize that every interaction, regardless of what happens, puts money in your pocket. Figure out how much money you make on a sale and how many interactions it takes you to get to the sale, and then break that down to how much money you make per interaction. So, if it takes ten prospects to get a sale and ten calls to get a prospect, that means it takes 100 calls to make a sale. If every sale is worth $1000, then every call, regardless of what happens, equals $10.

Negative external motivation is a penalty for not doing something. This one you’ll usually base on activity goals. The reason you focus on activity in this case versus a result is because you can always control activity, you can’t necessarily control the results. An example of external negative motivation is: If you don’t hit the number of prospecting calls for the month, you have to go without something you enjoy (like a certain dessert) for a week or two.

Peer motivation can come in the form of competing with others in the dealership: Ask others to hold you accountable for certain sales goals you’re hoping to hit.

Other than the four forms of motivation, what else can you do? The obvious is to be completely sold on what you have. If you are completely sold on your product and you know it’s going to make people’s work significantly better, you’ll be more motivated to sell.

Be prepared. The better prepared you are for any and all sales situations, the more likely you are to want to make some sales calls. If you aren’t prepared, you’ll tend to avoid calls. In any case, your preparation level will definitely affect your motivation.

Make sure to take good care of yourself and your health. If you’re sleep deprived, that will have a negative effect on your motivation, and it could be a substantial one. Get plenty of sleep, eat right, and exercise.

All of the above said, realize that you won’t always be motivated. This is where self-discipline comes in. If you can get yourself in the habit of making calls and doing the things you don’t want to do when you don’t feel like doing them, you’ll engrain those habits and it will be easier to do the things you need to do even when you don’t want to.