Paul Riddle
Contributing Writer
Success Group International
How do you motivate your team members beyond the pay system you use? It’s a question many members ask. Everyone has different ways of motivating, and that is because everyone has a different way of being motivated. Everyone is different.
With that in mind, the first thing you should do is determine what motivates the members of your team. Some people are motivated by money. For those individuals, the potential for a raise or a bonus will get them going. Some people will be motivated by the opportunity to receive extra time off. For those people, you may be able to offer them an extra vacation day for hitting their goals. Others may be motivated by recognition, so a special award or promotion may be what pushes them to excel. You need to get to know what drives each of your people to work hard every day.
The exciting thing about people is that everyone has different motivators, so there is no end to the ways that you can motivate your team. However, here are few ways to motivate your team to succeed.
The first thing to do is institute a scoreboard. If you don’t utilize a scoreboard yet, you absolutely must—and soon. It can simply be a huge board that is put up in a prominent place in your company. Then simply mark out columns for each day of the week and rows for each member of your team to put their goals and their actual results. The effect these boards will have on your team is tremendous. They create a healthy sense of peer pressure amongst your team. No one wants to be the one that ends up in last place on the scoreboard at the end of the week, so your people will be motivated to bring in higher revenues than the others each day.
When each member of your team comes in at the end of the day, have them write their totals on the board. If they meet their goals, write in the amount in black. If they surpass their goals, they write in the amount in blue. If they fail to meet their goal, they write in their amount in red. You’ll see the effect this has. Your guys won’t want to return to the office at the end of the day just to write their total in red. They want the blue, and they’ll end up pushing themselves throughout the day to surpass their goals.
Reinforce the scoreboard with some type of incentive for meeting and exceeding their goals. Some owners will simply award a dollar amount to those individuals that beat their goal for the week. Others will make a game out of it. Whoever beats their goals for the week gets a playing card and whoever has the best hand at the end of the month wins a prize. Whatever incentive you want to use with the scoreboard is up to you, but we recommend it being an incentive that will motivate. That’s why you want to know what really motivates your team, whether it’s money, time off, TVs, etc.
In addition to that, there are two other great programs to motivate your team.
Get your team involved in some type of profit-sharing program. That way your team is tied to and committed to the profitability of the company. Some companies call it the “Bonus Bucket” program. Basically, if goals are exceeded, a percentage of the profit that goes over the goals goes into a “bucket”. Then, at the end of the year, whatever amount is in the bucket gets divided amongst everyone on the team. It can quickly become a substantial bonus for your team, and your employees know that if they help the company become more profitable they’ll benefit too. That gets everyone excited about how we are doing each day instead of just the technicians or salespeople. Everyone in the office is keyed into how we are doing and how we can increase our profitability.
The easiest way to motivate your team is to have some sort of an employee of the month award. You can give the winner a gift certificate to their favorite restaurant or tickets to a sporting event they would enjoy. The options are unlimited, and it’s a great way to recognize the efforts of your team’s superstars.
Most of all, motivating your team gives you a tremendous opportunity to get creative. Hold a contest, plan a company trip or party, but most of all, have fun!
About the Author: Paul Riddle, Vice President, Success Group International
Paul Riddle has over 25 years of hands‐on experience as GM, COO, CEO, and owner of service companies specifically in the mechanical and restoration segments. Throughout his career, he has personally trained the owners and employees of hundreds of businesses, including several turnaround situations. His hands‐on training for owners and their employees has been in the areas of business planning, sales & marketing, and company culture. Paul enjoys applying his knowledge and experience working directly with business owners and their employees to increase profits, improve the company’s present value, and unlock the intrinsic value of the business when sold. Paul joined SGI in 2009 as the VP of Operations.