An enterprise is like a living organism: it’s functioning and development depend on many issues. Motivating sales specialists is the key to successful sales. In order to become known on the market, small and medium enterprises need to be aware of that. What are the traits of a good manager? How does the Polish SME sector cope with motivating sales specialists? These and many other questions are answered by Tomasz Michalik, the initiator of the Motiveo.pl project.
You have been leading one of the market’s first interactive agencies for 15 years now. You also are the creator of an innovative system for the SME sector. Where did you get the idea?
That’s right, it’s been quite some time that I’ve been dealing with communication and marketing. For all these years, I’ve been gathering lots of experience in the area of motivation in sales and implementing spectacular programmes for the major corporations on the market. Where did I get the idea to transfer this experience to the SME sector? The answer is very simple: there are no such solutions in the SME sector. A high price is always the barrier in implementing such programmes. Working with corporations, we create complex programmes with budgets of hundreds of thousands of złotys. In the SME sector, budgets like that are impossible. So we started to look for possibilities of transferring this know-how to small and medium companies. Technology came to the rescue. It turned out that by building our service as an SAAS platform, we are able to lower or even remove the barriers to entry. Most importantly, we are killing the middleman, that is the agency that would have to come up with a motivation model. Using this technology, we are giving the entrepreneur the possibility to configure the motivation programme himself. The fees for using the system are much lower than the costs of hiring an agency.
This requires the entrepreneur to be fully self-reliant. Which in turn leads to the fundamental question of what the traits of a good manager should be.
First of all, he should be very much aware of his strengths and weaknesses. He should turn his weaknesses into success. I’m thinking of replacing the competences he’s missing with the competences of his team. In practice, he should be able to motivate people to do their tasks with high involvement.
Translating this to the SME sector, are Polish SMEs successful in motivating their sales specialists?
There are hundreds of thousands, even millions, of small and medium enterprises in Poland. I’m sure that there are entrepreneurs that do well in motivating their employees. In small companies, it’s much easier to manage motivation than in big corporations. However, most of entrepreneurs don’t know how to get on with it. Leaving aside the few per cent that deal with the issue well, we still have a huge market of companies that don’t have such knowledge, but need it, even if perhaps they are not aware of that fact yet. I think this applies not only to the Polish market. There’s lots to do and we understand that educating the market in this respect will be necessary.
Are there inexpensive tools enabling entrepreneurs to increase income available on the Polish market?
There are many systems that facilitate increasing company income. We have a number of excellent CRMs and systems for analysing consumer behaviours, both online and working at the points of sale. There is lots of tools, but I haven’t come across one that would directly allow to build the motivation of sales specialists or carry out activities referred to by marketers as the ‘push’. From this perspective, it’s the cheapest and fastest method of stimulating sales. It’s worth using it in the SME sector, which, like any business, needs to sell.
Could you briefly describe the elements a well-built sales motivation system should include?
The answer is very simple: it needs to naturally motivate the people that have direct influence on sales to sell the given product. You need to clearly communicate to the sales specialist the benefits they will get from selling the given product. Everything depends on the strategy of such sales, which will be different for different companies.
Let’s get back to Motiveo. What benefits can it bring to the SME sector?
Immense, in my opinion. The entrepreneur’s awareness of how to stimulate sales by motivating sales specialist will already be very practical. Those that will decide to use our system will have the opportunity to easily and practically take advantage of our knowledge which we’ve been building for years on the basis of our experiences on the corporate market, creating such programmes and stimulating the sales of the major players on the market. From my point of view, it’s worth it. I hope that the SME sector will soon discover the benefits offered by the Motiveo system.
The benefits for employers are obvious: they get motivated sales specialists and higher profits. But what does the system offer to employees?
A motivation programme is a set of rules that apply to the entrepreneur and the sales specialist and it’s always a good idea to have these rules written down and make sure that they are clear to both parties. I have already said quite a lot about the benefits for entrepreneurs – first of all, they will be able to systematize the process of creating a motivation system, going through the configuration process without falling into any traps. They will be sure that from the point of view of economy, the system will not generate losses. I’m convinced that the sales specialist will especially appreciate the transparency of such a programme and the fact that they will be able to use the system via a mobile phone, which is a device they use in their everyday work.
Motiveo means transparency and certainty that achieving a given target will result in a particular reward. This is extremely motivating and translates to results.
Currently, the system is available to clients in Poland and in the UK. Are you planning to expand to other countries?
Yes, we want to conquer the entire world. J This is our dream, but we are very humble and know that it’s a long way and we’ve made only the first few steps. The SME market is very diverse in this respect. Still only a few companies deal with this aspect. There is room for Polish innovation. For sure, in Poland, there will have to be more educational activities in terms of understanding the need to motivate and using the system in practice than for instance in England. What we know today is that our product is well-positioned against the needs of the market. The purpose of every SME in the world is the same: business must sell. This is why we are not afraid of the future.