Variant 9.

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Motivation

Motivation is an inner state more than something that one person does to another. You cannot motivate people. You can only create the conditions in which people feel motivated. Films and books seem to tell us that motivation in management is something that people do to others. Sports coaches are seen as 'good motivators.' Unfortunately, this has often led to a simplistic view of what motivation is. As all the research and writing shows, motivation is a complex concept. How would you define it? In our view, it is best defined by describing a motivated person.

People are motivated to do things when they want to do them and will do them without further or constant prompting. Motivation can come and go. There are days when we feel highly motivated and days when we feel like staying in bed. In other words, motivation is almost an inner state rather than something that one person does to another.

People can be helped to fell motivated. They will feel better about doing things if they feel that the effort is ‘worth it.' What is 'worth it' will differ person by person and time by time. Frederick Herzberg shows that without certain conditions being met, it is difficult to perform and that certain factors will help us be motivated – responsibility, recognition and so on. Herzberg also shows that the nature of the job may itself be motivational. Douglas McGregor considers two groups of people – those who tend to see extrinsic motivation as necessary to make people do what they do not want to do; those who tend to see motivation as a matter of helping someone do what they want to do anyway.

All these researchers and writers appear to have one thing in common. They show us that motivation stems from what we are, what we want to be, what we need today and what makes us feel good about what we do. If managers hold simply to this and recognize that management is always a matter of 'different strokes for different folks,' they may not go far wrong. David McClelland speaks of three basic needs: the need for achievement, the need for power and the need for affiliation.

The Sales Person

In the race to encourage the purchase of products which are useful, desirable and convenient, the sales person can be part of the product. "People buy people" is as true today as it ever was. More and more products are the same – and the sales person can make all the difference.

As more and more products become seen as commodities, in the marketing sense of that word, so sales skills become more and more vital. If you have a product. which is demonstrably better than its competition. Then the product ought to move itself, at least with some help from advertising.

However, it is remarkably difficult to think of any product today which is demonstrably better – and there is good reason for this. Almost all companies today are full of bright, creative, highly skilled people who, if one company gets an edge, work like a horse – to replicate and match it.

Today, the difference between one product and the next, is less its physical nature and more the way that it is marketed and sold. The sales person is part of the product. He or she alone can get to understand what the customer wants – in physical terms and perhaps more importantly in terms of output, function, image or even fashion – and thus create the actual here and how difference in that specific customer's eyes. It is for these reasons that the skill of selling, soft or not, comes top of the poll in training.