What actions do you take to ‘re-motivate’ a stagnate sales person?
Positive Motivation:
Assign a new rep to mentor and allow the senior sales an override?
Give them responsibility to introduce a new brand or product to the marketplace?
Provide a period of exclusivity to a potential new vertical market
Negative Motivation:
Do you cut their territory?
Reassign customers?
Stop providing leads (if you have been)?

I'll be interested to hear opinions from both managers and sales people. I'll provide my personal insight at the close of the question.

* This was selected as Best Answer

Susan,

Many large technology companies employ what sales people refer to as a "penalty" system. If you carry a 5mil dollar quota and hit it, your next year's quota will be 10mil. Tough to do, especially if you don't have anything new to sell into your customer base, and your customer's just bought software, hardware, and services on a three year cycle. The reality is that they won’t be prime for upgrades and another large purchase for a couple of years minimum. So, the sales person is now forced to 1) look really hard for new business within his current accounts or 2) find new logo accounts or 3) find another job. And 1, 2, 3 is the desire of the company and the point behind the commission plan, or “penalty system”, so the company’s goals are always met.

My preference, for keeping sales people motivated is "accelerators". Design "kickers" that kick in once they make quota. If a sales person makes quota in Q3 and he or she knows that they are now in the "accelerator" pay scale they will usually go into "over drive" to close business and not go on vacation.

The bottom-line is that all sales people are motivated by "coin" so that should be the key factor to design around to keep complacency at bay.

Good Luck,
Peter
May 2009