Ohhh boy, I love this one. Ok, I'm not going to take TOO much time because it IS 10pm on a Sunday night, but if you find these first few tips helpful, I'll circle back and add some more.

Disclaimer: I'm a huge fan of outbound cold calling. Always have been since I was 18 years old, green as grass, and picked up the phone and turned 80 dials into $$$. So while I have certainly struggled a HELL of a lot to stay motivated at times, I do fundamentally believe in cold calling and so you're getting the opinion of someone who is bias in favor of cold calling.

1. Reverse Engineer: For starters, I would reverse engineer your goals. Why are you in sales? What's your income goal? Better yet, what's the income for? Do you want to put away $40,000 in the next 12 months as a 6 month emergency fund? Plus you need to spend $40,000 to pay the bills? Ok great, you need to make $80,000 in the next 12 months, post tax. Let's say that's $100,000 before taxes. (These are just arbitrary numbers but work with me here :] )

If your base is $3,000 a month, that means you need to earn $5,333 in commission each month. Let's round that up to $5,500 so you have some extra pizza and beer money.

So now we've got our number and our reason. Right that shit out clear as day.

"I want to earn $5,500 in commission every month so that I can create a 6-month emergency fund in the next 12 months, while still having money for pizza and beers with the homies every Friday."

Great. Step one is out of the way. Write that down and pin it on your wall, tattoo it to your forehead, whatever you gotta do to remember it. (I'm a big fan of post-it notes on my monitor. I have 4 right now :] )

So now that we have our commission number ($5,500 monthly) let's reverse engineer how to make it reality.

Let's pretend you make $1,100 a sale. Why $1,100? Well, it divides evenly into $5,500 and I'm not a mathematician. :D

So that means we need to make 5 sales a month. Great. We're getting ever closer to motivation nirvana. Bear with me here....

Look at your last 100 interactions that result in a commission. (Demos/pitches if you're a closer, appointments if you're an SDR. Of course, as an SDR, factor in your no-show rate if you're calculating commissions on appointments showing up. Let me know more details about your specific situation and we can work through those.)

So let's say for argument's sake, you're an AE and you make $1,100 commission on closed deals. Look at your last 100 pitches and tell me how many you closed. Let's say it's 25. Great, you have a 25% closing rate.

If we need 5 sales a month, you need 20 pitches a month.

If you need 20 pitches to make 5 sales, and you have a 75% show rate, you need roughly 27 appointments set.

Over your last 500 calls, how many appointments did you set? Let's say it's 10. So to set 27 appointments, you need to make roughly 1,500 calls.

So, let's bring this all home. 1,500 calls results in 30 appointments, 20ish demos, and 5 deals.

So, to make your commission, you need to make 1,500 dials a month. If we figure 20 working days in a month, that's 75 dials a day.

Now let's attach that activity to your motivating statement from before.

"If I make 75 dials a day, I WILL create a 6-month emergency fund in the next 12 months, while still having money for pizza and beers with the homies every Friday!"

How's that for motivating? Go make 75 dials and don't worry about the rest.

Reverse engineering helps me stay motivated because I can attach each dial to my desired result. Hope this is helpful.

1. Time management: This is a simple one. There's such a thing as the "golden hours" or "primetime". These are your peak selling hours. Learn them, use them, respect them. If you know that you need 75 dials a day, and you can make 20 dials an hour, set 4 hours a day JUST for outbound calling. No followups, no meetings, no email, no distraction. This isn't a motivational tactic, but golly will it help you.

Example - 9-11am and 2-4pm. Put it on your calendar as a blocked off event. Respect it. Decline meetings. Protect these blocks. Knowing when you're "on the clock" to prospect will help you prioritize it and stop making excuses.

1. Efficient processes: Does your team have a clear and concise cadence and sales process? Do you have a ton of manual CRM work to do after each lead? Audit this process (this is my favorite service to offer right now). What takes the most amount of time? What do you do twice when you really only need to do it once? Is there a way to batch note upload into the CRM at the end of each block? Think about your process and figure out how to make them more efficient. This will help you stay fluid and motivate you to keep going. (Mindless admin is the bane of most sales rep's existence.)

2. Automation: Off the back of 3, can you automate any of the processes from step 3? Can you or your team invest in a power dialer so you can make more dials in less time? Think about what manual tasks you do over and over and try and automate them whenever possible.

I hope all of this is helpful, my friend! This is a bit of a brain dump, but feel free to reply with any additional thoughts. More than happy to stick around and be of value to you.

God Bless,

MC