Motivate… Don’t Attempt to Control

by Mark LaRosa / Dec 22

Perhaps the most obvious set of individuals that work remotely are the sales force.  Before technology, sales managers have had to manage remote workforces – and ensure their productivity.

The key to managing any remote workforce, as I blog on all the time at QuotaCrush, is to design the proper compensation plan.  Whatever you try to do in terms of technology that will control and track your employees, the bottom line is if what you really want is higher productivity, then you need to align the goals and tasks of the remote workforce to the goals and tasks of the corporation. The best way to do this, is to design a compensation structure that drives the tasks that you as an organization want done.

While I blog on how this relates to salespeople, in reality regardless of what your remote workforce is doing, you can significantly increase their performance by giving them more freedom and relying on them to drive their own tasks.  A properly designed compensation plan will easily drive their activities to the activities that you want them to perform.

Of course, you need to provide the right tools to make their jobs easier.  This may include time tracking tools, and other mobile devices, but if you try to drive productivity by controlling what tasks they do at what time, you will get the exact opposite reaction to what you want.  You will drive resentment and distrust, rather than drive independace and productivity.  You need to trust your remote workforce to be able to control their own schedules, and if you can’t then you need to decide if you have the correct remote workforce.

Compensation packages should be designed to reward over-achievers, they should be achievable but tough, and they should be transparent.  If everyone knows the performance of everyone else, it will drive competition that will benefit everyone.

While in a technology age, it seems like we should be able to use technology to solve this problem of productivity, but the reality is that we are talking about an issue that is not of the technology age.  It is a problem that has existed for as long as there have been remote workforces, and the solution should always be to drive increased productivity by designing fair but challenging compensation packages that align with the business goals.  When you treat people like professionals and give them clear goals, in general, you will be thrilled with the results you receive.

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