Sales Training

Five steps toward fueling motivation

By Andrea Hill

My granddaughter, Aubrey, is being homeschooled…at my house. Each morning her mom drops her off before she goes to work, and Aubrey and I head to our shared office. Most days she jumps on her computer, logs into her curriculum (she is enrolled in an international online school), and knocks out her lessons. Some days, like today, she just can’t get into it. And most of the time when this happens, it’s not that she’s not motivated to do her lesson. It’s that she can’t relate to it.

Motivation is not something that can be delegated like a task or taught like a lesson. We can try to motivate others by focusing on outcomes (carrots and sticks), but ultimately, the only type of motivation with staying power is self-motivation. Self-motivation happens when the desire to learn or achieve comes from a deep interest in or attachment to the work.

One aspect of marketing that manu-facturers and designers should pay much closer atte...