Selling, self-motivation and the role of a true sales manager

Selling Is not a normal job

Selling is not a profession for the faint of heart. Imagine stepping into a boxing ring every day, knowing you’re going to get hit. Again and again. Or you're à surfer paddling into waves that will dump repeatedly you headfirst into the water before you ever get on your surf and enjoy the ride.

That’s sales: rejection, indifference, sometimes outright hostility, built into the fabric of the job. And sometimes the thrill of closing a deal.

And yet, this is the career that fuels the growth of every business. Without sales, nothing moves. No cash, no innovation, no future. Which is why the real question is not “Is selling hard?” (it is) but “What keeps someone showing up, day after day, to do it anyway?” and what, as a business owner or sales leader, you can do to help your team and your organisation achieve their goals?

The need for self-motivation

The easy answer to the first question is money. Commissions, bonuses, president’s clubs. The rewards to elicit behaviours. And yes, those are motivating - at least in the short term. But they don’t last. Any VP who has managed a team knows the cycle: the rep who works hard when the carrot is dangling, only to collapse when the deal falls through.

Edward L. Deci, in his seminal book Why We Do What We Do, explains why. True motivation doesn’t come from outside. Reward to elicit behaviour don't lead to long lasting behaviour. Motivation comes from autonomy - the sense that we act because we choose to, not because we have a specific rewards to aim for or because we’re forced to. A salesperson who only grinds because a manager is breathing down their neck will burn out. One who sells because they own their actions - who has internalised the mission, his mission above the company's mission - will sustain performance.

Objective Management Group’s database of over two and a half million salespeople confirms this: the single biggest predictor of success is not talent, experience, or even skill. It’s desire - and the commitment to pursue it, even when it means doing things that are uncomfortable. High-desire reps with strong commitment consistently outperform low-desire, low-commitment reps, even when the latter are more “qualified” on paper.

“Motivation that comes from autonomy is infinitely more sustainable than motivation imposed from outside.”

This is why desire and self-motivation matter so much in sales - and why leaders ignore them at their peril.

Finally, whilst many organisations assume salespeople are mostly driven by monetary compensation - extrinsic motivation - the data show that top performers possess robust intrinsic motivation. Top sales reps naturally care about their compensation plans—selling isn’t for the faint-hearted, as noted earlier—but intrinsically motivated salespeople outperform.

As Robert Henri, the great American art teacher, put it: “The object of painting a picture is not to make a picture… it is the attainment of a state of being, a high state of functioning.” Replace “painting a picture” with “selling” and you have a crisp description of intrinsic motivation: A-players focus on selling well - understanding their prospects challenges, vision and ideal needs - rather than closing for the sake of closing.

The "Unknown unknowns" of selling

But motivation alone isn’t enough, be it intrinsic or extrinsic. A motivated rep applying the wrong approach again and again will eventually lose that motivation.

One of the greatest traps in sales is there are so many unknown unknowns - what we are not aware of not knowing, our blind spots. Many reps believe they’re “selling” when in reality they’re just talking. They walk into meetings and “show up and throw up,” spewing features and benefits in the hope something sticks. They often have little experience, they've been taught the wrong approach and believe it's the correct way to do things. (Disclaimer: this doesn't happen just to young reps. We work with sales professionals with 20 years of experience selling who tell us "I've been doing it the wrong way all this time, time to change the operating model").

It’s like a tourist who spends an hour on the Champs-Élysées and declares they’ve “done Paris.”. As for seasoned reps? I'd argue it’s like a golfer who has been swinging the wrong way for 20 years - the muscle memory is strong, but the handicap never improves.

What young and seasoned sales professionals often miss is the heart of professional selling: the diagnostic. Asking questions. Listening deeply. Uncovering pain. Acting as a trusted advisor who helps the prospect see their own blind spots.

This gap - the one between educating for free and selling - is invisible to many reps. They don’t even realise they’re missing it. And without intervention, they never will.

From compliance to growth

Here’s where the role of a sales manager becomes critical.

Picture a young rep: motivated, maybe even gritty, but raw. They don’t yet know how to diagnose, they fear asking tough questions, they have a high need to be liked or need of approval (see below), they avoid talking about money, they can't challenge their prospects, in a respective way, when the prospect is contradicting himself. Left alone, they’ll plateau quickly.

This is where compliance comes in - not the bureaucratic kind, but the developmental kind. The rep must be willing to seek and follow guidance: read the books, practice the role plays, try the uncomfortable approaches. In Deci’s framework, this is a lower form of motivation - compliance with external direction - but it’s a necessary step. You don’t master jazz improvisation without first drilling scales under a teacher’s eye.

Angela Duckworth’s research on Grit is crystal clear: success is not about flashes of passion, but about sustained practice. Sticking with it when it’s boring, hard, humbling - an article on grit in sales here -

And here’s the nuance: too often, sales managers adopt a micro-management approach rather than developing a culture of accountability. They track every dial, hover over every pipeline review, and think they’re “driving performance.” In reality, they’re suffocating autonomy.

True accountability is different - without excluding pipeline reviews and following leading KPIs - But it’s at its core about linking sales goals with personal goals—helping each rep see why hitting target matters for them. Maybe it’s funding their kids’ education, maybe it’s the freedom to buy back time. When managers align company objectives with individual meaning, accountability stops being punishment and becomes fuel.

Sadly, very few sales managers truly understand this.

“Compliance is not the enemy of autonomy. It’s often the bridge towards it.”

The role of a true sales manager

This is why the distinction between “spreadsheet managers” and “coaching managers” is so important.

Spreadsheet managers, or those with their heads buried in CRMs live in the world of dashboards, forecasts and end-of-quarter pressure. Coaching managers understand this dynamic of self motivation. So they understand the importance of this growth for their team, they live in these coaching conversations, in role plays, in one-to-ones that ask: “Why did the deal stall?” and “What will you do differently next time?”, "How can I help you perform better?".

All the research shows it bluntly: the best managers spend 60% of their time coaching. That’s not a typo. Six-zero. And yet, most sales leaders spend less than 15% of their week doing it. And very few know how to coach in a consultative manner which outperforms traditional sales management by 26% (NDLR: because sales people are looking at what their managers do more than what they say).

A true sales manager doesn’t want to be the hero. They want to develop heroes. Which, as a side note, is why sales managers carrying a quota cannot succeed in their role. It's mentally and structurally two different roles. 

So a true sales manager is able to build the rhythms, the structure, the systems that develop a true sales culture where excuses aren't accepted, where pointing outwardly towards the prospect or the state of the economy isn't accepted. They develop a culture similar to the one the Top Gun academy has developed. 

The metaphor I use is music: a piano teacher doesn’t become great by playing louder than the student. They become great by teaching scales, correcting posture, repeating encouragement, drilling patterns until the student can improvise. Sales is no different.

Autonomy through mastery

Over time, with repetition, reflection, and accountability, something shifts. The rep who once parroted features begins to hear nuances in prospect conversations. They start spotting patterns, anticipating objections, guiding discussions with fluidity.

This is the full Deci circle: autonomy reappears - not the naïve autonomy of doing whatever you feel like, but the deep autonomy born from mastery. The rep now chooses because they can, not because they’re forced to.

Angela Duckworth would call this the reward of grit. It’s not about the glamour of “natural talent.” It’s about the messy, deliberate practice that turns compliance into confidence, and confidence into autonomy.

Sales hiring : a misunderstood pillar for sales excellence.

But here’s where many business owners and VPs sabotage themselves: they hire wrong. In our experience, only a portion of salespeople have this grit. And it's a difficult trait to identify in a classic recruitment process. It requires a robust, continuous and scientific approach, not "knee-jerk, gut-feeling" based approach to hiring.

Yet organisations still rely on gut feel, polished CVs and charismatic interviews - see here for more details -. They confuse confidence with competence. They seek experience in a similar company. They are seeking technics. And they almost never measure the things that matter most in sales: desire and commitment. When you actually can do so.

This is why sales talent analytics matter. It’s why predictive assessments like those from OMG exist. Because you can train skills, you can teach technique - but you cannot inject desire into someone who doesn’t have it.

“You can train skills, but you cannot inject desire into someone who doesn’t have it.”

(If this resonates and you’re wondering why some hires failed, we can assess whether our sales hiring process can help.)

The takeaway?

Selling is brutal. That’s precisely why self-motivation, grit and accountability matter so much. But left alone, even the most driven rep will hit invisible walls.

The role of the sales manager - the true sales manager that wants to develop heroes rather than being a hero - is to build the bridge: from compliance to autonomy, from external discipline to internal drive. To link accountability with personal meaning. To coach, not to hover. And to create an environment where motivation is not a sugar rush like a two day "motivating seminar", but a muscle.

For VPs and business owners, the takeaway is clear:

• Don’t hire on gut feel. Hire for desire and commitment.

• Don’t manage by having your head in spreadsheets and CRM. Manage through coaching and by building self-motivation.

• Build a culture where reps own their goals because those goals matter to them. And will help them achieve your own goals.

Because in sales, autonomy is not given. It’s earned. And the sales manager’s job is to create the conditions where it can flourish.

Just like a tree breaking through asphalt - not by luck, but by persistence, resilience, and an unshakable drive to reach the light.