“What should I do if I lose motivation?” As an SDR or BDR, staying motivated is probably one of the biggest challenges. It is a really tough job full of rejection where being told no 90% of the time is considered successful. There are ups and downs, inevitably there will be times when we do not feel as motivated as we’d like to. This is normal. However in order to hit our number, we do need to be consistent with our effort. The good news is I’ve learned how to maintain motivation as a sales development rep and I am here to share it with you including a five step plan that you can start right now to get your mojo back!
Firstly, it is important to note that motivation is one of the five elements of Emotional Intelligence. And if you’ve read any of my other posts you’ll probably know that I truly believe developing our Emotional Intelligence as SDRs is key. If this is your first time hearing about the concept of emotional intelligence, start here: What is Emotional Intelligence And Why Does It Matter For SDRs? Next let’s recognise that struggling with motivation is normal and handling it is a skill that you can learn to develop, like any other.
Short Term Motivation
Let’s take this in two parts – first we look at short term motivation – how to get through your day or week even when you don’t feel motivated to do anything. Then we will deal with longer term motivation.
Motivation Is Born From Doing
People often talk about motivation like a thought or feeling “I didn’t feel like doing my cold calls today, I had no motivation”. I’ve come to realise that motivation doesn’t come from feeling or a thought, it comes from action. What I mean by that is that if you don’t feel like doing something, thinking about it will not help you to feel like it. Waiting for motivation doesn’t work unfortunately.
The good news is that doing actually creates motivation. So if we don’t feel like doing 50 cold calls, just commit to doing 5. And yes, do them even if you don’t feel like it. Even if you are not motivated to do so. By doing 5, you may just find the motivation to do 15 more. And guess what, you’ve done 20. It’s not 50 but it is not zero either. Something is always better than nothing. And don’t forget to reward yourself afterwards. The reward is up to you. For me, I’d listen to my favourite song, make myself a cup of tea, eat a treat or take a 10 minute break.
Consistency Over Motivation
When I started as an SDR I was always trying to figure out how to stay motivated. Eventually I realised that we don’t need to be motivated to do things. We just need to do them. Instead of focusing on staying motivated I wish someone had told me to focus on being consistent. So I’ll tell you now: Be Consistent with your effort and activity and if you do this, consider the day a success, regardless of the outcome with meetings and opportunities.
Some days you will be up and some days you will be down. Some days you’ll feel great and it’ll come easy, other days it’ll be a struggle. Do it anyway. Do what you can. This will mean 100 cold calls some days and 10 cold calls another day. Once you can maintain some level of consistency week to week, you will be doing okay. Just don’t fall into the trap of waiting for motivation.
Long Term Motivation
The advice I’ve given so far will help you to get through a slow day or a slow week however I understand that if you are feeling constantly underwhelmed and not very motivated it will be difficult to keep going. In this case we need to consider motivation as part of Emotional Intelligence.
In Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence, he identified four elements that make up motivation: our personal drive to improve, our commitment to the goals we set for ourselves, our readiness to act on opportunities that arise and our resilience. All of these things relate to our intrinsic motivation. That is, things that are motivating us from within. The opposite is extrinsic motivation and this will relate to things like promotions, targets and money.
In order to develop this element of our emotional intelligence, we must practice leaning into our intrinsic motivation. We must revisit our Why. Why are you doing this job? Maybe you want to be an AE? Whatever your “why”, connect your overall goal to smaller goals you can control now. If you are feeling like you have lost your spark, it may be time to take a pen and paper and try the following exercise:
How To Awaken Your Intrinsic Motivation
Take a pen and piece of paper and write down the following as honestly as you can
- What do you want from your life? And how does this job contribute to that? There are not many people who dream about being an SDR but it very often can lead to a very exciting career. The exact path you’ll want to take will be different for everyone but taking time to think about it and write it down helps to connect you back to why you are going through this struggle.
- Next let’s write down what areas do you want to improve in the next 3 months that align with the larger long term goal – keep this relatively short so that you can stay focused but not so short that it is impossible to achieve. E.g. I aim to improve my cold calling skills this quarter
- Once you’ve identified some areas that you genuinely want to improve (not just because your manager told you to but because they matter to you and your life) identify a metric for where you are now. E.g if we use cold calling, figure out your conversion rate – how many cold calls convert to meetings for you per month?
- From here set what you feel is a realistic goal for the next 3 months. Include performance driven metrics like improving your conversion rate but also activity metrics like the no. of cold calls you plan to make. Make sure it feels realistic but challenging.
It's Not Supposed To Be Easy
Once you have done this, you will need to do your best to remain committed to your goal. This means that even if you have a few bad days, you will not abandon the entire plan. You will see it through. Your ability to stay committed to your goals forms part of your emotional development. It is related to delayed gratification – doing hard things now for a reward later. SDRs are usually good at jumping on opportunities as they arise but it doesn’t hurt to refocus on this area. Make sure you are alert and open to all opportunities that may come your way.
And finally we need to develop our resilience. We need to struggle to develop resilience. That means that we have to face adversity and hard times and push through. As I said earlier sometimes this means, we don’t manage to hit 100% but we make damn sure we do more than we feel like doing. Everything is progress. And it all counts. Developing resilience will stand to us in every aspect of our lives both work and personal. It definitely will feel uncomfortable but it is worth it.
Sometimes finding motivation is just about taking a step back, remembering our why and then defining a clear plan to improve aspects of our lives that are important to us. We all have targets and numbers to hit but true long term motivation comes from deep within us and our desire for fulfilment in life. Don’t be afraid to take some time to tap into that. If we can find our deeper why, we can usually achieve our targets and KPIs as part of the process. Good luck and please share your own progress and stories about motivation in the comments to help out our SDR and BDR Peers!
Until Next Time