Analyzing Abraham Maslow\'s Need Hierarchy and Its Use as a Motivational Tool

Motivation

Our organization, like most other organizations, is mainly concerned with motivation of salespersons who act as the backbone of our business. My firm runs a chain of bookstores around the country and it is important for us to hire salespersons who are highly motivated and can attract more customers. But to keep people motivates all the time is not an easy task and our HR department is always coming up with ways to sustain the interest and motivation level of sales employees. In this connection Maslow's theory of needs has played an important role as it has been incorporated in our rewards and incentive plan.

Abraham Maslow was of the view that man has different set of needs and it was important for him to satisfy one set before he could move on to another. This theory has been given immense importance in psychology studies of motivation because man feel that at least it contains substance as far as set of needs are concerned. But theorists do not agree with Maslow that man can move to the next level of needs only when he has been able to satisfy the previous one. But still it is important to discuss this theory in detail in order to see why it has been able to attract great attention.

Abraham Maslow developed his theory of hierarchy of needs in late 1960s and focused on five sets of man's needs. He adopted a humanistic approach to the subject of motivation and felt that to be able to achieve success in the world or in his work, man first needs to take care of his more basic physiological and biological needs. Five levels of needs have been described as:

Biological / Physiological Needs: Maslow maintains that in order to survive, man first focuses on his basic needs such as food, water and shelter. He felt that unless these needs were taken care of, man could not move to the next level. This is because man cannot exist or survive without these important things in his life

Security / Safety Needs: Maslow explains that man needs to feel safe and secure because outside threats or fears can kill his spirit of achievement.

Social Needs: this set includes desire to develop healthy and positive relationships with others. Man, being a social animal, needs to feel loved and for this reason it is important for him to associate and mingle with others.

Ego / Esteem Needs: Maslow is of the view that in order to gain a sense of self-worth, man wants to be respected by others around him including colleagues, friends and family. If man is not accorded due respect, there is a possibility that he would turn into a helpless and worthless being.

Self-Actualization: this is by far the most fascinating concept that Maslow mentioned in his theory. He is of the view that when man has taken care of all his pervious set of needs, he would then try to engage in some worthy cause or vocation. According to Maslow, self-actualization is a life-long process.

Salespersons play the most crucial role in the success of a product or service since they convince the customer about the veracity of advertisements and reinforce the image that was created by the same. Salespersons can make or break a product with their attitude and their ability or lack of it thereof to win customers. A customer may be drawn to a product because of what he sees on TV or other advertising channels but it is the salesperson either at the showroom or store or the door to door sellers who do the most important job and convince the customers that the product is as good as it was made out to be. Higher sales of a product or service are very often directly connected with salesperson's performance. However the performance in its turn is connected with one's level of motivation. The more motivated a salesperson is, the more sales he is likely to make. It is the job of sales manager to ensure that his sales team stays in high motivation mode. Most organizations understand this connection between performance and motivation. However the real problem lies in motivation strategies. Many managers believe that money is the sole motivating factor and thus they increase salaries or offer monetary incentives to increase sales and motivate salespersons. However this is a very wrong approach as various motivation theories prove.

Motivation is something that we normally associate with achievement because it is felt that man is motivated to do something because he wants to attain a sense of fulfillment. But it is important to understand that theorists do not think that motivation can be connected with sense of achievement alone, they have taken other things into account too. For example they feel that man's desire to survive, his desire to protect himself from enemies are instincts that spring from the motivational spirit that exist in all human beings.

Keeping this theory in mind, our HR department has developed a motivation strategy which they feel can keep salespersons adequately motivated. HR department has made a few rules clear. The managers in the firm must understand the salesperson's social conditions. If his basic needs are being met, he requires more than monetary incentives -- probably a higher rank or a better job title or additional responsibility to make him feel important etc. The job should provide him a means to attain self-actualization- a sense of fulfillment that comes from knowing that the job gives him a chance to use his talent adequately and prepares him for next level of responsibility.