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How to Create a Sales Incentive Program

Imagine your company’s sales have dropped or become stagnant over the past year. Or imagine sales are doing well, but you want to push them to a higher plateau. Creating a sales incentive program could be the best solution for both situations.

But first things first: What comprises an effective a sales incentive program? How should the program be executed? This is what we look at below, exploring four building blocks that are essential for creating almost any type of sales incentive program.

  1. Reward Budget

Before you choose the incentive for sales performance, determine how much you can comfortably spend. The prospect of revenue growth is a major reason for incentivizing sales performance. But you don’t want to break even after delivering the incentive. You want a sizeable chunk of income leftover that goes straight to the bottom line and grows your company’s wealth.

  1. Reward Schedule

The schedule on which a reward is given is determined mostly by the type of reward. For example, say the incentive is additional commission for closing a sale within two weeks. It would be a short-term incentive structure that should ideally pay out bimonthly.

On the other hand, if you use a large reward that involves more than adding another digit to a paycheck, you’ll probably deliver the reward after a few months have passed. For instance, if the incentive is a travel trip, you’ll probably offer it once or twice a year for two reasons: cost, and avoiding spending too many would-be work hours on pleasure activities.

  1. Reward Requirements

A sales incentive program requires salespeople to reach a revenue plateau before the incentive is triggered. Products and services are sold at different costs, and it’s important to consider this fact before choosing the reward. For example, selling a new B2B software solution to a single client would probably be more lucrative than closing the deal on a new type of office blinds with the same client.

Additional reward requirements sales incentive programs use include: feedback from new customers that is placed in a performance scoring program, revenue generated from selling in region-specific sales zones, and the time it takes to transition a lead to a customer.

  1. Type of Reward

Rewards for a sales incentive program entail various types of attractive offers, from cash bonuses, to new vehicles, to company stock. What you offer is up to you, but keep in mind that you’ll probably be rewarding a high earner who may already enjoy these things.

One thing the person doesn’t enjoy yet is a unique travel trip — with heavy emphasis on uniqueness — to a world class destination. Using unique travels as a reward also makes sense in another respect: Practically everyone loves to travel to great destinations, which means everyone should be highly motivated to qualify for the reward.

Need a Sales Incentive Reward?

If so, Incentive Travel Solutions can help you plan an unforgettable trip that rewards your top performers and brings them closer together through shared experiences. The trips we plan aren’t like the average vacation. The destination and activities are truly amazing, and a travel staff goes with you to ensure the itinerary goes precisely as planned.

To start planning an incentive travel trip, call us today at (704) 540-1482, or use our contact form. We look forward to helping you plan an amazing trip that motivates your team!

 

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Developing a Sales Incentive Program: Ideas for Compensation

A company that possesses top sales talent and doesn’t reward the people that comprise the talent in a meaningful way is living on borrowed time. If top sellers feel that they are underappreciated and/or unrewarded, there is a good chance they will seek employment elsewhere, and target companies that have an excellent rewards structure, as they conduct their search.

The good news is that your company can prevent this from happening by deploying a sales incentive program that entails an escalating series of rewards over the course of the year to help keep top talent motivated.

Weekly
Professional sports organizations hand out “player of the week” awards to honor the exceptional performance of an athlete within a given week. Implementing the same type of award for your sales team is a good idea for the same reason: It pays tribute to commendable performance that should be recognized because it differs sharply from the norm.In most cases, there isn’t money attched to the reward, but notice of top performance is still quite rewarding. Honoring top performers weekly creates an incentive for these employees to keep up the good work.

Monthly
Salespeople who perform the best within a single month usually don’t do so by a stroke of luck. They possess elite sales talent and know how to transmute it into generating quality leads and closing sales for nurtured leads. Because sustained, monthly success is inherently more valuable to the bottom line than weekly success, consider offering monthly top performers a moderate financial reward, such as generous gift certificate to a five-star restaurant in the area.

Annually
Annual sales success should be rewarded the most generously because it demonstrates the most benefit to the bottom line. We recommend that you offer top sales associates a travel trip that is unique in terms of travel, destination, lodgings, and activities. Such trips give employees something to look forward to all year.

Contact Incentive Travel Solutions
If your company needs to develop a sales incentive program for top performers on the sales team, we can help you plan the ultimate, annual reward for sustained excellence in sales: A travel trip to an exotic destination that features unique entertainments after you arrive at the destination, and lodgings that make the trip feel like one that could not be easily accomplished on a personal travel budget.

To get started on planning the ultimate reward for your sales incentive program, call Incentive Travel Solutions at (704) 540-1482, or refer to our contact page. We look forward to helping you plan a trip that your top sales performers will remember forever – a trip that will motivate them to work hard and qualify for the next trip to receive an unforgettable reward. The more you motivate your sales team, the better results you can expect from the sales process.