You know that it takes every department running smoothly within their organization to have a successful and profitable business. However, for many - it’s their rock star sales team closing a deal that brings in the big dollars!
Motivating your internal sales reps to care about your company's top line is a critical piece to the growth of your business. You’ve tried giving away plaques (or other dust collectors) or have started sales meetings with motivational quotes. Why not try something different? Developing and implementing a sales incentive program will harness the (friendly) competition between your sales reps to strive for success!
For a successful sales incentive program there are three popular routes that have shown excellent results:
1. Rewards along the way
With many sales reps changing jobs every few years and the time it takes to create a sustainable new business pipeline, there's value in rewarding your sales teams along the way - keeping them motivated, even before their first big sale.
- New Employee Incentives. Structure an incentive program that keeps your newer employees motivated by competing with each other. They'll feel a sense of belonging and will help each other along the way to hit their reward milestones.
- Incentives based on previous years metrics. For your sales reps that have been with you for more than a year, a sliding scale metric of how much new business they generated month over month (or, year over year) keeps them motivated throughout the journey with your company.
- Senior and Junior Reps: Getting the confidence of your newer (or, under-preforming) reps will help them grow future sales. Pair teams of senior and junior reps together, where they collectively work on deals and along-the-way-metrics to compete against other teams.
2. Leaderboards
Many successful sales reps love seeing their name in lights. They want to be a hero and bask in the glory of closing deals. Leaderboards are a great method to harness their inner tiger to chase more sales.
- Gamification. Create leader boards for the Top 10 Deals of the last Quarter, Who Sells the most of a new Product, or Most Improved Quarter over Quarter. These leaderboards can highlight the top performers, but you don't need to have the bottom 50% on the leaderboard (embarrassment is not the same as motivation).
- Communicate it. Depending if your sales reps work out of a central location, dispersed across the country or are all remote, creating an effective method to communicate the leader-board will provide a burst of excitement to the teams - everyone wants to be on top!
Many successful Sales Incentive programs publish weekly leader-boards on their rewards website.
- Regularly Update. If your sales teams are going to be challenged to be at the top of the leaderboard, ensure you're committed to seeing the challenges all the way through and updating them on a regularly occurring frequency.
3. Challenges
Fast and quick challenges can turn a dull Tuesday into a sales machine. These challenges need to have clear rules, a start and end time, and rewards announced from the onset.
- New Meetings Set. Set a two day challenge to see how many new meetings your sales teams can set within the next 48 hours. Send the challenge email start time before they all get into the office, giving the early birds a head start.
- Obscure Product. You most likely have products that have high margins and are often complimentary to your signature product offering. Challenge your sales teams with a reward for whomever can sell the most of that obscure item within the next 30 days. They'll be digging through old leads to restart the conversation.
- Inventory sell-off. Quite possibly, you have inventory from the previous year setting in your warehouses and you're trying to make room for the newest products. Challenge your sales teams to see who can liquidate the most of the old inventory until it's gone!
How to Reward Your Winners?
A key to rewarding your winners is instant gratification where they can be proud of their results for a long time. Recognizing the employees with your companies branded Digital Debit Card allows those employees to shop for whatever they want, from any retailer they want (and the rewards don't get lost in their paycheck).
Our clients see their winning employees walking around the office with the items they purchased with their rewards, proud of their results and ready for another incentive program to start. We also host leaderboards and communication strategies to keep sales teams engaged and ready to win again.