Sales Incentives Programs: How do you keep your sellers, selling?
Sales incentives succeed when they cater to a rep’s individual strengths and weaknesses, a sales team’s collaboration and a deal’s unique characteristics. How do you decide which sales incentive to apply to your business?
Research shows that across the board, the happiest employees are the ones who feel appreciated, valued and heard. In fact, 58% of people say that they would feel more engaged if leaders gave recognition to the job they were doing.
Graceanne Domino, Manager, Sales Development at Rocketrip believes that the key to galvanizing a team is with role-specific incentives.
“I’ve had the most success with a tiered structure plus an all-out winner,” she continues. “This is effective because it solves for the fact that every team likely has top performers who will take an early lead; which is amazing, but can sometimes lead the rest of the team to be disengaged if it’s a winner-take-all scheme and the likelihood of them catching your top performers is low.”
However, other incentives may work better for your business. For instance, a split incentive program may encourage your reps to work together and collaborate on their efforts.
Or it may be worth applying a presales incentive program to your business, rewarding your reps throughout the various sales stages in order to keep them motivated.
While the most traditional way of rewarding a sales rep is with a cash commission structure, non-cash rewards are gaining traction in a big way. In the 1990s, approximately 25% of US companies were using non-cash rewards compared to 80% in 2018.
What sales incentives do you find most effective for galvanizing your team, and what pros and cons have you experienced with cash or non-cash rewards?
