Matching The Incentive

One for the sales managers. So I was talking to someone that a while back ran a sales incentive for a new product. The technology they were looking to shift was considered by the backroom team to be great. Management expected a real buzz.

Then nothing. They had three prizes lined up. But the whole endeavour bombed. Of the trio of rewards created, one wasn’t even reached and the other two, well, let’s just say that it truly pained them to have to give them out.

When I heard this tale of woe, I’d just come from a chat with a Sales chief at the large Aussie recruitment company, Julia Ross.

She shared some of the incentives they ran. Even down to the tiddlers on a daily basis.

With an all-female team, the regulars included the expected spa days to shoe vouchers.

What shone through was apparently that those most tickled by the prize at the outset tended to win it. So the trick was much about crafting a succession of different accolades that would appeal to each contender along the way.

Her most popular so far this year was a half-day extra holiday.

When I blogged last year on the delightful topic of spiffs, I touched on the pitfalls of the usual suspects always walking off with the garlands, and introduced the notion that an occasional cheeky surprise nod to improvement can work well.

Combine these two facets and you should create a conveyor of winning incentives for your team.