SALE INCENTIVE PROGRAM |employee motivation program|corporate incentive program|corporate incentive gifts|employee recognition idea Getting your sales incentive program rightMarketing is probably the only function that really brings in revenue for the company as compared to all the other functions. But on the other hand, in the specific area of sales, it becomes very vital for the company’s management to keep a firm hold on its sales staff. Sales personnel are highly burned out and need a lot of pushing from the company—a sale incentive program, among others, is one of the best ways to make it happen. So how exactly does one implement a Sales Incentive Program. 1. Specify objectives: Even before you decide to host a sales incentive program, you must specify clear objectives as to what you want to achieve with this program. You will have to think about which section of your sales staff you are going to target and what you intend to impart to then, you will also have to specify the objectives of this program and ensure that they know what’s in it for them. 2. Understand that it isn’t always about money: Sales incentive programs aren’t just always about paying incentives in the form of cash. Money really isn’t everything. There was a research that said that employees are looking for appreciation more than salary packages and that is in fact the primary reason why sales incentive programs are done in the first place. 3. Sales Incentive Programs have to be implemented using system based information and not People based information: In companies, bias is bound to thrive. Managers are hence not the right sources of information for deciding as to who would be the recipients for your sales incentive program. To have effective systems in place is a must for a successful sales incentive program implementation. Systems like MIS and other data capturing and gathering systems must be in place and are best when few hands get to access this information. 4. Sales Incentive programs are not a PR gimmick: Just because you launched this sales incentive program and media got the hang of it and you got splashed all over the media it is not to be construed as a one time media‘s attention seeking affair. This program is for your sales staff and you got to do this in a rather consistent and recurring manner. 5. Sales Incentive Programs must be a part of your overall strategy – not a one time solution: Your business strategy must espouse the sales incentive programs as a path to achieve maximum performance from your sales staff which is necessarily the most important part of your business. Your strategy must be skewed towards sales, sales forced and hence the sales incentive and sales tracking programs. Your undue focus on any other program and any other department of function is not going to earn you revenue like it does with a good sales force highly motivated and charged up. A low-lying de-motivated sales force can not only bring your revenues down but can also have a spiraling effect on your long term profits for your business. |
