A sales incentive is a bonus or a non-cash reward given to salespeople in addition to their standard compensation components. These are designed to motivate salespeople to meet or exceed their goals.
Money isn’t everything, so it pays to understand your team’s unique needs and motivations. Consider some of these non-cash incentives that will have a lasting effect on your salespeople.
- Bonuses
Whether it’s a monetary incentive, merchandise, or some other tangible reward, bonuses are often a key factor in motivating salespeople. The bonus is a supplemental compensation that’s paid in addition to an employee’s hourly rate or annual salary.
Many companies use bonuses to attract and retain top sales talent to keep up with their competitors in the competitive marketplace. However, it’s important to be cautious about using monetary incentives for this purpose. Too much of a good thing can be detrimental to employee morale.
A better sales motivation approach is using non-monetary rewards such as merchandise, vacations, or new technology. This can be more effective than a cash bonus that’s spent and forgotten.
Achieving sales excellence takes more than specific goal setting and execution, it also requires a flexible mindset and openness to change. Your sales team needs access to the right tools, content, and coaching to do that. Yesware can help you get there with a sales enablement platform that’s designed to increase predictable sales results.
- Recognition
Whether they want to get ahead in their careers or simply feel good about themselves, salespeople’s efforts are often motivated by the desire to be recognized for what they do. This is so basic that many have described it as a “primary good.”
However, while recognition is necessary for human well-being, a recognition paradigm that ignores the underlying power dynamics can be detrimental to team morale. This is because focusing on recognition often leads to a neglect of other, more critical aspects of recognition theory, such as the fact that the recognition process is always one-sided and power based.
Encourage your teams to focus on the positive by asking them to track daily wins (even small ones, like a great conversation with a customer) and send you a message about them. You can also do things like ringing a bell when someone makes a sale or setting up a #kudos Slack channel for remote teams to recognize each other. Keeping sales contests fresh with new metrics, themes, and goals can also help keep morale high.
- Training
Training is one way sales managers can encourage sales excellence and push their teams to new heights. As a company, you can create and offer a wide variety of training courses on marketing fundamentals, sales strategies, and productivity tools. You can also train your team on how to use the tools that make it possible to sell at scale, like personalized follow-up and content marketing.
When you provide a variety of training opportunities, your reps will be more likely to find something that resonates with them and motivates them to perform better. It’s important to remember that every salesperson is slightly different and may be motivated by completely unique factors. Knowing what drives each of your team members can help you tailor their rewards and incentives consulting firm.
Achieving sales excellence means establishing and implementing policies, goals, tools, training and coaching, and a culture that supports those initiatives. Sales leaders who understand how to drive sales enablement with strategic onboarding practices, a strong leadership team, and open communication between departments can count on their sales teams to achieve high-achieving benchmarks.
- Travel
Travel is the one non-monetary reward that truly creates lasting memories for people. It is not only a great incentive to drive sales, but it also promotes brand loyalty.
A well-designed and implemented sales incentive travel program is the best way to provide a high ROI. It helps drive internal sales, increase customer retention, and foster stronger employee advocacy.
In a highly competitive airline industry, driving sales requires balancing the needs of account management and business development. It is important to balance discounts and revenue protection against the need to drive incremental share without dilution.
The most successful programs are professionally facilitated and based on the principles of Sales Process Engineering. The council members must be card-carrying quota-driven reps and managers (not consultants or support staff) to be effective. They should be able to commit to meeting at least bi-monthly for two to four hours. This enables the group to maintain a laser-beam focus on the objective, have agendas pre-published, and have consistent participation. It is also critical that the council includes at least one member from each region to ensure a balanced representation of the airline.
- ESOPs
ESOPs are an excellent way for business owners to transfer ownership to the people who’ve worked tirelessly and helped the company get where it is today. As an alternative to a traditional M&A transaction, the owner can still realize liquidity but stay on for a couple of years to ensure that everything transitions properly, which also helps keep key employees and the corporate culture intact.
In addition to creating job security and a stronger sense of ownership, ESOPs also increase productivity and drive continuous improvement. This can ultimately result in higher profits, which can be used to further grow the business or reward staff members for their efforts.
However, it’s important to consult with a qualified professional before exploring an ESOP for your company, as the process can be complicated and requires careful consideration. For example, a feasibility study is necessary to determine whether or not the company has adequate payroll to qualify for tax deductions on contributions. Additionally, it’s vital to clearly understand repurchase obligations and how they can impact the company’s cash flow.
- Referrals
Referral programs are a powerful way to bring in new customers. They are cost-effective and can provide a great deal of momentum for businesses. However, they require a high level of trust and commitment from salespeople to work. It’s important to identify who makes a good fit for your business and communicate this to your salespeople before they start asking for referrals. For example, the makeup brand Glossier offers a program that rewards loyal customers with discounts when their referred prospects make their first purchase.
This type of incentive works well because it is not a monetary reward but an experience that will last in the long term. It is also important to have a clear process in place for referrals and to follow up with your customers to make sure they are happy with their experience.
Ultimately, referrals are the best way to grow your business. By delighting your existing customers and making it easy for them to refer, you can create a powerful network that will help you gain traction in the market.
- Employee Stock Options
Stock options are a common tool to motivate salespeople, but it’s important to note that they come with investment risk. If you decide to exercise your options (buy shares), the value of those shares will be based on the increase in your company’s share price.
A stock option is the right to buy a set number of company shares at an exercise price, typically at a discount to the market price. Unlike standard call options, ESOs cannot be sold on the open market and can only be exercised once they have met certain conditions, such as a cliff period under a vesting schedule or meeting performance targets.
Two main types of employee stock options exist – incentive stock options (ISOs) and non-qualified stock options (NQSOs). ISOs typically receive preferential tax treatment, as gains on the sale of stock are considered long-term capital gains instead of ordinary income. However, NQSOs have the same underlying structure as regular call options and can be sold on the open market. Regardless of the type of equity granted, you will need to add the pool of shares to your company’s cap table and create an ESOP plan to manage it.
- Mentorship
Developing a strong sales team is critical for your company’s growth and reputation. High-quality sales teams can boost customer retention and increase market share. They also help set new benchmarks for success. Keeping your sales team motivated requires ongoing support, including mentoring.
Mentorship can take many forms. One-on-one relationships are common, but peer or group mentoring can be effective too. Mentoring programs can be structured, but they should offer flexibility to accommodate the unique needs of your sales force.
If mentorship is already happening naturally within your sales team, encourage and formalize it. Pairing newer reps with senior ones is an excellent way to give less experienced representatives experience in nurturing leads and closing deals while helping seasoned agents level up their management skills. Provide mentors with training on how to be an effective mentor. Ensure that they can count on you to offer recognition, such as by acknowledging their efforts in your company’s culture or promotional decisions. You can also hold events like monthly lunches for mentors to encourage team bonding.
