Incentive Building Blocks - Sales Analytics - Continued

The following as examples are the kinds of actionable intelligence that can result from proper analytic planning:

• Segmenting Sellers and Customers – Identifying channel performance tiers, decile breakdowns, and uptrender/downtrender reporting.
• Dashboard/Scorecard Reporting – Developing a set of standard metrics to be used to determine the effectiveness of the program and displaying sales results to participants in near real-time to be able to influence the success of the program. Included can be sales, margin, average sale amount, number of customers, etc.
• Promotion Analysis – Reporting and analytics around special promotions within a program to incent sellers and resellers to sell, or customers to purchase, specific products during certain time periods. For example, double points may be awarded if specific products are sold in a certain month. Reporting can show which sellers, resellers or customers respond to the promotion to earn the bonus points and can identify incremental sales generated during the promotion period.
• Trending Reports – Showing trends of sales that can be sliced and diced in a variety of ways; i.e. by customer, end-user, seller, reseller, market segment, region, location, product, etc.
• Strategic Marketing Analysis – Capturing customer and end-user sales data specific enough to allow for future promotional efforts targeted at unique market segments.
• Relationship Marketing – Creating custom and personalized communications for sellers, resellers and end-user customers to grow and enhance long-term sales relationships.
• ROI Analysis – Factoring in a variety of sales-related costs and performance metrics at program inception, allowing you to determine ROI at program completion.

This list can go on and on, but it points out the great opportunity that you have to grow sales through the proactive use of analytics to break down sales numbers, identify and target customers and markets, drive specific product growth, change strategies on-the-fly, and build stronger channel relationships.

Incentive Building Blocks - Sales Analytics Continued

If your sales data can’t be automatically gathered, have your incentive company include claims functionality on your incentive platform for capturing the sales channel and end-user information that you need about each sale. Claims sites are easy to create and can offer the opportunity to gather new levels of sales intelligence.

Once your incentive program kicks off, you’ll find a wide variety of uses for the data you are gathering. VanSon Technology Services is a consulting firm that specializes in providing IT analytics for loyalty, incentive and relationship marketers for a wide variety of sales channel applications. President Chris Vanderploeg and his team are experts in helping clients create applications to gather important sales channel data and generate insight to allow for more effective marketing.

Incentive Building Blocks - Sales Analytics Continued

If you have direct sellers and/or if detailed sales information can be acquired directly through your normal sales process, then that data may be uploaded directly into the incentive site, where reports and dashboards can be made available to sellers. However, if you are selling through an indirect channel (i.e. sales representatives, distributors, VARs, contractors, etc.) that doesn’t normally allow you to capture detailed sales and/or market information, the incentive platform can be built to gather intelligence.

The right questions are those similar to these: Who is selling your products? Are products being resold, and if so, through whom? What products are your sellers and resellers selling and why? How can the purchasers be segmented for future promotions and specific marketing efforts? What is the product mix being sold and what is the profitability of specific groups of items? Can the final sales price of products (if it is variable and/or determined by resellers) be captured? How can sales be increased if certain products are targeted during certain times of the year?

Incentive Building Blocks - Sales Analytics

Over the past five months, we have been looking at the basic components of a successful incentive program. The last (and often neglected) critical building block is sales analytics – a powerful set of tools that can help you better manage your sales and marketing efforts and investments.

Not long ago, we ran a series of incentive programs aimed at motivating a client’s distributor sales representatives. Initially, we helped them increase the effectiveness of their efforts by improving program creativity, communications, and rewards - and increased sales resulted. Soon after, we added sales analytics as a key program deliverable, to begin to gather end-user information that was typically being lost due to the multi-level nature of their sales channel.

For the first time, the client was able to uncover what companies were actually buying their products and segment them into target markets. The results were surprising, as completely new niche market opportunities were discovered. Today, each market is served by a unique set of specific relational marketing communications and tools that are driving continued sales growth. Sales analytics created new opportunities for expansion of sales opportunities.

A sales incentive program and platform, especially one created for non-employee sales channels, can be a powerful tool for gathering seller, reseller, and end-user sales data for a variety of marketing intelligence, targeting, and cross-selling opportunities.

The key to having solid analytics is to ask the right questions at program creation that will yield the data reporting and tracking needed throughout the program to make solid business decisions. Then, the incentive site can have functionality built in that will help you analyze and act on the sales information that you capture.

Incentive Building Blocks - Major Rewards!

Let’s take a look at major reward categories:

Group Travel – Still the premier reward choice, group travel drives performance because it engages potential winners with dreams of beautiful and exotic locales. Add to that the camaraderie and relationship-building inherent in group travel and it’s obvious why this reward solution is always a winner. The downsides to group travel are that you will typically be limited to rewarding only your very top performers due to the cost factor and that younger performers (Generation X and Millenials) appear to value personal travel opportunities over hobnobbing with management.

Individual Travel – One of the fastest-growing reward categories, individual travel includes hotels nights, cruises, experiential rewards and sporting destinations (skiing, golfing, fishing). Individual travel options can be seamlessly included as choices in merchandise collections. We have seen incentive travel rise to 20% of reward redemptions in the past year.

Sports Travel – Really a category in itself, a variety of providers bundle individual or small group packages of airfare, hotel and meals around top sporting events, including the World Series, Super Bowl, NASCAR races, PGA golf tournaments, and more.

Experiential Rewards – In the same way that Orbitz changed the travel industry, new technologies are making available on incentive web platformas an ever-expanding number of experiential rewards. These can include extreme sports (kayaking, mountain biking, white-water rafting, scuba diving), movies, theater, concerts and museums visits. Other creative vendors offer the chance to relax at the spa, in a hot-air balloon or at a cooking school. Even shark chasing and jet fighter battles are among today’s edgier experiential rewards.

Merchandise Collections – Carefully warehoused and ready to instantly ship for maximum participant satisfaction, merchandise reward collections (typically ranging from $20 to $10,000+) are the backbone of the incentive industry because they offer a wide range of awards to meet the needs of a diverse audience. Today’s collections, from companies like industry stalwart Hinda Incentives, include thousands of rewards of tangible items plus expanded individual travel and experiential rewards. Other providers tap into vast databases of retail items (such as Amazon or national travel services) to offer award collections with millions of rewards that are handled on a drop-ship basis. Ask your incentive vendor to explain the pros and cons of each approach.

Plateau Rewards – When participants are offered a choice of 15 - 20 very high-perceived value items at 5 – 7 plateau levels, they are able to quickly and strongly attach to a handful of choices that provide a powerful and emotional motivating force. The plateaus also serve to drive performance up the ladder as top performers strive for the next step. Make sure that you specify only the highest perceived value rewards, and include electronics, which will always be the leading redemption category.

Gift Cards – Gift card offerings have grown significantly during the past five years and most national retailers offer gift cards. Some incentive companies have bundled gift card solutions and online shopping at a variety of bricks-and-mortar and online retailers. Due to their similarities to cash, gift cards are not an ideal choice for sales incentive programs. That being said, gift cards are an excellent solution for program promotion and recognition in amounts under $100.

Socially Conscious Rewards – The newest reward category is led by Chicago’s Helping Hands Rewards, which “serves as a conduit and a catalyst between social purpose businesses that produce merchandise and incentive companies.” From gourmet brownies to spa gift sets, utilizing products that are manufactured by social purpose businesses creates added value for the sponsoring company and the recipient, while giving back to the community.

One final thought on tangible rewards. The luxury products market is in a down cycle as individuals and families try to conserve financial resources. In this economic environment, I would suggest that salespeople will use cash for basic necessities, and not luxuries and that is not a motivational scenario. So while it may be counterintuitive, now is the time to offer tangible rewards, experiences and luxuries that salespeople can get excited about and work hard to earn without having to feel guilty.

Now, more than ever, think hard about your rewards offering and offer new choices to grab your sales channel’s attention and focus their efforts on earning fantastic, tangible and travel rewards that can enhance their lifestyles.

Incentive Building Blocks - More Rewards

While the nature of your sales channel and budget will be the biggest factors in your decision as to what rewards to offer, there are several things to remember when choosing your rewards:
o Know your audience – Age, gender and channel demographics will play a role in reward selection.
o Don’t cheap-out – Salespeople are smart. . .they know when a rewards budget is too low; rewards should be commensurate with the performance.
o Understand perceived value – Include items such as large plasma HDTVs, luxury individual travel and laptop computers which will give your program a positive glow.
o More isn’t always better – Sometimes a focused group of 15-20 high perceived value rewards is better than 200 lower value awards.
o Mix it up - To keep your salespeople’s interest, change the rewards offering every few years, though be sure to keep the budget consistent.

It is not a cliché to note that there are more reward choices available today then ever before. One of the reasons is that new web-based technologies have dramatically expanded the award categories available for incentive programs, adding new levels of personal travel and experiential rewards. Another is that new and different retail products manufacturers have jumped into the incentive products business to expand their sales. So more then ever, the range of electronics, optics, timepieces, jewelry, computers, and lifestyle merchandise is broadly expansive. Next time we'll take a look at major reward categories.

Incentive Building Blocks - Rewards

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years in the incentive business, it is this – rewards matter. They matter because a big piece of the motivation puzzle is the need to emotionally engage participants, and rewards are arguably the single most important tool to capture the hearts and imaginations of salespeople at all performance levels. Rewards are a key Incentive Building Block, and it is critical that sales managers think carefully when choosing incentive program rewards.

Many studies have shown that tangible rewards and trips are better motivators than cash. A University of Chicago study found that salespeople working towards a non-cash incentive had a 38.6% performance uplift (versus no incentive), nearly double the performance of salespeople working towards a cash incentive.

According to Scott Jeffry, PhD, the reason for the extra effort has more to do with psychological theory than economic theory. Incentive program participants ask themselves “How hard will I work for this particular award?” Especially if a reward is considered a luxury or a “splurge,” salespeople will work harder to earn the item of their choice “guilt-free.” If we take that a step further, salespeople will work even harder for the right rewards.

Incentive Building Blocks - Tangible Media

Shingled Sales Guides – Incentive Services has used “shingled” sales guides (printed booklets about the size of a CD case with layered pages for easy access to main sections) successfully for several years. They offer a quick, easy read and are small enough to be kept in a pocket or glove compartment.

Sales DVDs – A training DVD is an extra, tangible touch that begs to be viewed. Make the training interactive by offering a follow-up quiz on your incentive site.

Sales Tips Cards – Print up your most important sales tips on a business card sized accordion-folded piece and have managers present them when traveling with sellers.

Training and Training Network Magazines are outstanding resources for serious training expertise, and leading incentive houses such as Incentive Services offer complete suites of training technology and services. So don’t neglect training!

Next time, we’ll look at the wide range of incentive rewards available today and some pros and cons of each.

Incentive Building Blocks - Web Based

While sales incentive training can be delivered in a number of formats, try using different new or different methods to engage your channels, including:

WEB-BASED

Computer Based Interactive Training (CBIT) – A wide variety of interactive Q & A and video training modules are available for inclusion in your incentive site. You can make sure that participants complete each module by following each with a quick quiz. Reward successful quiz-takes with points and offer a bonus for sellers who finish all training modules in a timely fashion. Dan Cronin suggests that “with CBIT, a company is typically training on a specific product or service. This training can be taken and measured at the company level, distributor level, and customer level. Common analytics include pre-test scores, completion percentages, and post-test (or retention) scores.”

Video Sales Tips – Once a month, when a recipient logs into your incentive site, force the viewing of a quick (30 -120 seconds) flash video that highlights a key product or selling skill. Use upbeat music and graphics to heighten interest.

Social Networking for Best Sales Practices – Include a social networking function on your incentive site that allows sellers to share great sales ideas. Track and reward top contributors with points toward rewards and create a best practices sales library for the each sales group (mangers, reps, DSRs, etc.).

E-Learning Games – According to Dennis Kelly, President of Interactive Games, the role of e-learning games is “to reinforce the understanding of presented material and to add variety in training. In addition, e-learning games offer immediate feedback, maintain interest, support a variety of learning styles, graphically convey concepts, and make training fun.”
Move Existing Training to Your Incentive Site – Most performance program providers can link existing electronic training materials to an incentive site. This is an easy, inexpensive way to re-expose your sales channel to material they may have avoided.

Personal URLs (PURLs) – PURLs allow you to create a graphic landing page that is personalized for each seller, where you can provide important training information. Use email blasts or postcards to drive salespeople to their PURLs.

Voicemail Blasts – If you have a captive sales force, send periodic voicemail blasts that include key selling tips. Voicemails can be produced with music, voice talent, and humor to get your message across without boring your audience.

Incentive Building Blocks - Training

A recent study by the Incentive Research Foundation found that a majority of companies surveyed run their own sales incentive programs. Sadly, we see that many of these companies fall short of outstanding sales results because management neglects to effectively integrate the Incentive Building Blocks that lead to maximum program success. One of the Building Blocks that often gets neglected is training, so let’s focus this month on “training” as it relates specifically to your online incentive or loyalty program.

Yes, training = boring for a lot of us in the sales business. But the importance of training is underlined by the EMPA’s National Benchmark Study® which shows direct causality between higher organizational training scores and higher EBITDA. It can be argued that effectively weaving training initiatives into your next incentive program could be the difference between good and great program results.

As Dan Cronin, Vice President of Incentive Services, Inc. notes, “When launching a loyalty program, a key to training is to get your team on the same page. That means you need to take your managers and your sales reps and clearly educate them on the goals of the program. You then need to clearly layout what is expected of each manager and sales rep to make the program a success. Then, tie analytics to each participant so that you can hold each team member accountable for results.”

While you likely already have training programs in place, adding new training tools to your incentive process can leverage sales results in several ways, regardless of whether your channel includes direct sellers, reps, or indirect distribution. That is because:

Incentive programs offer a natural motivational draw to participants and as such, offer a new and different venue to focus sellers on critical product and/or selling information.

You may use points or other rewards to motivate participants to use training tools.

Incentive technology platforms allow you to use new or different media in an interesting, engaging fashion.

Incentive training ensures that all sales channel participants understand their roles, program parameters, sales performance expectations, and use of the internet platform that supports the program. In addition, training can leverage managers’ recognition skills, improve seller’s sales skills, and reinforce participant knowledge around products and services included in the program.

Incentive Building Blocks - Develop the Campaign: Chapter 4

A typical incentive campaign has five components, each with a specific call to action:

- Prelaunch Teasers – Usually includes one or several teaser messages before the program launch to pique curiosity and interest. We will usually start prelaunch messages about a month before actual launch communications. Prelaunch teasers can be handled inexpensively with email blasts, sales intranet postings, and quick flash videos. The call-to-action is to pay attention to the program launch materials and get excited about the program to come.

- Launch Communications - Launch communications are absolutely critical to grabbing the sales audience’s attention and so, typically include a multimedia approach. This means mixing e-communications such as eblasts, social media and flash videos with printed materials. It also means that any type of personal touches that may be built into the launch effort should be included. For example, a program may be kicked off for employee salespeople, VARs or dealers through meetings with national or regional sales managers. Distributor sales programs can be launched with face-to-face meetings hosted by salespeople or by distributor managers who have been “trained” by salespeople. The call-to-action is to engage immediately in the program to achieve sales success and reap great personal rewards.

- Ongoing Touches – Now that the audience’s attention has been grabbed, it needs to be held with a mix of touches. If the life of the program is short, say 3-4 months, participants need to be touched 2-3 times per month. If the program is mid-term, 6-8 months, 1-2 touches per month are appropriate. If the program is annual, target several touches a month, early and late, with monthly communications in between. Even if an incentive process allows participants to roll points from year to year, it is critical to maintain monthly touches and change up the theme or subtheme on an annual basis to keep things interesting. The calls-to-action are typically entreaties to keep on pushing and reminders of the great awards that await top sales performers.

- Program Conclusion – A program needs to be closed out professionally and every participant needs to be contacted, regardless of his or her level of success. A personal message of congratulations or thanks for participating is appropriate. Rather than an email, we suggest a letter written and hand-signed by a top-level manager. Social media may be used to share outstanding performance with the rest of the sales channel. The call-to-action it to appreciate the relationship that is being built between the sponsoring company and the sales performer.

- Post-Program Recognition – Recognition is the memory anchor that locks in appreciation and spurs future performance, so if your channel allows for recognition of top performers, it is critical that sales managers take advantage of that opportunity with a local recognition ceremony or at least the delivery of a recognition award with a personal note of thanks. The call-to-action is to engage in the next promotion and shoot for even higher sales next year.

The story here is that sales managers must take the communications piece of their incentive and loyalty program just as seriously as the rules and rewards deliverables to give their program the best chance for sales success. Challenge your incentive provider to push the envelope with multiple media, social media and new strategies. In this of all years, your communications campaign may make or break your incentive program.

Incentive Building Blocks - Use Multiple Media: Chapter 3

A successful campaign will use a variety and mix of media to get participants’ attention, the choice of which will be driven to a great degree by the nature of the channel.

- Traditional Media – Though static, traditional media engage participants in a visual and tactile way. Included are printed pieces such as post cards, sales tips, brochures, flyers, etc. Also proven successful are inexpensive promotional products which may be included to reinforce the program theme.

- Electronic Media – Provide a good deal of “bang for the buck” and include flash videos with words, voiceovers or clips of managers’ talking, html emails, and voice mail blasts which may include generic or celebrity sound-alike voices.

- Interactive Media - Can be effective and “sticky” ways of engaging a sales audience because they require participants to go online and engage in activities that reinforce the campaign messaging. Examples include online games such as bingo, races or spin/win and “personal” URLs - PURLs. A PURL is a web tool that allows participants to receive a personalized message such as a post card, or an HTML email that pushes the participants to a website that is also personalized and interactive. A PURL hits home with program messaging and also quickly gathers participant information that may be helpful in future promotions.

- Social Media – Twitter, Facebook and blogs are, as William Whitmoyer of TMK Marketing points out, social networking tools that provide a dialogue where information can flow out from company but also in from the sales channel. Social networking means that sales management now has many more avenues to communicate with sales channels, and in turn, members of the sales channels may now communicate more easily with sales management and each other. Done well, social networking allows sales management to multiply the effectiveness of the incentive communications campaign, and certainly Millenials are most at home with social media.

Incentive Building Blocks - Communications: Chapter 2

With the growth of social media such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs, sales managers need to include these tools in the campaign due to the benefits they offer for interactivity and instant communications.

Let’s look at the key steps in a communication campaign:

Analyze the Target Channel and Audience: Employee salespeople, independent representatives, VARS, dealers, contractors and distributor sales representatives are at varying degrees of proximity to the sponsoring company, with employee salespeople being the closest and DSRs the furthest. This means that the tone of communications may be familiar with salespeople closer to home and gradually more arms-length as a program audience moves further down the channel.

Demographics may play a part in the message, as heavy male or heavy female audiences (say in beauty versus janitorial-sanitation markets) provide an opportunity to craft a message that will be best received by the target audience. Also, the average age of the audience can be considered if it leans significantly towards one age group, as Boomers and Millenials, for example, are strikingly different in the way they use and assimilate media. If there is no significant sex or age skewing, it is best to steer a neutral course.

Set the Budget: Rules of thumb in the incentive business suggest that 5-10 percent of program budget be devoted to communications.

Create the Campaign Brand and Message: Based upon analysis of the channel audience and demographics, your incentive agency or communications department will create the theme that will best drive the message. A key factor in a successful campaign is to emotionally engage the audience, either through the message or by highlighting the rewards to be earned. We typically present 7-10 possible branding themes to a sales and marketing team to get the broadest consensus and it is uncanny the way our clients will zoom in on the right idea. After the theme is chosen, let the copywriters develop and broaden the message.

Incentive Building Blocks - Communications

When teeing up the Incentive Building Blocks series a few months ago, I shared the story of a prospect who was lamenting an underachieving employee sales incentive program. It turns out that he had not promoted the program once during its six month run. He just expected his sales team to remember that the incentives were out there and to get selling.

Incentive and loyalty programs can be winners or losers based upon the quality of the communications campaign and the frequency, creativity and diversity of the touches. It is critical that sales managers devote energy and financial resources to making communications a relevant building block in the incentive development process.

An incentive/loyalty communications plan needs to be viewed as an advertising campaign. . .an ongoing effort to build program awareness, create emotional responses, maintain mindshare, build relationships, and deliver calls to action. Sales managers need to work closely with corporate communications to determine if and how the campaign will dovetail with existing communication strategy and branding, be run as a “one-off,” or be part of an ongoing incentive communication strategy that will link programs from year to year for maximum impact.

Because salespeople are bombarded daily with on-air and online messaging, the campaign must be engaging – which can mean fun, serious, striking, or even nutty - depending on the audience, products sold, and message. To cut through the participants’ information clutter, all communications tools must be “world class” in quality, execution, materials and content.

Concluding Steps to Program Planning

Determine the Budget – Once you have identified the estimated ROI metrics, you’ll have a good idea of what to budget for the program, including incentive compensation, value of rewards, communications budget, training, etc. Maybe the 1% of sales mentioned above is the right number, but maybe you’ll need 2% of sales or only ½% to move your needle. Without the ROI analysis, you are really just guessing.

Performance Goals – Once you have established your sales metrics and goals, as part of your normal sales forecasting and performance management process, you can break those goals down to the appropriate level for the applicable sales channel stakeholders, which may include company salespeople, rep groups, contractors, VARs, distributors, DSRs, etc.

There can be entire chapters written about each of the above steps, but the important takeaway is to view planning as a serious business exercise that will provide financial rewards in good and bad business times. For more information, check out the book The Secret to Incentive Program Success by Bob Dawson with Roger Peterson and Measuring the ROI of Incentive Programs, a research paper available on the web site of the Incentive Research Foundation at www.theirf.org.

Next blog, we’ll take a look at how to create a communications campaign to power your incentive program to success.

Program Planning Continued

Last time we discussed the first steps for effective program planning. We'll continue with two more important steps.

Identify Sales Channel Needs – The best sales incentive plans have channel alignment – all people in the channel are in the loop and focused on helping each other to grow sales with the identified product mix. It is critical for sales managers to identify all of the stakeholders in the channel that can have an impact on sales and include them in some way in the incentive process. For example, if you are running incentives focused on driving sales through contractor sales representatives, you may provide an override to your employee salespeople and contractor managers. At the very least, everyone in your sales channel needs to be communicated with about the program goals and their potential benefits in pulling together.

Determine the ROI Metrics – For years, the incentive business has used “rules of thumb” to determine incentive program budgets, and in fact, these rules have been useful and effective. Examples include using 1% of gross sales or 10% of incremental sales to fund the incentive program. Today however, with financial, sales, and projection metrics available through enterprise information systems, a sales manager needs to attempt to weigh all of the costs associated with the incentive program with the anticipated incremental sales profits to estimate an ROI for the program. Determining an ROI will deliver the real value of the incentive program in good times and in bad economic years can provide solid justification for continuing to invest in sales incentives.

Next time we'll conclude the discussion of Program Planning.

More About Program Planning

As Robert Dawson, longtime incentive market thought-leader and founder of The Business Group writes, “Incentive motivation is not about trips, toaster ovens, TV sets, and gift cards. Rather, incentive motivation is about investing. You are investing in something that can provide your company with the lowest risk and bring your company the highest return of any business investment you can make.”

Ideally, a well run sales organization builds an incentive program to deliver a measureable Return-On-Investment (ROI). The performance plan may include some or all of the following elements: Market research, manufacturing and logistics capabilities, ROI budget analysis, performance goals (team and individual), alignment and inclusion of sales channel stakeholders, product mix, and applicable metrics.

Estimate Potential Sales Increases – Through formal and/or informal market research, sales managers must determine what potential sales increases are possible for the duration of the incentive program and in the months that follow. This information will necessarily have an impact on manufacturing, accounting, logistics, incentive program budget, etc. Sales increases are a factor of many variables, including overall economic environment, product mix and new product roll-outs, competitive situation, strength of distribution channel partnerships, etc. Marketing intelligence can be gleaned relatively quickly and easily from forecast surveys of salespeople, dealers and distributor principals. Professional marketing intelligence firms can provide a more in-depth analysis of sales growth potential and product focus.

Determine Manufacturing, Services Personnel and Logistics Needs – Once you have estimated your sales for the incentive period, it is critical to work with internal resource providers to ensure that the products or services you sell will be available in a timely fashion. Manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics stakeholders all need to be in the loop. If you have materials made in China for example, forecasting errors will have a big impact on your ability to deliver, due to the obvious timing issue of getting products to the US. Failure to have the goods during the incentive program will not only cost you sales, but it may also damage your organization’s credibility going forward and put future sales growth at risk.

We'll cover more planning steps in the next blog so stay tuned.

Incentive Building Block #1 – Program Planning

Several years ago, our company created a sales incentive program for a client in the sanitation products business. Their products were sold in dispensers, so the promotion was designed to motivate their distributor sales network to sell a new touch-free dispenser line. The incentives were well designed and the new products were a hit, so sales went through the roof; actually almost tripling versus the previous incentive program. Those were great results. . .except for one small problem – the client hadn’t forecasted the sales increases, so the factories could in no way keep up with the production. What ensued was a chaotic scramble to ramp up production, provide damage control in the distributor network and calm down angry end users whose products were back-ordered by six months.

What we learned is that incentive planning has to go far deeper than the usual steps that the industry has used for years such as guessing sales numbers, budgeting, and deciding on an “open-ended” or “close-ended” rewards structure. In fact, the right way to look at incentive program design is as a serious exercise in true Return on Investment (ROI) analysis. Anything short of that can leave the sales manager vulnerable to financial and delivery problems.

Incentive Building Blocks

Years ago, I was talking with a prospect, and he shared with me his concern over a failed mid-year sales incentive program. We discussed the various program components, and when I asked how he had communicated the program to his sales force, he indicated that he had made a “big splash” when kicking off the six-month program, which had him perplexed as to why the promotion wasn’t a success. As we dug into specifics however, the gentleman admitted that, other than monthly sales volume statements, he had not promoted the program once during its six month run. He just expected his sales team to remember that the incentives were out there and to get selling. Case closed. Looking back, I can only wish that all of our clients’ problems were as easy to diagnose and fix.

When sales incentive programs don’t drive results as planned, it is often because the sales organization forgot to pay close enough attention to one or more of six key program components; let’s call them the Incentive Building Blocks:
Performance Plan, Communications Campaign, Training, Rewards, Analytics and Recognition.

Sales and marketing managers are already familiar with each of these program elements, but over the following blog entries we’ll dig into each of them in depth as a refresher course on incentive program design. The reality is that most incentive solutions in place today are lacking attention to some of the Building Blocks, hindering the chances for optimal sales results.

New Incentra Website

We have just completed a complete update of our website at www.incentracorp.com to better tell the Incentra story as a full-service employee recognition and sales and safety incentive provider. Included are many new sections that highlight our capabilities in International Incentive/Recognition Solutions, Communications & Promotion, Performance Technology, Cutting Edge Rewards and E-Learning.

Also enhanced is our Articles and White Papers section which offers a wide variety of ideas, research and best practices for topics including the ROI of employee recognition, the business case for workforce recognition, sales incentive planning and more.

Please take a look and let us know what you think at solutions@incentracorp.com.

Transforming Potential into Performance

From Sales Incentive Programs to HR Employee Recognition, from Total Recognition Systems to Safety Incentive Programs and Corporate Awards, Incentra empowers business leaders like, you, to dramatically Transform the Potential of Your People into Performance.

We do this by designing, communicating, and managing unparalleled employee motivation, recognition and sales reward and loyalty programs. We ignite the engagement and performance of the employees and sales channel members vital to your success, making them more valuable to you and to your customers. Sales incentives, employee recognition and corporate awards are all part of the potential mix we bring to bear in driving your success.

Our story is built on a foundation of positive, measureable results, representing a diverse group of clients and industries. Our commitment to helping you become a better leader, to enhance your achievement and to grow your business defines who we are, and why we should be talking.

The formula is simple, yet profound: Incentra ensures that you reach your potential by motivating, recognizing and rewarding your people for reaching theirs.

So if you are looking to improve employee engagement through HR Employee Recognition Programs or a Total Recognition strategy, grow sales with innovative Sales Incentive Programs, create a safer working environment with Safety Incentive Programs or recognize your achievers with Corporate Awards, we really should be talking. . .