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.
