Using the Power of Spurt Programs to Motivate Sales
Effective engagement with sales teams or customers is a long-term enterprise. Yet there are plenty of short-term goals to reach along the way. Consider sales cycles. Engaging with and motivating a sales team during a cycle can mean good things for sales reps and great things for your bottom line. Enter the spurt program.
By their nature, spurt or spiff programs are short term events designed to accelerate brand awareness or product sales. A spurt program can run for an entire quarter. It could run for just 2-4 weeks.
Program Purpose and Structure
Turning to spurt programs for sales team/customer engagement is based on the principle of injecting a quick burst of urgency and excitement into a sales cycle. They are great at motivating sales members to reach short term goals by offering a meaningful reward. A spurt program can:
- Increase sales team efforts
- Drive focus to one product area
- Motivate competition
- Inject some fresh incentives into an ongoing rewards program
A good spurt program has a deadline that incentivizes sales team members to go all out until the program ends. In addition, spurt programs should have clear and measurable objectives.
The Right Rewards Make a Difference
One of the keys to successful spurt programs is choosing the right rewards. Within a sales cycle, you are looking to reward participants with things that actually interest them. The rewards themselves should be motivators above and beyond reaching sales goals. If you can personalize rewards, all the better.
Individual travel experiences tend to be motivational for sales team members. The opportunity to get away on a personalized adventure with a loved one adds excitement and purpose. Another option is a points program. At Motivation Excellence, top performers can take advantage of using their points nearly any way they want through our Concierge Shopping Service.
Check Out MaxRewardsYourWay
We believe so much in spurt programs that we’ve designed our MaxRewardsYourWay platform to enhance them. We invite you to learn more about it by checking out the dedicated page we’ve put together on our website.
MaxRewardsYourWay allows companies to create customized reward packages based on goals, budget and item preferences. Rewards can include everything from travel to lifestyle upgrades (think Napa getaways, new fitness accessories or game room tech). Marketing these reward packages is easy. And, it’s a perfect reward option for companies who want low overhead and excellent return on investment.
Lastly, we offer the flexibility to change elements in the package. If one of your participants earns the Kitchen Gadget Upgrade Package but already has the coffee maker included in it, that person can contact our Concierge Shopping Service to swap it for something else.
Different Ways to Run Spurt Programs
Spurt programs are highly flexible and don’t need a lot of prep time to get them launched. There are multiple ways to set up and run a program. Depending on your goals, a short-term incentive program can reward for total volume of sales, quantity of product shipped or the best increase over the last sales cycle. You can reward only a few people or spread out the opportunities so more people are motivated to participate. Rewards can increase as sales levels do. Sell 10 x-ray machines and earn package A. Sell 15 and earn package B, and so on. They can also be a sweepstakes format. It all depends on what you’re trying to achieve.
Regardless of how spurt programs are structured, they represent a fun and exciting way to inject motivation into a sales team and boost your bottom line!
How to Personalize Group Travel Programs with Motivation Excellence
Personalization and group travel may seem like they don’t mesh. We are happy to say they can! There are numerous ways to personalize group travel programs, whether you are putting together an incentive travel program for employees or channel partners.
Group travel is something we specialize in at Motivation Excellence. Our planners incorporate plenty of personalized options to make our travel programs feel one-of-a-kind the people earning them. Here are a few ways we do just that:
1. Offer a Variety of Activities
Group travel doesn’t have to mean the exact same activities for every participant. Group travel program itineraries can be quite flexible, including a variety of choices. By offering many activities and the ability to choose, you give participants an opportunity to help craft an adventure they will genuinely appreciate.
We recommend putting together a list of activities with broad appeal. The idea is to have something for everyone. You might offer fitness activities along with golf, an adventure experience, spa sessions, and local tours. And don’t underestimate “at leisure” time. It’s consistently a winner with our participants.
2. Make Dining More Intimate
It has been our experience that group travel participants appreciate a more intimate dining experience, so they have an opportunity to spend quality time with executives or preferred suppliers.
Vendor-sponsored dinners allow participants to have access to product managers, and vice versa. If you’re hosting a channel partner incentive travel experience, connecting your distributors with favorite suppliers creates great relationships, with you right in the middle. If you’re running an internal sales incentive, giving top performers time to meet with the C-suite is very motivating.
3. Use the Motivation Excellence Inspire Platform
We’ve saved the best tip for last: use the Motivation Excellence Inspire technology for group travel. Inspire is a truly unique platform that puts personalized itineraries right in your travelers’ hands. Group dinners, individual activity selections, flights and more are easy to access via a phone or computer.
Inspire is completely customizable to match your company’s colors, logo and style. From program registration to plane seat preference to FAQs about your destination, Inspire helps engage your participants before, during and after your group travel event.
Some Things to Keep in Mind
Motivation Excellence takes incentive group travel to new levels. We use only highly-rated hotel properties and provide only the best staff to ensure flawless execution on-site.
Notice, we don’t call these “trips.” Anyone can take a trip. We provide experiences that people cannot plan on their own; experiences that are truly memorable and motivating.
Group travel doesn’t have to be static. It does not need to be a one-size-fits-all experience. Whether you are putting together a program for employees, channel partners or favorite vendors, we can help you personalize the program so that every participant feels like the experience was made just for them!
In Rewards and Recognition, Leadership Enthusiasm Is Critical
Both personalized rewards and travel incentives can improve engagement, boost morale, and contribute to greater productivity. But if an organization expects its incentivization efforts to pay off in the long run, there is a critical ingredient that cannot be ignored: leadership enthusiasm. Leadership needs to do more than endorse programs on paper. They need to be personally involved.
A March 2024 post by Forbes Council’s Member David Grossman drives home this point really well. We will borrow from Grossman’s post while adding our own thoughts. When all is said and done, we hope you walk away with a better understanding of how leadership impacts both the tangible and intangible benefits of personalized rewards and employee recognition.
Leadership Was Into It
Grossman began his post by discussing a recent experience that had made a huge impression on him. As he put it, he “had the opportunity to observe an exemplary employee recognition program in action.” The program was designed to award employees who demonstrated the company’s values in remarkable ways.
That alone says something. The employer went beyond offering personalized rewards and recognition just to increase engagement or boost productivity. They actually want their employees to live out company values as they do what they do. They want company culture to be more than words on paper. They want it to define how employees do what they do.
At any rate, Grossman observed that company leadership was really into the recognition part of the program. During the official recognition ceremony, leadership described how award winners exemplified company values. They described how the award winners went above and beyond to meet the needs of both clients and colleagues.
The Excitement Was Palpable
According to Grossman, the excitement in the room was palpable. There was an energy not seen in most employee recognition events. Most importantly, all the employees were able to see first-hand that company leadership actually believed in what they were doing. They saw that their leaders were genuinely enthusiastic about recognizing employees for their exemplary work.
It’s Not Always That Way
Unfortunately, what Grossman observed is not the standard for every company. In fact, he cited statistics from a Gallup poll showing just the opposite. According to the poll:
- 40% of American employees receive recognition a few times per year or less.
- Just 23% reported that their employers had recognition programs in place.
Things do not have to be this way. In fact, they should not. The same Gallup poll reveals that employees who are regularly recognized for doing well are four times more likely to be engaged at work. They are also 73% less likely to report burnout.
More Than Just a Human Resource
Perhaps a good way to summarize everything Grossman wrote in his post is to say that American workers want to be treated like they are more than just human resources. They want to be treated as partners with ideas to contribute, visions for the company, and the ability to serve clients without being tethered.
Personalized rewards and recognition programs cannot meet every employee engagement need in the modern workforce. But they can go a long way toward demonstrating to employees that they are human beings with value rather than just easily replaced resources.
Just remember this one thing: the success of any rewards or recognition program is intrinsically tied to leadership enthusiasm. Leadership needs to buy-in, both on paper and through actively participating in recognizing hard working employees. The more enthusiasm leadership displays, the more enthusiasm they will encourage in their employees. Ultimately, that’s what makes all this work.
How Engaging Family Members Can Boost Your Sales Incentive Programs
The companies we work with sincerely want engaged channel partners. It is one of the reasons they offer incentive programs for channel partners. But did you know that incentivizing channel partners doesn’t begin and end in the workplace? It also extends to family members.
One of the rarely talked about secrets of using incentive programs to boost channel partner engagement is getting family members involved. There are numerous ways to engage with family members. At the top of the list is to include them in incentive program communications. That way, they can get excited about the incentives as well. They can become cheerleaders at home.
Incentivize the Entire Family
Along the many incentive and reward programs we offer are personal rewards designed for individual channel partners. We can help your company design a package that uniquely fits your workforce. Personal reward options include things like:
- Dining experiences.
- Individual travel experiences.
- Tickets to concerts and sporting events.
- Music and book subscriptions.
Many of our reward options don’t just benefit the single channel partner. They benefit the entire family. One channel partner might take a spouse to the fanciest restaurant they have ever been to. Another might share tickets to the year’s hottest concert with every member of the family. It is not just the channel partner who winds up being incentivized; the entire family is incentivized.
At home, family members can cheer on the channel partner, encouraging them to be the best possible salesperson. And when the salesperson succeeds, the whole family gets rewarded. Talk about building excitement at home. Nothing else compares.
Involving Families in Incentive Engagement Pays Off in Multiple Ways
Involving families in channel partner engagement has a direct impact by encouraging family members to support their loved ones as they help them to be the best they can be. But there are indirect ways through which family member incentivization pays off. Let us look at a few:
- Financial Security – Modern families long for a sense of financial security. That being the case, some are unwilling to spend money on life’s little extras because they don’t want to jeopardize the budget. Providing those little extras through a channel partner incentive program enables families to enjoy some nice things while still being confident about their finances.
- Work-Life Balance – Work-life balance is an ongoing pursuit for salespeople of all ages. When personal rewards can be shared with family members, every experience becomes a step toward better balance. That makes for more close-knit families.
- Increased Engagement – Americans sincerely want what is best for their families. When they see family members benefiting from their own incentive programs, it makes them feel good. They are more engaged at work as a result. After all, they want to earn those rewards so they can share them with the family.
- Improved Emotional Wellness – Family members cheering one another on in pursuit of a shared goal find strength and unity in doing so. That can make for better emotional wellness, both at work and at home.
It is easy to look at channel partner programs as little more than a way to retain good business. Personalized rewards can do just that. But they can do so much more. One of the things we have learned here at Motivation Excellence is that engaging family members makes an incentive program much more effective.
If you would like to learn how to include family members in your channel partner engagement efforts, reach out to Motivation Excellence right away. We have all sorts of incentives and rewards that fit perfectly with the idea of getting family members involved.
The Motivation Excellence Team Mourns the Loss of Leader David Jobes
The loss of David Jobes will be felt by all who worked alongside him at Motivation Excellence. As a leader in the performance improvement and incentive industry, David helped create an award-winning culture, as well as a competitive and long-standing company in a niche community. Motivation Excellence is 39 years old, with David being an integral part of it for the last 32 years.
David bought Motivation Excellence six years ago, after serving as long-time President. While leading the company he molded the culture of the business to reflect his values of respect, integrity, trust, exceeding expectations, charity, collaboration and environmental stewardship.
Award-Winning
David made it a goal to be an employer of choice when he purchased the company in 2018. Since that time, Motivation Excellence has been honored with six years of being named a Best and Brightest Companies to Work For® recipient, both locally and nationally.
He was thrilled when his team recently won back-to-back Society for Incentive Travel Excellence (SITE) Crystal Awards for outstanding travel programs too. He believed that when his people felt secure and valued, their clients ultimately benefited from it. Thinking like an owner and treating everyone with respect were hallmarks David preached to his team.
A New Work Environment
David moved the company’s Schaumburg, IL headquarters in 2020. The new building offered upgraded amenities and the ability to build out a dream work environment. He worked closely with his designer to create a collaborative, open workspace that included eco-friendly and vegan materials from the ceiling tiles to the coasters in the meeting rooms.
Expansion
At the end of 2021, David purchased VIKTOR Incentives & Meetings. The newly-merged companies quickly became one team with two locations. Under his leadership, everyone at Motivation Excellence exudes the work ethic and shared values to create programs that Inspire Extraordinary Performance.
Legacy
As the driving force behind constantly improving company culture and client experiences, he inspired those he worked with to be lifelong learners and strive for the next level in personal and professional growth areas. Under his direction, the company donated more than $100,000 to various charities, most of which were hand-selected by his employees. He was especially pleased to help support Ingage Unlimited, an international volunteer training organization that sends groups to impoverished locations throughout the world to provide training in the areas of education, healthcare, business and leadership development.
His team will continue David’s legacy through exemplary service to their clients, each other, and the community. The entire Motivation Excellence team sends their deepest sympathies to his family.
How Custom Incentives & Rewards Can Revolutionize Your Employee Engagement
Motivation Excellence specializes in developing and implementing employee rewards and incentive programs. A reward points program is a perfect fit for employees and can encompass recognition and achievements. The best part is that with our personalized rewards solution, the points can be used for almost anything! In recent years, we’ve noticed a greater focus on custom rewards within our client base. We have several ways to reward your best people in exactly the way they want to be rewarded. There’s no better incentive!
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Being an employer of choice has always had a prominent place in workforce history, but since the pandemic, adding motivational benefits to an employee package is critical. We saw with the Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting, that engagement is key to keeping top talent. Having a reward and recognition, or incentive program, in play is a great way to increase engagement. The reward structure is paramount to a program’s success. Rewards shouldn’t be a one size fits all solution. When you offer a personalized reward to an employee the motivation to achieve the goal you want them to meet or exceed grows. If you haven’t started offering your employees the power to choose their own rewards, now is the time to start. The opportunity to earn a family vacation might be a winner for Sue, but Tom really wants to update his game room. With a reward point program through Motivation Excellence, Sue and Tom are both motivated to succeed because they can use their points on exactly what they want.
Recognition Is a Big Thing
Whether you want to run a reward and recognition program to highlight your employees’ milestones or an incentive program to motivate them to reach higher goals, with a well-designed program you’ll find eager participants. People want to be recognized for their accomplishments. They want their employers to notice and give value to their ideas, efforts, and loyalty. In fact, one survey among American workers revealed that 40% said they would likely put more energy into their work if they were recognized more often.
Employee recognition improves engagement. According to Gallup, companies with the highest level of employee engagement are 21% more profitable than those with the lowest levels. It comes down to a simple equation: recognition boosts engagement and engagement increases profitability.
All of this is well and good, but what does it have to do with customizing employee incentive programs? Giving people the ability to choose their reward experience is much more motivating than giving them a pin on their 20th anniversary or a gift card to the company store when they receive a great customer review. When an employee has some say in how they’re recognized, engagement flourishes and an emotional bond is established.
Applying Customization to Employee Incentives
There are many avenues to explore when it comes to personalizing employee incentives. Our online award offerings can be customized to include only certain items and categories, or you can keep the full gamut of thousands of options so employees can choose from trending electronics, sporting equipment, airline tickets and so much more! Some of our clients like to offer a select number of lifestyle upgrade packages. Each package is the same value, but focuses on a different theme, like culinary, fitness, travel and home entertainment. Our Concierge Shopping option allows point recipients to use their points nearly any way they can think of, including, vacation home rentals, college tuition for their child, lunch at a French castle…we’ve even purchased a cow at auction for a participant who wanted to give it to his granddaughter for a 4H project!
Having a choice in how they’re rewarded makes employees feel like they are true participants rather than just recipients of whatever reward their employers thought was best. And like everything else in the employment realm, making employees feel like an integral part of the success of your business also encourages them to take ownership of their role in it.
Customization works because what might be important to you will not be important to everyone else on your team. Customization avoids the temptation to offer the same incentive to every employee and expect all of them to embrace it with equal enthusiasm.
Customization Is Where It’s At
Don’t miss out on retaining top talent because they’re lured to another company with better incentives. Utilizing customization when it comes to retention is a great addition to any benefits package you have. We’d be happy to take a look at what you’re doing in that arena and see if one of our solutions would create more engagement for your team. Contact us today to design your employee engagement and rewards program.
Get to Know ME with Kathy Krawczyk
We’d like you to meet our Get to Know ME subject this month: Kathy Krawczyk! Kathy is one of those people you meet and instantly become friends with. She’s curious, talkative and ready to connect on a personal level. She sat down for a recorded interview and provided answers to questions below. Take a few minutes to get to know our recently hired Travel Sourcing and Planning Manager. Thanks Kathy!
What’s your current title and how long have you been in the incentive industry?
I am a Travel Sourcing and Planning Manager; I have been in the meeting/incentive industry for over 25 years.
What do you like about your job?
I like that I’m still learning after all these years. It keeps every day interesting, sometimes challenging, but everyone should have a challenge here and there.
What’s something special about how you grew up?
I’m an only child and because of this, I have eight friends that have been there for me since grammar school. I have two friends in particular who I met when I was five and they are truly my adopted family (along with their 6 brothers).
What’s a specific moment in your history that always stands out as a defining event, and why?
On a personal level it was marrying Al after knowing him for 15 years. We dated when we were very young, separated and then got back together. Two other events that I’ll always recall as defining: New Year’s Eve 1999 hoping New Year’s Day 2000 was going to be normal as usual after all the hype. And 9-11, who could not have been affected by that.
What’s an unknown or odd talent you have?
I used to sing in a guitar group back in the day and love to dance (my friends call me the “Dancing Queen”).
What motivates you to accomplish things in your life (work or personal)?
I love seeing the outcome. With any event, whether personal or at work, you plan and plan and then when it all comes together, I just sit back and take it all in. Sometimes it can bring on a little depression for a day or two knowing it’s over but then onto the next one (especially after my two daughters’ weddings).
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Spending time with my family and friends, traveling, making my mom’s old recipes, shopping (what woman doesn’t like this), and just hanging with my husband Al.
One thing that always makes you laugh is?
Hard to say, I love to laugh. Some old memories make me laugh every time I retell them. My friends say I have a contagious laugh.
What’s a bucket list item you can’t wait to cross off?
Traveling to Germany and Prague, and eventually retirement!
This month, our theme for social media is “How to be Influential.” Do you have influence with people in your life (family, friends, colleagues), and how do you best protect it?
I think when your family calls you when they need advice or have questions, especially your children, it means you have influenced them by teaching them over the years and they feel very comfortable still asking for advice. I feel the same with friends. I protect this by keeping trust between all of us, telling it is like it is.
Channel Partner Incentives and Personal Motivation – The Hidden Link
At Motivation Excellence, we specialize in creating innovative channel partner incentive programs that motivate distributors, dealers, and other partners to excel. We understand the intrinsic link between channel partner incentives and personal motivation. This post delves into this connection, exploring how channel partner incentives can drive motivation using real-world case studies as examples.
Personal Motivation in Channel Partners
Personal motivation is crucial in the context of any incentive. It’s a special case with channel partners, who are external to your company, often owning businesses that sell your products, and perhaps your competitors’ products too. Understanding what drives them—whether it’s a sense of achievement, recognition, or personal/professional growth—is vital. Channel partner incentives are not just about bonuses or perks for past actions; they are about creating opportunities for partners to achieve and exceed shared goals now and into the future. These particular incentives are about loyalty and keeping your brand top of mind in their business.
Case Study: Success in the Fencing Industry
To illustrate the effectiveness of a well-designed channel incentive program, consider our case study in the fencing industry.
Business Issue
Our client needed to restructure and unify their approach to build stronger relationships with contractors, increase market share, and boost customer loyalty. They also aimed to provide educational resources, networking opportunities, and better access to company leadership.
Our Solution
We developed an interactive Buying Show weekend that combined a fun destination with top vendor partners, exclusive deals, and financing specials. The event featured learning and networking sessions and world-class entertainment. Funding came from qualifying contractors’ incremental sales and supplier contributions, and we supported the program with a performance tracking website, an engagement campaign, and best practices webinars led by company leadership.
Results
- Attendee Growth: The number of attendees grew by 226% over 12 years, with attendees comprising over 71% of the customer base.
- Sales Growth: Median sales growth reached 214%, the average growth was 230%, and the top 25% achieved a 263% average growth.
The Buying Show became a must-attend event, significantly enhancing business relationships and revenue, with the program continuing successfully since its inception in 2012. The personal motivation for these channel partners has become to always qualify for the next event, and for some, to move up the ranks within the attendee audience to capture top-performance awards.
Case Study: HVAC and Plumbing Distributor
Another example of success with a channel partner incentive program involves a nationally ranked and independently owned HVAC and plumbing distributor seeking to drive incremental sales and gain market share with a self-funded travel incentive for their loyal customers and preferred prospects.
Business Atmosphere
Following the slow recovery from a major economic downturn, our client aimed to energize their market presence. They sought an engaging and self-funded travel incentive to reward their loyal customers and attract preferred prospects.
Creating a Solution
Collaborating with our client’s financial and marketing teams, we analyzed historic sales data, gross profit, and growth potential to develop a meticulous goal-setting structure and tracking system. Participants earned credit for meeting personalized goals and additional credit for surpassing them.
Self-Funded Travel Reward
We designed a travel incentive program where customers and their sales representatives and managers within our client’s company could earn a travel award by achieving predetermined incremental sales growth. This approach ensured the program was self-funded. Including our own company representatives in the travel experience significantly strengthened business relationships.
Support for Success
We partnered with our client’s sales reps and managers to create compelling presentations for their customers and prospects. An online performance tracking platform enabled company reps and customers to monitor daily progress toward goals. Monthly electronic reports and updates fostered ongoing engagement between customers and the sales team.
Rewarding Results
The revenue and profit growth for enrolled participants consistently outperformed non-enrolled participants. Over five years, the number of travel award winners increased from 75 couples to 250 couples. This ongoing self-funded travel incentive program led to real growth, increased market share, enhanced customer loyalty, and stronger relationships between customers and the sales team. The personal motivation became the enduring emotional connections with our client’s people combined with the value of their products. The extra motivation came from aspirational travel destinations.
Self-Sustaining Motivation
Channel partner incentives can create self-sustaining motivation by helping partners realize their potential and rewarding them for incremental growth with aspirational and educational group events. This continuous cycle of achievement and motivation leads to long-term productivity and loyalty to your company.
By designing incentive programs that address personal motivators, companies can drive their channel partners to achieve remarkable results. A holistic approach ensures that partners feel valued and recognized, encouraging them to strive for excellence consistently. Your business grows along with theirs, for the win-win scenario.
Contact us today to design and implement your channel incentive program or other incentive and rewards programs.
Here at Motivation Excellence, we are all about innovative channel partner incentive programs designed to motivate distributors, resellers, and other partners to excel in their roles. Of course, there are other organizations that do the same things we do. We all have one thing in common: we understand the intrinsic link between channel partner incentives and personal motivation.
The link is a hidden one in the sense that many people do not know it exists. It is one thing to know that channel partner incentives can be motivational. It’s another thing to know why. That’s what we want to discuss in this post. It is all tied to something known as the Herzberg theory.
Understanding What Motivates Partners
Frederick Herzberg was a well-known psychologist who made his mark as one of the most influential people in the business management world. In the 1950s, he began looking into what motivated people in the workplace. His research eventually led to the development of a theory which was formally named the Motivator-Hygiene theory. We just call it the Herzberg theory for short.
In a nutshell, his theory suggests that people are motivated by different things that can be divided into two categories. The Motivator category involves internal things like satisfaction, recognition, and the sense of achievement. The Hygiene category involves external things like salary, bonus pay, company policies, and supervision.
Herzberg theorized that the short-term gains realized through external motivators were lost once those motivators were taken away. Likewise, supporting internal motivators with external counterparts enhances productivity. Therein lies the link.
The two types of motivators feed off one another. Promoting one while ignoring the other does not achieve the best possible results. So when it comes to creating truly successful channel partner incentive programs, the key is to find the right balance between them.
The Idea of Personal Motivation
Going beyond the Herzberg theory leads us to the idea of personal motivation. What motivates an individual to be the best they can be? Is it a sense of achievement? Is it merely an intrinsic desire to always be the best? The actual trigger for any one person is less important than actually coming up with the channel partner incentives most likely to trigger partners to take action.
Channel partner incentive programs give partners a reason to explore their own personal motivations. But it needs to be understood that a bonus or perk is not the same thing as a channel partner incentive. Bonuses and perks are one-time motivators offered in response to past actions. Channel partner incentives are an invitation to do better both now and in the future.
Channel partner incentive programs place a reward in front, where partners can clearly see it. As partners work to receive that reward, they come to realize just what they are capable of. They take a sense of pride and satisfaction in their own accomplishments even as they seek to win the proverbial prize.
Incentives Can Be Self-Sustaining
Channel partner incentives can be self-sustaining in the sense that they train partners in the fundamental truth that they can be better at what they do. As partners accomplish goals and understand their own capabilities, they personally motivate themselves to stretch further. The more they accomplish, the more they want to accomplish in the future.
Leveraging Channel Incentives to Increase Market Share
Here at Motivation Excellence, employee incentive and rewards programs are a big part of what we do. But they are not all we do. We engage with organizations to create a variety of incentive programs, including sales incentive programs and channel incentives.
We help organizations leverage channel incentives to increase market share. Incentive programs are a terrific way to motivate channel partners. Incentives can run the gamut from travel experiences to merchandise rebates and certain types of non-cash rewards. The key is to figure out what makes channel partners tick so that you can create an incentive program uniquely tailored to each one.
Channel Incentive Basics
The foundation of this entire discussion is an organization’s channel partners. Channel partners are distributors, retailers, resellers, etc. Virtually every entity involved in the sales chain is considered a channel partner. Some industries have longer chains than others. Nevertheless, unless an organization is selling directly to end customers with no operators in between, there are channel partners involved.
Increasing market share from a channel partner perspective is all about encouraging those partners to prioritize your organization’s products or services. You want your organization to be given priority over the competition. But channel partners need a reason to do so. That is where channel incentives come in.
A channel incentive provides the reason for selling a bit harder. The right incentive can encourage partners to increase their focus and efforts on what your company offers. It can motivate them to work on market penetration to establish residual sales.
Expanding to New Markets
Market penetration is a big issue among organizations looking to increase their share. Greater penetration leads to new markets, and new markets boost both share and revenues. How do channel incentives play into such market expansion?
Imagine using a channel incentive program to encourage partners to go after previously untapped markets. They only receive the benefit if they manage to penetrate those markets. An incentive gives them the reason to put in the time and effort.
There is an added bonus in this regard: expanding into previously untapped markets requires that channel partners have an appropriate level of expertise about your products and services. If partners want the incentive badly enough, they will make the effort to learn everything they can about your organization.
Ultimately, you should be left with channel partners that know your products and services inside and out. They can represent your organization as they work to expand your reach. Everybody wins as a result: your organization, your partners, and end customers.
Fostering Loyalty and Commitment
There is a downside to leveraging channel incentives as a way of increasing market share: potentially crafting a program that emphasizes numbers more than anything else. When the only goal of increased market share is a higher number, whether it is sales volume or total revenues, it doesn’t take long for the luster to wear off. Numbers are just that. They are numbers that channel partners can grow used to and ultimately ignore.
An ideal channel incentive goes beyond mere numbers to foster loyalty and commitment. A good program engages with partners as much as customers. It encourages partners to take an active interest in promoting your organization’s growth and prosperity. When your organization grows and prospers, so do your channel partners. You want them to own that.
Channel incentive programs can be powerful tools for increasing market share. If you would like to know more about how Motivation Excellence can be involved in designing and implementing incentives for your channel partners, reach out at your earliest convenience. Let us create an incentive program like no other.
4 Not-So-Obvious Benefits of Non-Cash Incentive Programs
Organizations are used to offering cash incentives as a way to motivate employees and contractors. Motivating the sales team with cash bonuses is a classic example. We take a different approach at Motivation Excellence. We prefer non-cash incentive programs such as personalized rewards for employees or travel incentives. We believe they can ultimately accomplish more than their cash alternatives.
The sky is truly the limit when it comes to coming up with non-cash incentives. We are big fans of travel experiences. But non-cash incentive programs can also reward employees and contractors with event tickets, merchandise, and points that can be redeemed for a variety of experiences.
Does your organization offer any non-cash incentive programs? If not, we encourage you to take a second look at how you incentivize your team. Below are four not-so-obvious benefits of going the non-cash route.
1. Adding Value to the Incentive
We prefer non-cash incentives because we believe they boost loyalty and increase the emotional connection between team members and employers. We see this happening in multiple ways, beginning with the concept of adding value to an incentive program.
Cash is valuable to employees. That much is true. But employees do not tend to think of the value of cash from the employer’s perspective. Cash compensation is just expected. Therefore, it can be easily taken for granted.
Non-cash incentives are different. Employees tend to attach more value to them. For example, offer your team 4–5-star travel experiences and they will associate those experiences with a higher value – even if they actually cost less than offering team members cash bonuses. It is the highly personal nature of travel that leads to the higher perception of value.
2. Creating an Emotional Bond
Non-cash rewards, like personalized gifts and tickets to popular events, are considered more thoughtful. It takes a lot more thought and effort to procure event tickets than it does to throw a few hundred dollars into a team member’s paycheck. That extra time and effort tells employees that they matter.
When employees feel valued, they are more likely to develop a positive emotional bond with their employers. The more personal an incentive program feels, the more successful it will be in its ability to incentivize. But more importantly, it will foster a stronger emotional bond.
3. Creating Camaraderie Rather Than Competition
With all our experience in non-cash incentive programs, we have discovered something curious: non-cash incentives are more likely to inspire camaraderie among team members. Take travel experiences once again. An entire team sharing similar travel experiences – even if they do not travel at the same time – have something in common. They bond over the shared experience.
On the other hand, cash incentives tend to foster competition. This is not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. But sometimes, you want camaraderie rather than competition. Sometimes it is better for team members to want everyone to benefit from an incentive program rather than individuals competing for a single prize.
4. Better Alignment With Company Culture
Last but not least, non-cash incentive programs can be tailored to align with company culture. But that’s not all. Organizations can utilize non-cash benefits to change or enhance the company culture. This makes them a great tool for creating the kind of environment and culture an organization strives for.
Cash benefits do have a place at the table. But more often than not, non-cash incentive programs are where it’s at. They not only incentivize and inspire, but they also help increase loyalty and foster an emotional connection between team member and company. Non-cash incentive programs are definitely worth a solid look if your organization doesn’t currently use them. Contact us today to design your incentive and rewards program with us.
