What You Can Gain from Group Travel Incentives
At Motivation Excellence, we LOVE group travel incentives! For sales incentives, whether for your internal team or channel partners, a group travel award is coveted, and thus very motivational. For the right audience, travel experiences as rewards are phenomenal ways to engage, connect and foster performance improvements from the people who mean the most to the success of your business!
Group travel is a complex beast. But, with us as your partner, your team and participants only see the shiny, fun exterior because we put in all the sweat equity behind the scenes. As with any sales incentive, it needs to be managed in just the right way so that participants are engaged and rewarded, and our clients are secure in their budget and goal attainment.
A Plethora of Goals
Group travel incentives can be defined by one or more goals. So, it’s important for businesses to really understand what they want to accomplish before designing an incentive program that culminates in a group travel award. Below are examples of five goals we routinely design travel incentive programs around:
1. Improving Performance
According to the Incentive Research Foundation, an estimated 91% of travel incentive participants find travel incentives ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ motivating. Those are some impressive numbers! With a fantastic travel program as motivation, improving performance to earn it gets some added priority. Of course, offering the right destination for the audience is a critical component. Budget also comes into play, but we have 40 years of experience helping clients fit great destinations into their budget.
2. Relationship Building
Group travel experiences are great at building relationships between the executive team and the people working so hard to improve the bottom line. Planning small group activities or dinners so leadership can interact with top performers in a relaxed setting is one way we nurture relationship building. When you see a whale breach 100 feet away together, the shared experience builds memories which create fondness and leads to loyalty. Significant others become more than acquaintances which can lead to friendships outside the business world.
3. Building Brand Loyalty
Travel awards tend to be powerful and positive experiences. For B2B channels, they’re also a great venue to add value to a business relationship through networking and training sessions. Including preferred vendors, adding small group session options and organization product demonstrations will highlight how your business is able to put all the pieces in place for easy one-stop-shopping and support.
4. Sharing Organizational Insights
Yet another opportunity group travel offers is the ability to spend time sharing organizational insights with sales teams and distribution partners. Announcing a new product, giving insight into company goals and strategies or offering best practices for continued growth or steps to the sale are all ways to connect with your internal sales team or B2B channel partners. Combine all that with being in a great location with plenty of fun activities too and you’ve captured attention and fostered engagement.
5. Building Momentum
Showing appreciation to the people who bring the most to your bottom line not only strengthens relationships and increases loyalty but if done well, it motivates them to continue to qualify year after year! And each subsequent year likely brings with it a larger goal, which means your company continues to see performance improvements long after the group travel experience is over.
Take Advantage of the Latest Trends
We advise any company considering group travel incentives to partner with a trusted incentive travel firm. It’s a niche business, but knowing you’re with a company, like Motivation Excellence, can take a lot of stress off your shoulders. We do the heavy lifting. Our years of experience add up to risk mitigation for our clients, creative ways to get the most out of a budget and global partnerships that reap rewards wherever we go!
We also know what’s hot in group travel right now and how to best motivate your target audience.
- Personalization – When participants get choices on a travel experience, they’re able to make it more personal to them and their guests. Our Inspire travel technology creates personalized itineraries, including transportation, selected activities and a daily agenda. There are other ways to make a group experience more personalized, and we use them all.
- Free Time – One of the biggest trends of the last several years is offering more free time to the daily schedule. Not only does this save some budget for our clients, but it allows their participants the opportunity to truly relax without having every minute planned. “Bleisure” (business + leisure) days offer a more balanced experience for everyone.
- Cultural Experiences – Incentive travelers like to feel immersed in their travel experience. Getting off the tourist path, and finding unique places, usually only the locals know about, offer a glimpse into the significance of cultural traditions and activities which tend to be very impactful.
- Exclusivity – We like to plan travel experiences no one could plan on their own. Travel awards should be built with a wow-factor (or multiple) to really drive home to the winners that they’ve accomplished something extraordinary and are being treated as such.
If your organization wants to plan a group travel incentive we’d love to connect with you to offer our insight into successful programs. Motivation Excellence has 40 years of experience designing, planning, and implementing group travel incentives for channel partners and sales teams. Let’s get started on yours today!
How Channel Partner Incentives Help Your Business Thrive
Channel partner engagement is a priority among companies that rely on partners to distribute, market and sell their products. B2B loyalty and incentive programs are a great way to capture your channel’s attention and business. If channel partners feel more connected to your business, or more motivated by an incentive you’re offering that your competitors are not, you’ll see the net result in increased sales, often over a long-term run.
The Channel Partner Relationship
Channel partners can be amazing assets! Tending to this special relationship is critical to outshining your competitors in the same field. Distributors often carry competing product lines. Turning the attention to your brand can be tricky, but in the long run it’s very beneficial.
For our clients with distribution channels to consider, we’ve seen great growth when they’ve introduced a B2B loyalty or incentive program. Programs can reward partners for going through product or steps-to-the-sale training, in addition to increasing their purchasing and selling habits. When our clients help their channel partners grow their own businesses, a solid and loyal relationship starts to take hold, which pays dividends well into the future for both of them.
Tangible Channel Partner Contributions Worth Incentivizing
Loyalty and incentive programs are all about motivating behavior changes that positively affect your business. Your participants are rewarded for meeting new goals, which brings ongoing incremental sales increases to your business. How and why you motivate your distribution channel is critical to a successful relationship. Here are some reasons why you should consider implementing an incentive or loyalty program this year:
1. Market Expansion
Strategic partners offer market expansion into new geographic regions and customer segments. They can provide access to industry verticals without requiring a huge upfront investment. The goal here is growth. A channel partner’s established networks reduce barriers to market entry, thereby facilitating more growth in a shorter amount of time. Engaging with these new networks through a B2B reward program can help you find a foothold in a new territory.
2. Increased Sales
The basis of any loyalty or incentive rule structure is capturing increased sales. The equation is often very simple: Partner meets stated goal and they get stated reward. Loyalty programs reward from dollar one and often include tiers that correlate with amount of activity. Participants can level up or down depending on their ongoing purchasing habits. Incentive programs often have goals that stretch the normal behavior of a customer’s yearly purchases and rewards them for meeting or beating the stated goal after a predetermined stretch of time. Both programs’ rules need to factor in what will motivate the participant, while bringing in increased sales and gross profit.
3. Brand Awareness & Loyalty
When you’re one brand among dozens vying for the attention of distribution partners, offering an incentive program can be what shines a light directly on your company. Perhaps one of your competitors is running a group travel incentive to the Bahamas. Sure, it’s a great destination, but in your industry it’s a pretty common one. Offering a fresh new destination can turn heads to your program pretty easily. Adding in customer exclusive events or training throughout the year can also create engagement opportunities that become reasons channel partners choose to buy more of your products. Keeping your brand top of mind is a great way to increase sales and loyalty.
4. Product Launch
An incentive or loyalty program is a great way to introduce the latest and greatest! A product launch could add a bonus element to an existing program, or it could be the reason to start a program in the first place. Ramping up excitement is critical to a successful introduction. A short-term incentive can produce sales on day one. A long-term incentive can ramp up the rewards for increased sales quarter over quarter or year over year. New product training events and access to company executives are engaging elements that can help bring in sales immediately and set up a landscape for a beneficial partnership long into the future.
5. Product Focus
Some of your product lines might be more profitable for you than others. A B2B incentive or loyalty program is a great way to steer share of wallet toward the categories that have the best margins for your company. You can still reward on any sale, but by rewarding more heavily on certain skus, you can create more demand for the products that bring in the highest gross profits.
Plenty of Reasons to Reward with Channel Partner Incentives
If your channel partners are vital to your company’s success, you definitely want to explore the use of channel partner incentives to grab and keep their attention. For them, it shows how much you value their partnership. For you, it creates incremental growth potential on a continuous basis.
We have a library of information on our blog page regarding B2B programs, including the best rule structure elements, how to keep your program flexible and measuring ROI within channel programs. We are here as your resource from pre-launch through re-launch every year. Our experts at Motivation Excellence can discuss the best options for your particular situation. We look at your goals, audience, budget, and current and potential sales data, among other things to create a solution custom-built to your business. We know how to Inspire Extraordinary Performance with the people who mean the most to the success of your business. Let’s connect to get started!
5 Reasons for Maintaining Flexible and Adaptable B2B Incentive Programs
Channel partner incentive programs are a big part of what we do at Motivation Excellence. We pride ourselves on helping clients develop dynamic incentives that maximize results, often because they remain flexible and adaptable. We don’t use SaaS products. Each program is custom designed for the needs of our clients. And we build in measurements throughout the program life so if any tweaks need to be made, we can do them in real time.
Here are five reasons for making sure your next B2B loyalty or incentive program is the opposite of rigid:
1. Business and Market Needs Change
If there is one thing we can count on in modern business, it is change. Business is subject to ongoing evolution and churn. North American businesses are tied to global trends now more than ever. Supply chain issues and international trade situations can pop up overnight. Therefore, everything from business goals to market conditions to customer preferences can change rather quickly. Flexibility in how a rule structure is written makes it possible to adapt incentive and loyalty programs to current conditions.
2. Partner Needs Are Diverse
Channel partners come in all shapes and sizes. Some might be looking for training on your product. Another might want you to provide general business growth strategies as an add-on value. One might be brand new to the market, while another has a long history. The amount of time, resources and product needed is different for each partner. Ensuring incentive programs are flexible and adaptable makes it easier to meet diverse needs while allowing your team to meet each participant where they are now and help them get to where they want to be. We often suggest offering different ways a partner can earn rewards. Highest percentage of growth over goal and greatest revenue growth over goal allow small and big players to earn rewards based on their performance, instead of the bigger fish always overshadowing the small ones.
3. Flexibility Encourages Innovation
In the 40 years we have been working with clients on incentive programs, we have discovered something interesting about flexibility: it encourages innovation. When program creators have the freedom to be flexible, they tend to think outside the box. This fosters new ideas and strategies. Combining risk mitigating features with imaginative elements can really make a program stand out among competitors. For instance, if your company selects a group travel reward destination that’s more intriguing than “the other guy’s” destination, you have a better chance of luring engagement your way.
4. Adaptability Improves Partner Retention
Rigid programs that fail to meet partner expectations lead to disengagement and attrition. When you can catch this trend early on, you’ve got time to fix it. Programs designed at Motivation Excellence build in regular metrics and communication elements so our clients can see in real time what’s working and what needs to be adapted to increase participation.
Participants want to feel like they’re being seen and heard. Adaptable incentive programs show partners that their engagement truly matters, which leads to building a strong base of loyal participants.
5. Both Make Use of Performance Insights
Designing a flexible program that has room for changes as needed allows our team to make sure our clients are getting the results they want (or better) while keeping their risk low. Using performance tracking metrics at regular intervals gives our clients business intelligence they can use to adjust how the program is being run. This allows them to give certain aspects a boost, add new categories to the incentive or pull back on elements that are not seeing activity at all. Flexible and adaptable channel partner incentives can be adjusted as insights indicate.How are you doing with your current B2B loyalty and incentive programs? If you are struggling to achieve stated goals or keep your participants motivated to keep out-performing themselves year after year, maybe it’s time to change things up a bit. Perhaps your program need a bit more flexibility and adaptability injected in. We can help. Contact us to learn more about Motivation Excellence and our approach to custom built B2B programs.
The 4-Step Process for Measuring Channel Incentive ROI
Your organization invests in channel incentives for a reason. Channel incentive programs are not merely vehicles for spending money. You want something in return for every dime you spend. And how do you ensure you’re getting what you want? By measuring return on investment (ROI).
ROI can be measured in any number of ways depending on how the principle is applied. When it comes to channel incentives, keeping things as simple as possible is the name of the game. Unnecessary complications only make it more difficult to get a clear picture of channel incentive effectiveness.
The 4-Step Process
Your organization may have its own way of measuring channel incentive ROI. But if not, here is a common 4-step process used by organizations in a variety of industries:
Step #1: Define Objectives and Metrics
The first step is to define objectives and metrics. They should be clear and well aligned with your organization’s business strategy. But be careful. Without a clear understanding of what you are trying to achieve, you can end up chasing objectives and metrics that don’t matter.
What do you hope to achieve with your incentive program? What KPIs will clearly demonstrate success or failure? Common examples above channel incentive goals include revenue, lead generation, cost per lead, and conversion rate. There is plenty more to consider.
Step #2: Calculate the Cost of Your Program
The two basic components of ROI are cost and benefit. Therefore, the second step is to calculate the total costs of your incentive program. Total costs include:
- Partner incentives
- Training and support
- Deployment and administration
- Infrastructure expenses
Calculating costs may not be an exact science, especially when multiple incentive programs overlap. For instance, you might have the same group of people administering multiple programs. The administrative costs related to the work they do may not be consistently spread across all programs. You may have to estimate.
Step #3: Calculate the Benefits
Next is calculating the financial value of program benefits. One of the benefits might be increased revenue from partner sales. It is easily measured. Other benefits could include cost savings, customer acquisition, or even a broader market reach.
Some of the perceived benefits may not easily be quantified with a monetary value. Nonetheless, understanding the true ROI of a channel incentive program requires numbers as accurate as you can come up with.
Step #4: Do the Math
The fourth and final step is simple math. The basic formula for calculating ROI begins with subtracting your total costs from your total benefits to arrive at a number that represents your return. Then you divide that number by your total costs and multiply it by 100. Here it is in a nice, neat formula: ROI ratio = (benefits – costs) / costs x 100%.
If your calculated ratio meets or exceeds your target, the channel incentive program has been a success. If not, any further action is largely dictated by how far off the ratio is. Missing the target by a little isn’t the end of the world. Missing it by a lot suggests it might be time to rethink how you approach channel incentives.
Are You Measuring ROI?
How you measure channel incentive ROI is less important than the fact that you do it. If your organization utilizes channel incentive programs and you are not measuring their ROI, it is time to change things up.
Measuring ROI tells you everything you need to know about whether your channel incentives are working. You need them to work, or your organization is essentially throwing money down the drain. That’s not a very good business objective.
Our 2025 Airfare Outlook; What You Need to Know & How You Can Try to Save Money
At Motivation Excellence, we book thousands of airfares every year for the participants who earn group travel experiences through our incentive programs and attend conferences that we organize for our corporate clients. We know a thing or two (or 12) about airfare trends and expectations. In the overall budget for our programs, air is the one thing that can fluctuate the most, so knowing when the best time to lock in tickets is critical.
We’ve seen airfares rise steadily since COVID, and we believe that trend will continue in 2025. Inflation, strong demand, and limited capacity all contribute to this, with the latter two really allowing airlines to flex their pricing power.
A recent Wall Street Journal article titled, “Airlines Are Charging Higher Fares and Are Confident You’ll Pay Up,” supports our position. Adding to the equation, delivery of new aircraft has been limited due to production problems at Boeing and Airbus.
“Just in January we’ve seen airfares rise 12%. Spring and summer travel will likely boost this by another 5%,” says Brad Hecht, Senior Vice President of Travel and Chief Travel Strategist at Motivation Excellence.
Airlines continue to prioritize profitability according to United Airline’s Chief Commercial Officer who was quoted in a New York Times article published January 22, 2025. Both Delta Airlines and United have projected their profits in 2025 to be exceptional, with Delta saying they expect their 2025 profit to be the best in their history.
What can the average consumer do to try and mitigate soaring ticket prices?
“As always, fares depend heavily on where you are flying and when you are flying. Flying to the south/Caribbean in winter/spring will guarantee higher fares and limited availability for the high season,” says Hecht.
For consumers looking to get the best fares, try to
- Book more than two weeks in advance
- Check prices at multiple airports; it might be worth driving to an airport farther away if you can save money
- Be flexible with your travel dates
- Consider alternate destinations that offer similar experiences, but may not be as popular for the masses
For our group travel incentive clients, we’ll continue to use our hybrid model of combining free-sold flights with blocked space and charters to help manage their air travel spend. We are diligent in checking price trends and guiding our clients about when the best time to purchase is to help control this part of their budget.
Motivation Excellence uses high-end travel and merchandise incentives, meetings and events to help our clients Inspire Extraordinary Performance among the people who mean the most to the success of their business. Through data-driven metrics we create customized solutions that minimize risk and maximize results while providing business intelligence companies often don’t realize they’re missing.
Why Your Approach to Sales Incentives Matters to the Results
You already know that sales incentives are rewards designed to motivate the sales team to achieve specific goals or objectives. You also know that incentives can be applied individually or team wide. But did you know that your approach to sales incentives matters to the eventual results?
Sales incentives are more than just the incentives themselves. An organization’s motivation is another big part of the equation. What does the company want to achieve? Introducing sales incentives could be about:
- Increasing revenue.
- Spurring new company growth.
- Introducing a new product.
- Encouraging channel partners to choose your product over a competitor.
Being very intentional about your goals is the first step to creating a successful sales incentive rule structure. Making sure your management team is hyped about the program is another step. When you get both aligned your odds of success increase dramatically. Create a simple and achievable set of rules that benefits your bottom line and motivates your participants and you’re on the right track from the start.
Sales Incentives Can Be Personalized
A good way to frame an organization’s approach to sales incentives is to look at the incentives themselves. Of course, there are monetary incentives that organizations have been relying on for decades. These include things like cash bonuses, gift cards, and stock options. But monetary incentives are not the be all and end all. Often an extra check gets spent on groceries or gas and is forgotten at the end of the month.
Incentives can be highly personalized. They can go above and beyond monetary reward. Here are just a few examples:
- Individual travel packages
- Group travel with a significant other and company executives
- Personalized lifestyle upgrade packages
- Award points that can be redeemed for nearly anything
- Tickets to high-value events or once-in-a-lifetime experiences
Sales incentives can even be packaged as professional development opportunities. For instance, we have worked with organizations that rewarded their channel sales teams with customized training programs and career development courses.
Anything You Want It to Be
It’s time for organizations to get beyond static sales incentives that don’t push the boundaries. Your organization’s sales incentives do not have to be the same incentives as your predecessors were using 10-20 years ago. The incentives you choose for 2025 can be anything you want them to be.
So, how do you come up with sales incentives that actually work? You start with establishing your goals. Put yourself in the shoes of the people who mean the most to the success of your business. Think about what motivates them. Think about what you can offer them they can’t get on their own. Are competitors offering a sales incentive or loyalty program to your shared distribution channel? What do you know about it? How can you do something more appealing?
Working with an experienced team like Motivation Excellence makes all of these questions easier to figure out and answer. We’ve got 40 years’ experience creating successful programs for our clients and their target audience.
The ‘Whatever It Takes’ Approach
This all boils down to being willing to do whatever it takes to motivate your sales team. If your approach to sales incentives is to simply do what everyone else did before you have done, plan to achieve the same results. If you want different results, you will have to approach sales incentives differently.
Your approach to sales incentives really does matter. It dictates how your internal and external sales teams will respond. And in the end, their response determines whether sales goals are achieved. It is really no more complicated than that.
Get to Know ME with Alyssa Chomiczewski
It’s time to get to know Alyssa Chomiczewski from our Traverse City location. Alyssa started with Motivation Excellence halfway through 2024 and fell in step with the team instantly. She’s kind, open and ready for adventure. Read below, and watch her short video, to learn more about her favorite sports team (despite the family drama) and at least one potential wedding gift idea (she gets married later in 2025). Thanks, Alyssa, for participating in our Get to Know ME segment this month!
What’s your current title and how long have you been in the incentive industry?
I am a Technical Project Manager, and I joined the incentive industry, and Motivation Excellence, about 7 months ago (July 2024).
What do you like about your job?
As a project manager, I enjoy problem-solving and keeping projects on track. Organization has always been a skill I value and rely on in my professional life. The problem-solving aspect keeps the work interesting and is especially rewarding when I overcome a complex challenge or learn something new in the process.
What’s something you want to share about the people you work with at Motivation Excellence?
I feel very fortunate to have joined a team that is not only welcoming (and fun!) but is also filled with smart, genuine people who have become friends with one another. The sense of camaraderie on my team, and with everyone I’ve met at Motivation Excellence so far, was obvious from the start and I feel lucky to get to be a part of it.
What’s a specific moment in your history that always stands out as a defining moment, and why?
The summer after I graduated from college, my car broke down while I was driving back to my internship. It suddenly stopped in the middle of the road, leaving me stranded and broke. At the time, my plan was to stay in Michigan and start interviewing for post-grad jobs in some of the state’s bigger cities. However, my dad was living in the suburbs of Chicago, so I made the decision to forgo buying a new car and move to Chicago instead. That choice led me to a role in Commercial Property Management, and I ended up having the time of my life living in one of the country’s largest cities.
What’s an unknown or odd talent you have?
I got a unicycle for my 12th birthday, and for a time, I was pretty good at riding it. It’s been over 15 years since I last tried, but I’m sure I could pick it up again with some practice.
What motivates you to accomplish things in your life (work or personal)?
I’m always striving to grow and improve, both personally and professionally. Learning or trying new things gives me a genuine sense of accomplishment. Ultimately, my goal is to spend as much meaningful time with my family and friends as I possibly can.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
I love anything that gets me outside! Hiking, backpacking, kayaking, snowboarding. If I have free time, you’ll usually find me outside. When I’m indoors, I enjoy reading, puzzling, or building with Legos.
One thing that always makes you laugh is?
My funny friends and family.
What’s a bucket-list item you can’t wait to cross off?
Traveling internationally (besides Canada). Other than a couple parks in Canada, I’ve never left the US.
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Why or why not and care to share any?
No official resolutions, but I am participating in Dry January and No Frivolous Spending January.
Tips for Making Personalized Travel and Events More Exciting
If you’ve ever attended an event or embarked on a work outing that felt lackluster, where the highlight was watching the clock, you’re not alone. Whether it’s personalized incentive travel or a special event, the experience can feel uninspired when it’s not tailored to the participants. But here’s the good news: personalized travel and events can be thrilling and unforgettable.
At Motivation Excellence, we specialize in creating experiences that wow participants from the moment they arrive until the final farewell. Personalization is the key to transforming any event or journey into a memorable adventure. By focusing on customization and creativity, the possibilities for excitement are endless.
Let’s explore some tips for making personalized travel and events more engaging and memorable:
1. Choose Unique Destinations
The destination sets the tone for any experience. Selecting the same type of venue or location repeatedly can lead to predictability, and fatigue. Instead, explore unique destinations that your participants will be intrigued by. In the case of a channel partner incentive, selecting a location that outshines any competitors’ planned destination is critical.
Whether it’s an off-the-beaten-path retreat, a luxurious resort with a distinctive cultural flair, or a boutique venue with stunning views, a new and unexpected location ignites curiosity and enthusiasm. When attendees anticipate exploring someplace new, the excitement begins even before the journey starts.
Our travel planning team members are experts at finding the right space in the right place for your needs, audience and budget. You’ll be surprised at how many options you’ll have to choose from!
2. Incorporate Immersive Experiences
The best experiences are those that engage participants on multiple levels. Start things off with an engaging activity that immediately draws everyone in. For instance:
- A cultural cooking class at your destination.
- A fun group adventure, like ziplining or paddleboarding.
- A charitable activity that pairs your team with a local group in need.
- A hands-on workshop tailored to your group’s interests.
Interactive experiences create connection and excitement, breaking the ice and setting the stage for a truly memorable time. Your participants will wonder what’s happening next!
3. Add a Dash of Gamification
Gamification isn’t just for meetings—it’s a powerful tool to add fun and engagement to travel and events. By incorporating game-like elements, you’ll keep your group entertained and energized. Here are some ways to gamify your next experience:
- Create scavenger hunts that encourage exploration of the destination.
- Offer opportunities to earn rewards or prizes through group challenges.
- Set up friendly competitions, like trivia or physical challenges, that foster camaraderie.
Gamification not only adds excitement but also keeps participants engaged throughout the entire gathering.
4. Leverage Technology to Elevate the Experience
Technology can enhance travel and events in ways that feel fresh and innovative. Gone are the days of dull itineraries and generic activities. Our proprietary travel technology, Inspire, gives your participants the power of individuality in the palm of their hands.
- Real-time engagement: You can send alerts and updated activities directly to the participants who need to know there’s a change.
- Personalized itineraries: Inspire creates individual itineraries and keeps flight and transportation information in one place.
- Create a Scrapbook of Memories: Our interactive photo gallery allows everyone to share photos from the experience so they can relive the best moments again and again.
By integrating the latest tech, you can transform even the simplest gathering into something extraordinary. We’re up to date on
5. Surprise and Delight
One of the most powerful ways to create lasting memories is by incorporating surprises throughout the experience. Whether it’s a surprise guest, an unexpected gifting event, or a secret experience revealed at the right moment, these touches add a sense of wonder and make your event feel truly special.
We like to offer special activities that participants select ahead of time, to help create that personalized experience within a group travel program. Adding a gift that enhances the activity is a great way to keep the surprises coming.
Final Thoughts
The secret to creating excitement in personalized travel and events is to focus on the participants’ unique preferences and interests while continually introducing new elements to keep them engaged. From unforgettable destinations to interactive activities, gamification, and tech-driven innovations, there’s no limit to what you can do.
At Motivation Excellence, we believe in delivering the wow factor at every step. Whether it’s an incentive travel program for top performers, a team-building retreat, or a celebration to acknowledge a big milestone, we craft events and travel experiences that leave a lasting impact.
Your next adventure doesn’t have to be ordinary—it can be extraordinary.
How to Establish Goals for a Successful Incentive Program
When we design an incentive program, your goals become the heart of the rule structure. Motivation Excellence programs focus on attainable goals for your participants that move the needle for you too. Whether you’re putting together a sales incentive program for your internal team or looking to reward your channel partners, having clear goals and motivational rewards are the pillars to success.
Start With the SMART Concept
A good place to begin when establishing goals is the SMART concept. SMART is an acronym encapsulating the following five components:
- Specific – Specifically define what you want to accomplish and why.
- Measurable – Your chosen goals should be both measurable and trackable.
- Achievable – Set goals that are challenging yet reasonably achieved.
- Results-Driven – Goals should be driven by a desire to produce results.
- Timely – Establishing time sensitive goals creates a sense of urgency.
The SMART concept works extremely well for ensuring goals are intentional rather than random. Intentional goals lay the groundwork for successful incentive programs. If you’re looking for more tips on setting and achieving goals, check out our blog on the topic here. For specifics on how we design successful rule structures visit our website and explore our tab on Performance Management & Tracking.
Consider Existing Business Objectives
Every business entity has a core set of objectives. Well-designed incentive programs look at which objectives, or goals, will make the most difference to your bottom line. Pairing the appropriate goals to the most relevant participant audience is key to building your next incentive program. For instance, if you’re launching a new product in Q2, your incentive program audience might be your internal sales team, with the goal that each team member secures five new locations to distribute your new product. If five new locations is a stretch, but doable with extra effort AND it will create positive ROI for you, then it’s a worthwhile goal to use as the basis of your incentive program.
If something is unattainable for your participants, it kills the incentive process before it gets started. Also, if you’ve selected a goal that doesn’t help your overall business objectives, no one walks away feeling motivated or rewarded in the end, which can lead to poor excitement levels leading into your next incentive scenario.
Get Management Buy-In
In our experience, incentive programs that don’t involve the management team, tend to fizzle rather quickly. If team leaders are fully involved and excited, the enthusiasm spreads to participants. This is the case whether you’re planning an internal incentive or one that involves channel partners. Management needs to believe in the goals and rewards, and even have the ability to earn something if their team succeeds. Incentives that have individual and team goals can really amp up participation. And often, team leaders are the ones who know what the best goals are for their team, as well as the best motivators. Don’t leave them out of the mix!
On the flip side, if management isn’t involved or interested, we see inconsistent success rates. Incentive program motivation definitely comes from reasonable goals paired with aspirational rewards, but without consistent encouragement, individuals can find themselves deflating after the first bump in the road.
Personalize the Reward Experience
As a final springboard to preparing the best incentive outcome for your selected goals, consider making the reward for success something personalized to the receiver. Individual travel options, lifestyle upgrade packages, or reward points that can be used for nearly anything are all staples of our personalized reward choices. When someone is working for an experience or reward that means something extra special for them, the intrinsic motivation value can skyrocket!
Remember, incentive programs are most successful when they are established on clear and attainable goals, paired with aspirational rewards and buoyed by consistent encouragement. Before you launch your next program, consult with us on how best to establish goals and rewards that will help move your business forward in both the long- and short terms. We’re experts in creating winning rule structures that motivate your participants and reward your bottom line.
Channel Partner Engagement: Common Challenges to Overcome
Successful distributor incentive programs understand the importance of channel partner engagement and its relationship to loyalty. The whole point of engagement is to captivate, activate, and motivate partners to choose your product or services over your competitors. Anyone in this sphere of influence knows keenly though that there are challenges when it comes to engaging with B2B partners.
1. Poor Communication
Communication is essential between businesses and their distribution channel. Clear and transparent communication ensures that everyone is on the same page and pursuing the same goals. But the opposite is also true. Poor communication leads to goal misalignment. It leads to misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and conflicts.
How can organizations overcome this challenge? By establishing clear lines of communication in advance. At Motivation Excellence, we suggest reaching out to channel partners involved in an incentive or loyalty program multiple ways. Some people prefer email to text. Others prefer a printed piece over a phone call. Sometimes participants like to be able to tune in on their own time.
We always recommend a variety of engagement channels. A custom program website that can house important program information, training modules and instant performance tracking gauges is great for the “one stop shop” approach. Sending well-timed emails with data analytic options is critical for getting increased open rates. Sending materials to the home can engage the significant other as well as the participant. Texts can be easy ways to keep the program top of mind. We put together a monthly schedule so we aren’t being too intrusive, while also knowing we are being timely and consistent.
2. Competing Interests
Your channel partners are probably not exclusive to you. Most partners work with multiple distributors or manufacturers, increasing the chances of competing interests. Channel partners may prioritize a competitor instead, leaving your business with partners who are not as engaged as they could be.
That’s where loyalty or incentive programs play a critical role. If your business is offering an incentive that ignites excitement, you’ll likely capture attention. At Motivation Excellence we take a deep dive into your industry to find out what competitors might be doing for incentive or loyalty programs. Then we look at what options could bring the focus to your program, and thus, bring you more market share.
Our programs drive incremental growth, but also, stronger relationships which, in the long run, builds loyalty and trust.
3. Business Support and Training
If your business invests in the success of your channel partners, you’ll see a greater ROI in your incentive or loyalty program. One of our clients has seen great success and increased loyalty with their distribution network because they offer supports like networking events, training modules and small business growth seminars in between their yearly customer loyalty travel event. As channel partners’ businesses grew, they tied the success back to our client’s support.
Providing training on the merits of your product or service is another proven way to build trust and loyalty with B2B partners. If you’re reaching out with valuable information on best practices or steps to the sale and your competitors are not, you’ll capture engagement and loyalty going forward.
4. Incentive Misalignment
Rewards and incentives are the seeds of channel partner engagement. However, they may fail to effectively bloom under one of two circumstances: they do not align with partner priorities or partners find the reward structure confusing or unmotivating.
Incentive misalignment is overcome through proper research ahead of time. Creating a clear rule structure with attainable stretch goals and aspirational rewards leads the way to engaging channel partners. By successfully overcoming numbers 1 to 3 above, you’ll naturally find better alignment and success with your next incentive or loyalty program.
One final word about channel partner engagement before we close: it is not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing effort designed to ensure that channel partners remain on board for the long term. Strong engagement drives sales and brand loyalty. On the other hand, a half-hearted engagement will deliver half-hearted results. Which would you prefer to see from your channel partner program?
Take the guesswork out of your channel partner engagement and have Motivation Excellence manage your next loyalty or incentive program.
