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!
Get to Know ME with Melissa Nazareno
It’s time to get to know Melissa Nazareno, our Accounting Manager. As you can read below, she sees the fun in numbers and systems, which makes her a perfect fit for her role! Read on to learn about her passions for space exploration, delegation and solving challenges. Thanks, Melissa, 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?
My current title is Accounting Manager, and I’ve been in the incentive industry for 1 year with Motivation Excellence.
What do you like about your job?
I love my job because it allows me to solve business challenges and optimize operations by transforming digital and financial infrastructures. Motivation Excellence has built a supportive culture that allows for growth. I can geek out on numbers, play with systems, and have strategic impact. My job is fun, and I’m excited for our future.
What’s something you want to share about the people you work with at Motivation Excellence?
I’m surrounded by fun-loving people who have built careers around making others happy and driving positive change. Our team strives to deliver exceptional incentive experiences and innovative technology for our clients. Coming from an audit role where clients weren’t always thrilled to see me, I greatly appreciate this industry.
What’s a specific moment in your history that always stands out as a defining moment, and why?
I’ve had a collection of moments which led to a pivotal understanding: time is precious. With whom and how I spend it is sacred. I’m big on process improvement and continually work to streamline my life with this in mind.
What’s an unknown or odd talent you have?
I’m amazing at talking to engineers and translating what they said to non-engineers. Specifically odd, but very handy in solving cross-functional challenges and troubleshooting. I’ve worked in systems implementations and my spouse is an engineer, so I’ve had a ton of practice!
What motivates you to accomplish things in your life (work or personal)?
The pursuit of truth and the quest for knowledge propels me. I love learning and trying new things to find out more about myself. Life is a sandbox, and I seek out adventure.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work?
Being an executive assistant to three little ones means mastering the art of multitasking. While I love spending time with them, I also cherish my daily runs, accompanied by a podcast at 2x speed – it’s meditative.
One thing that always makes you laugh is?
Non-sequiturs and deadpan humor.
What’s a bucket list item you can’t wait to cross off?
I’d love to watch a rocket launch – or even better, travel to space.
This month, our theme for social media is “Effective Delegation.” What are your tips on delegation?
I’m passionate about this topic. Simply being the best at something doesn’t mean you should always do it. I believe in passing on the value you can create to others, empowering them by matching the right tasks to the right people. The goal is to help someone progress from being task-focused to taking ownership. One of the most overlooked aspects of effective delegation is recruiting and maintaining a pipeline of talented people for value creation. I love lifting others up and watching them grow.
Looking Ahead with Confidence & Optimism as We Celebrate an Anniversary
There’s nothing like an anniversary that gets you to look back and forward at the same time. We celebrate 39 years in the incentive industry in September. David Jobes was part of that history for 32 years, until he passed away in July. Our company will remain owned by the Jobes family. In a recent company-wide meeting they expressed their commitment to the company, calling the team a second family, and saying the company is stronger than ever as two members of the leadership team step up to run the business.
Bob Graham and Michelle Ebner, both Vice Presidents on the leadership team, are now co-CEOs and co-Presidents. Graham has a long history in the incentive industry and at Motivation Excellence, most recently serving as VP, Client Solutions and Technology. He will focus on operations and sales, while Ebner, formally VP, Finance, will concentrate on corporate finance and human resources.
“The foundations of Motivation Excellence, which include our culture and exceeding our clients’ expectations, are solid. Michelle and I are focusing attention on running things even more efficiently so we can serve our clients at the highest standard and maximize the company’s growth potential. David had a strategic vision for the company, and we plan to keep that going,” said Graham.
The existing leadership team will remain intact and includes longtime veterans of the industry. Brad Hecht is the Sr. VP of Travel & Chief Travel Strategist, Rhonda Brewer is VP, Sales and Kelli Robb is VP, Travel Operations. All three are deeply involved with our group travel and award point program clients.
“We will honor David’s legacy by continuing our high level of service. He built an amazing culture with our clients and our internal teams, and it’s a priority to keep that alive,” remarked Ebner.
It’s heartwarming to keep Motivation Excellence within the Jobes family, and especially wonderful to have people from our work family take the reins going forward. We will continue to Inspire Extraordinary Performance through our motivating B2B and employee incentive programs and aspirational rewards solutions.
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.
Manage Risk to Maximize Your Possibilities
We live with risk, every day, in multiple ways. Many we know about, like, running with scissors, crossing the road without looking both ways, and eating too much sugar. We make choices to avoid potentially disastrous outcomes: holding the scissors in a safe manner while walking, using a traffic light to cross the street, and hopefully, quitting bad habits that can lead to poor health.
If you’re reading this blog, you’ve already led a life full of risk management, perhaps without knowing it. Maybe you’re ready to step it up a level so that in the end, you can feel more comfortable taking calculated risks that have tantalizing rewards tied to them.
Creating a Safety Net
Business leaders often have to think ahead to try and visualize all the outcomes in a given scenario. It’s when they don’t see a potential danger that things can spin out of control quickly. An unforeseen threat can lead to a loss in profits, personal injury, a tarnished brand or worse. Outside the business environment, we also look for potential hazards. That’s why we push kids to wear helmets while riding bikes and why most states made it a law to wear seatbelts in motor vehicles.
Investopedia.com has an article that lays out five well-known strategies for managing risk. They include:
- Avoidance – not participating in harmful activities
- Saying no to the hang-gliding adventure, or shady investment
- Retention – acknowledging the inevitability of certain risks and accepting the responsibility
- Assuming a deductible, or not insuring something at all because the cost to replace doesn’t warrant it
- Loss prevention & reduction – recognizing you can minimize, but not eliminate all risks
- Installing a camera doorbell, or putting a locking bar on your car’s steering wheel
California State University, Fullerton expounds on the management strategy of sharing or spreading risk in their write-up. To thin out a risk, like losing an important document, make sure to save it in multiple places so if a computer gets damaged or a filing cabinet gets soaked with water, the information has been spread, or shared, to another location. They also suggest looking at the likelihood and severity of risks as a way to determine how much effort, and money, is put toward potential management.
In the incentive market, business leaders might choose to use Motivation Excellence’s experienced team to lessen risks associated with planning and executing an incentive program for their channel partners or sales team. Hiring an expert in any field is a great way to mitigate potential risks in areas not familiar to your own team while maximizing return on investment.
Linking Risk and Reward
There are risks we simply want to avoid, and then there are ones that tempt us with the potential for greatness! Indeed, the beauty of a well-calculated risk is in the payoff if it succeeds. In fact, Skillcast.com writes that it’s important to recognize not all risks are negative. Sometimes taking a chance enables us to take advantage of an opportunity.
On top of a positive outcome, FloQast, a finance and accounting company, states employing risk management strategies can have other positive effects, like:
- Saving you money
- Improving quality of decision-making
- Increasing productivity
Consider the risk-reward ratio too. Is the potential reward worth the potential risk?
Taking the Smart Risk
There is more than one successful business owner who says the biggest risk you can take is to NOT take any risks at all. But of course, gambling blindly and going in with a well-thought-out strategy are wildly different. You could always get lucky with the former, but odds of success are higher over the long run with the latter. Keep these bullets in mind as you set out to manage risk in your life:
- Identify risks early
- Know what you can control
- Mitigate when possible
- Monitor and adjust as needed
And when you’re not playing with someone’s life savings or health and safety, perhaps risk-taking can be a double-edged sword of positive outcomes. If you succeed, you can lead others down the same path. If you fail, you can teach others from your mistakes. Here’s hoping all your risks pay off in the end!
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.
Remembering David Jobes, Owner & CEO
This is a hard blog to write. The passing of David Jobes leaves a huge hole for us as his work family. Please follow this link to view the official company press release. Continue reading here to get the personal side of David’s impact on all of us at Motivation Excellence.
David was hired by our founder, Greg Lewis, seven years after the company started. In his 32 years here, he steadfastly rose to become an influential leader. He was the long-time President before buying the company in 2018.
Company culture was very important to David. Recognizing everyone’s contributions, hosting regular company gatherings, placing an emphasis on charity, supporting each other outside of work, and having a philosophy of autonomy all helped create a collaborative and respectful work environment. His door was open to anyone in the company who needed to chat on a personal or professional level. We truly do consider ourselves a family here at Motivation Excellence, and he paved the way for that.
When he built-out our headquarters he took great care to create a space that invited collaboration, creativity and social interaction. He hated cubicles. He was happiest on the days everyone was in the office, laughing and working together. He was also dedicated to being respectful of our natural resources. Much of our office space is made up of eco-friendly and vegan materials, from the ceiling tiles to the coasters.
Above all, David was committed to making sure our clients were being served with the most elevated level of standards. He was quick to provide resources to help exceed our clients’ expectations. He gave his leadership team the ability, trust and freedom to run their individual departments in the best way to accomplish this goal. He truly worked hard to Inspire Extraordinary Performance for our clients’ participants, as well as each of us.
We will surely miss his positive energy, passion for excellence and unwavering devotion to the Cubs. He was quick to laugh, share a smile or lend a helping hand both inside and outside work. He has inspired those of us who have worked with him and that’s why we know his legacy will continue to be strong within Motivation Excellence.
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.
InFLUence is Contagious – It’s OK to Spread It!
Nowadays, being an influencer is a bona fide job in the social media universe. But being influential doesn’t always have to involve selfies, shares and likes in the brick-and-mortar world. Great leaders know the difference between influence and authority, and between arrogance and celebrating their team. If you want to gain influence in any of your orbits, set your trajectory upward and bring others with you!
Gaining Influence
Successful leaders with influence have solid credibility. They’re accessible and confident. They’re infallibly ready to point out the wins and share their contagious passion. The best way to develop all those traits is to be very deliberate about it. To build influence, use materials that can weather storms, withstand shake-ups and yet be flexible enough to expand with you. (I feel like the “The Three Little Pigs” story could be handy here.) Indeed.com suggests 19 tips to get you started. They include:
- Build trust
- Stay humble
- Be competent
- Set up small wins for the team
- Help others find their voice
- Utilize active listening techniques
Indeed’s article says, ultimately, helping others achieve their goals is a hallmark of an influential leader. You’re a mentor, a sounding board and a cheerleader all at once! Emotional intelligence (understanding your own and others’ emotions) is key too, according to Business.com. A strong Emotional Quotient (your level of empathy, communication style, and self-awareness) only strengthens the equation.
Using Influence
The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) shares that influence is the ability to affect the behavior of others in a particular direction using tactics that connect, inspire and involve them. Networking, and specifically intentional mingling, helps a person gain social capital, which is the currency used in the influence business.
The CCL also shares that it’s important to carefully select when and how to influence others. When the moment is right, their experts recommend a three-pronged approach using tactics that appeal to the head, heart and hands. A mixture of logic and emotion can go a long way in creating gusto for an idea, a team or a goal.
Going Viral
Being a great leader is one thing. Being an influential leader is stepping up the game. And you don’t have to have “manager” in your job description to be impactful in others’ lives. Being influential is about how you make people feel and react to your guidance, motivation and leadership abilities. If you find yourself contagious with passion and enthusiasm, don’t mask it! By all means, spread it far and wide. Those who catch it will not only continue to spread it but will also be thankful to you for getting it started. Just like great leaders create other leaders, those who influence create the next generation of enthusiasts. That’s what “going viral” means in today’s lexicon, whether online or in person. Good luck!
