Not all salespeople are driven by cash incentives. It is important to have a reward or incentive program for your salespeople, but just flashing a dollar bill in someones face doesn't always work. In many situations, it can even be harmful. When the only reward in monetary, your sales team may only look for the easy way to reach the goal, which may not be synonymous with your brand or goals as a company. An article I read discusses a few different ways to motivate your sales team and do it in a way that benefits your brand, goals, and pockets. This article discusses the main types of motivation that the individuals on your team may hold most important. The first is money. Some times good old fashion cash works, but make sure it isn't the only incentive. The mission and brand identification are also important. You need your team to be on board with what they are selling to generate appropriate results. You want your team to be self-motivated by providing reasonable targets. Some times a challenge is what salespeople seek, especially if there is a reward at the end of the tunnel.
All in all the idea is to better understand what drives your personnel in order to put the right incentive in place for them to not only reach their personal goals, but that of the company as well. The article I read has much more great information in it. If you want to check it out, go HERE
This is a common topic that I have come across. Not only is it important to understand the ways in which your employees are motivated as a whole but also as individuals. The incentive that motivates me may not motivate you. How does an employer find out what motivates each employee and how do they know how much of each motivation is needed? How much of a cash incentive does it take to equal time off or another form of compensation that may not be so easy to calculate?
ReplyDeleteHi Mike-
ReplyDeleteThis is true. I do not think that employees are all motivated by cash incentives. I think that employees are motivated by other factors other than money. Even in my own retail job we give different incentives all the time to get employees motivated enough to sell store cards. We raffle off different gift baskets, amusement park passes, movie tickets etc. It seems from at least my perspective is that employees like to earn something that they can see. If companies want to give a monetary incentive which will be put into employees paychecks, they are not actually seeing this money it is tied in their paychecks which they may not see for a few weeks. I think that employees are motivated by both monetary and non-monetary incentives but since they can see these non-monetary incentives and take them home with them, they may be more inclined to win the basket for example because it is tangible.