How To Properly Reward Your Sales Team
Team member engagement is crucial in every business. Without it, the performance and viability of your enterprise may be put to the test. It is particularly true for your sales team.
Incentive Research Foundation has discovered that a well-thought-out incentives program can boost performance by 44%. A customized sales incentive program can have the same impact—allowing your staff to hit or beat their sales goals.
Businesses looking to revive motivation and engagement among their team members must provide the latter with opportunities that resonate with them. In this article, you’ll learn more about a sales rewards program and tips on creating one.
Why Reward Your Sales Team?
As businesses rely on sales for revenues, a sales compensation plan is often developed to motivate, reward, and continue engaging salespersons. It’s usually an institutional program that comprises monetary and non-monetary rewards.
A sales team that’s motivated and engaged is expected to help companies reach or surpass their income objectives—making the reward system beneficial in achieving company goals.
Sales Team Performance Reward Ideas
There’s no one-size-fits-all regardless of how an enterprise wants to implement its rewards system. But the idea remains the same, to show recognition and appreciation to employees who show top-level performance. Team members who feel valued and appreciated are motivated to perform their tasks better.
Most companies have sales performance incentive funds (SPIF) that provide monetary or non-cash incentives. These rewards can be distributed to individuals or the sales team. Below are some ideas to properly motivate your sales team.
- Cash Incentives
Giving cash incentives as a reward to your outstanding and competitive employees can be a motivation for them to strive hard and carry their tasks to the maximum level. To begin with, below are the common cash incentive applications in your company:
- Think of a structured sales commission system
Sales reps are often rewarded based on a pre-determined commission system. Thus, besides the basic salary, they can receive additional cash incentives based on their performance in a certain period. Percentage commissions are often paid on top of their wages monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or yearly.
The Key performance indicators and sales targets must be set early to assess team members’ accomplishments. And making your leaderboards accessible to everyone is also a must for transparency.
- Lift Limits On Sales Commissions
Traditional reward structures place-specific caps on commissions, and it guarantees your business can stay on top of its overhead expenditure. However, the downside is that sales reps may rely on these figures to match their performance. With an uncapped cash reward structure, your organization may be able to achieve unlimited income, thanks to your hard-working sales reps.
- Non-Cash Rewards
Money isn’t the only motivating factor for better staff performance. A good working environment, a less-stressful manager, opportunities for career advancement, and proper work-life balance all contribute to team member happiness. Non-cash incentives enable companies to provide these to their sales team. Most organizations utilize this method to show appreciation to well-performing staff.
- Training Opportunities
A company must be willing to invest in its employees’ upskilling. Sales seminars and other team member training forms are generally well-received because of their beneficial contribution to a team member’s individual and career development.
- Job Promotion
Speaking of career development, some employees may leave a company that doesn’t offer professional advancement opportunities. Most workers don’t want to get stuck in the same job forever. Businesses must prioritize internal applicants to fill mid-level or managerial positions to counter this, especially if they’ve constantly shown impressive sales performance.
- Gift Cards
Discount cards can also be handed out to show appreciation to sales reps. Ideally, gift cards must be carefully suited to the preferences and lifestyle of the agent concerned. But it can also be a valuable offer that appeals to workers in general, such as fuel, restaurant, or grocery cards.
- Travel Incentives
If you want to help your sales agents achieve a proper work-life balance, consider offering a free weekend trip to a destination of your employees’ choice. While you can give this as an individual reward, you may also choose to pay for a team-building exercise in an exclusive resort if the incentive should cover the whole department.
- Paid Time-Offs
Companies should recognize that their sales team members have lives outside of work. Paid time-off is another great non-cash incentive offer to top-performing agents. By offering PTOs, companies are giving back to employees the time they should’ve spent with their families instead of working long hours to close high-value sales.
- Let Your Employees Choose
Non-cash incentives are highly flexible. And to give them what they need, it might be better to ask your employees to choose the reward that best speaks to them. The important thing is to set a cost cap.
For example, if your rep is a gadget-lover, consider giving away the latest laptop, smartphone, or tablet as a reward. Additionally, an agent whose music or sports buff may appreciate tickets for two to an upcoming concert or finals game.
The Bottomline
Proper team member recognition is essential in keeping your business thriving. With a properly structured reward system, some of which are discussed in this article, you’ll be able to keep your sales staff motivated and engaged well enough to exceed their targets continuously.
