9 incentive ideas for sales to avoid

Sales figures less than they should be? Sales team motivation low? Businesses frequently take a "Do-It-Yourself approach to increasing the bottom line and as a consequence, sales figures suffer and sales team motivation drops. Here nine misconceptions that can undermine an in-house sales incentive which we've heard many times!

1. "I believe my cash reward plan motivates my sales reps to perform at their highest level."
Cash isn’t always the key motivator and we have lots of evidence to prove this. One in particular study found that merchandise rewards led to 3x increase in sales over cash rewards.

2. “All of my sales reps should be working towards the same goal.”
Wrong. When given the chance to select their own sales goals, 98% of sales people will select a goal and interestingly, 42% will aim for the highest sales goal offered.

3. “I know what motivates my team to reach their goals”
Interestingly, only 25% of internal incentive programmes succeed in reaching their goals. Maybe time to re-evaluate!
 
4. “Most of the sales uplift comes from the top 20% of my sales force.” 
Hard evidence shows that only 35 – 40% of sales uplift comes from the top 20.
 
5. “Only my top performers should be rewards with incentives.” 
Your biggest sales lift and highest potential lies within your middle and low performers. 56.3% of participants have increased sales above the run-rate with a properly designed incentive programme.
 
6. “Why should I reward my sales reps for not achieving target?”
Most sales teams have 50% or more of their representatives below target. Rewarding sales reps that are below target can cause a growth from 50% to 90% of plan. Worth the reward now?!
 
7. “I should run the incentive programme to increase sales during slow periods”
Don’t neglect the busy sales periods. Sales uplift runs 5-10% higher during busy periods. When sales people are putting in maximum effort, they increase their closing rate.
 
8. “My sales graph results should all look the same”
Nearly every sales organization has a hockey stick graph with a few top performers and a long line of mid-to-bottom performers. Sales lift comes from moving the other 80%.
 
9. “Most sales incentive programmes are guesswork. There’s no science involved.” 
We believe there is in fact science involved within building sales incentives. By understanding human behaviour and what really motivates us through behavioural economics studies, we have data evidence from over 600 client programmes that prove what works and what doesn’t. There’s no guesswork about our solutions.

Do you want to know incentive ideas for sales teams that will work? To learn more about how we can help your company to effectively recognize and reward your sales team and channel partners’ efforts and motivate them to perform at their best we welcome you to get in touch with us at: latam@biworldwide.com or directly at +1 954.800.0490.