But still I keep on asking what does this mean for new business sales and existing customer revenue? For us we are working harder than ever to get our message heard to the right people. When you believe strongly in a product or service and know it inside and out it’s much easier to shout about it and be more confident in talking about it’s benefits and features.

Product Knowledge / Embedding

This is why one of our key areas of focus has been around product knowledge and knowledge embedding. So often do I hear the age old problem of knowledge learnt in a workshop or training session is so quickly lost over time if the opportunity to practice is not forthcoming. When we are in an age where we are asking our workforces to remember so much more and hold onto all those small but important pieces of information and bring them out as and when they need them.

Complimentary training by drip feeding bit size chunks of information through creative campaigns can be one of the most effective ways of refreshing knowledge and increasing knowledge retention.

WIFM

For those of you that haven’t come across the acronym WIFM it stands for “What’s In-it For Me“. We all work best when motivated and learning is no different especially when you can demonstrate a direct link between learning and an increase in sales / profits or the achieving of targets and KPI’s.  There are a number of ways this can be achieved, however my favouirite by far is Incentivisation. Running a First Class Incentive scheme will give you First Class service to your customers and those you want to become customers. After all there are not many of us around that want to give our customers a second rate service, which is a relief, so provide your staff with the tools they need to achieve targets, KPI’s and retain all the knowledge necessary to make your business as strong as it could ever be.

Incentivisation

Why are so many companies turning to Incentivise for learning, sales improvement, achieving targets and the list goes on… The answer is simple, without it we are asking our staff to complete tasks within set targets with no support or reason. We believe in motivation and reward to bring around a change in culture and attitudes to gain an understanding in why they are doing something and to believe in doing it in the best possible way. We all want to be educated and motivated and some form of reward and recognition is often all it takes to get the results you need so long as you manage your scheme in the right way using the right tools.

Its now been 3 months since the launch of our new brand www.treatmonster.com which showcases our product range that can be offered in the online shop for Incentivise.

Since launch the new website has been rising through the ranks of google and we have worked very hard to start getting the brand known within the business community locally and nationally. We have recently been proud to sponsor the tour shirts for a local Rugby club where age groups from under 6 to under 12 were taken away to Weymouth for a fun packed weekend.

In addition to our wide range of experience days which range from Pamper Days to Rally driving with Vouchers offered from High street brands such as Next, BHS and Argos. We can source any product line you need in addition you are able to add your own product ranges, branded merchandise to the reward shop within Incentivise.

If you have any ideas on products that could compliment the current range in www.treatmonster.com we would love to hear from you.

The answer comes down to choice, just ask yourself would you be happy if when you sat down in your favorite armchair and switched on the TV you had the choice of BBC1, BBC2 and ITV? Well that’s what it was like 20 years ago and we survived, I hear you say. Yes we did survive because we knew no different, we now have the choice of hundreds of channels and I agree maybe only a handful of these are worth watching but we would feel cheated if we didn’t have the choice. 

The same applies for rewards, we are all different and we want different things. Some of us may choose a reward for ourselves, our partner, our children or maybe granny’s birthday so by catering to the masses we will deliver the right choice each time. 

Creating a well stocked reward catalogue can be time consuming and not as easy as might be first thought.  Firstly, the rewards need to be attractive to the staff who are being rewarded – i.e. no point in offering a pamper day at a spa to a team that is predominantly male (well probably not!). Secondly, the reward catalogue needs to cover a range of rewards that are actually attainable by staff through the incentive scheme as it can be quite demotivating if staff realise that no matter how well that they perform they can never earn enough reward points to purchase anything.  The rewards on offer also need to be aspirational – after all you are trying to motivate your staff to achieve more so you need some rewards that people might want to try a little bit harder to get.  Lastly, there is definitely a seasonal element to rewards and you need to be able to vary the catalogue to include certain rewards that are appropriate for the time of year. 

It can be hard work trying to do this on your own and my advice is let someone do it for you. Well I am going to say this; I’m one of those someone’s  but when I write a blog I want to give out the facts and the facts here are that by going to a supplier who has done all the hard work for you you are going to get a more varied catalogue,  and, because of established relationships with suppliers and a well tested fulfillment process a better service at lower cost. 

Be creative, you don’t have to stick to traditional vouchers although a well favored choice. When your staff see there has been time put into every detail of their incentive scheme their appreciation of loyalty increases so by offering goods that they may not come across in everyday high street shops will create a buzz within the scheme. 

Our own system, Incentivise, allows you to create separate catalogues for specific campaigns and specific groups of people so that you can always ensure that you offer staff the right incentive rewards for the right reasons at the right time and the right cost. 

I’m always interested to hear about creative ways you have found to reward staff so please leave a comment or email me direct at niall.mccrae@incentivise.com

Incentivisation differs from standard commission plans in a number of different ways. Commission is the hard earned cash for sales success but, for the average sales person, commission earned tends to go straight into their bank account and straight out again to pay the mortgage and other living costs. The point is that, except for the lucky few, commission is the norm, unremarkable…just another part of earning the wage. Breaking this cycle can be tough, however Incentivisation offers that opportunity to reward in a way that is both special and memorable.

So how does it work?

Incentivisation should sit alongside commission but be seen as separate and, whereas commission is paid for the day-to-day sales success, incentivisation rewards for other types of achievement, as well as sales. And the key word here is “Reward”. Rewards need to be special, tangible, non-cash items that can be earned outside of the normal sales environment. Why does it work? Well it’s because they are memorable. Who remembers the £250 commission cheque that went to pay off part of the credit card bill?  But everyone remembers the one-off incentives reward that gave them a very special treat.

Rewarding achievement should ber the goal of incentivisation and to do this you need to create campaigns targeting specific areas of performance and behaviour that need improvement. Incentive campaigns can be aimed at particular teams or groups of staff, and different roles or grades can be given different challenges and different rewards.

Three key stages to a successful Incentive campaign:

• Create opportunities for staff to achieve
• Monitor staff performance and award reward points for achievement
• Provide staff with the ability to spend their reward points on something exciting

In our organisation, we call this process Realise, Recognise, Reward.

Three scenarios:

Marketing

Marketing wants to introduce a new product range into the mix and needs to educate the sales team with it for selling alongside their current products. Commissioning for sales of a new product on top of an existing mix can create all sorts of challenges, so creating an incentive campaign to reward staff for learning about the new product and how to sell it helps to motivate the sales team to embrace the new product. This gives sales staff the knowledge and confidence to sell the new product, and reinforcing the new product with incentives keeps it fresh in their minds.

Customer services

Outbound customer services team seems to be struggling when dealing with customer objections. An incentive campaign can be created to: educate about the correct handling of objections; reward for participating in the learning; test staff to measure improvement; reward staff for getting the correct answers; and finally, report and monitor ongoing performance rewarding staff as their results improve.

Partners and resellers

Your partners and resellers are not giving your products priority when dealing with customers, even though commission plans are in place to remunerate partners for sales performance. An incentive campaign can be set up to specifically target the staff of resellers and partners to raise product awareness and to encourage them to sell more by rewarding directly for sales achievement.

So what makes incentivisation schemes work?

For senior management, you need a robust and auditable system that makes return on investment clear, demonstrating budget going in at one end to service the scheme and supply the rewards, followed by improved performance and increased sales coming out at the other end. A good incentivisation framework will be transparent, making the performance of each campaign visible.

Operational management needs to reward staff in a clear and tangible way and see who is earning and, equally importantly, who is not. Giving opportunity to earn rewards needs to be straightforward. It shouldn’t interfere with day-to-day work, and it should be easy to create and launch campaigns, as well as monitor and report on them.

From the perspective of staff, they need clear goals, how to achieve these goals and know what they can earn. For staff, the incentive system needs to have two key elements: a points bank in the style of a normal bank account, where they can see what points they have earned and how to spend their points; and an online shop where they can spend the points they have earned. An effective incentive system should always provide both of these elements.

Central to the scheme are the rewards. Organisations should create catalogues made from a  mix of rewards that reflect the culture and style of the organisation. They may want to create multiple reward catalogues so that specific rewards can be made available to different groups. If reward delivery is high profile, then staff can see who is receiving them and this further motivates others to participate in the scheme.

Rewards can take many forms

Here are a few examples:

• Gift items
• High street vouchers
• Vouchers for experience days
• Additional annual leave, flexi-time credits or other organisational benefits
• Vouchers for further education, training, childcare etc.

Conclusion

Targeted incentivisation can be used in addition to commission helping Sales Managers raise the game of their sales staff in fun and engaging ways. Incentive campaigns can address specific challenges that would be difficult through standard methods, and they have the flexibility to be tailored to appeal to specific groups or teams. Above all, incentivisation is a highly cost-effective and enjoyable way of improving sales performance, from which everyone in the organisation can benefit. Finally you need to make the return on investment work, only build a scheme that works with reaching your targets and kpi’s then everyone gets something from the scheme.

How do you encourage staff not to take days off, especially when you already pay them to come to work? Do you adopt a ‘Carrot’ approach and reward for good attendance or a ’stick’ approach and refuse to pay sick pay for the first few days and risk penalising those that are genuinely ill? Or both?

Summer Absenteeism

The cost of this has a considerable effect on efficiency, profitability and team morale, but what’s the best way to tackle it and should you? What more can an employer do? Do you positively acknowledge your staff for the days they come to work or do you take a disciplinary approach. Neither option is perfect and the approach needs to be balanced to avoid being discriminatory and generating bitterness.

The ‘Carrot’

A well known mail delivery service introduced a ‘carrot’ approach to tackling absenteeism rates by rewarding employees who didn’t take any sick days in a given period. Although they saw an 11% increase in attendance this approach could have legal implications. Staff are rewarded for not taking days off, but what if an event was unavoidable such as, a funeral, religious holiday or activity, public duty or disability? Could a claim of discrimination be made for someone upholding a mandatory duty and losing out on the reward given to others.

The ‘Stick’

On the other hand two large super market chains took a ’stick’ approach. They no longer pay sick pay for the first 3 days of leave, although one witnessed a drop of 5% in absenteeism rates, it also created demotivation as staff felt unable to take a day off for genuine ill health. The implications of the ’stick’ mean that staff often come to work when they should, for their own health and the health of their colleagues, be at home. This is especially true during the current times with a swine flu epidemic. Those that are unwell should be actively encouraged to stay at home to prevent widespread infection rather than being forced, by the sick-leave policy, to come to work.

A Balanced Approach

Neither Carrot nor Stick will, in isolation, deliver the desired result and a balanced approach is key. Have in place a disciplinary procedure for unauthorised absences and there are tools, such as the Bradford Factor, that can help you identify and monitor high-risk individuals. However it is important to encourage good attendance and one method is to provide incentivisation where an unconscious by-product of the incentive campaign is a reward for good attendance. This subtle approach to rewarding attendance is an excellent compromise providing as it does gentle and covert promotion of good attendance while avoiding many of the political and occupational difficulties that often accompany openly rewarding basic attendance.

Incentive schemes that reward achievement and improve performance can also deliver, as secondary benefits, behavioural and cultural improvements such as regular attendance etc. By having multiple targets such schemes can be an excellent tool with which to tackle unscheduled absence. Costs are low and, when compared with productivity, offer a high return on investment.