You know you need to increase sales. Maybe the summer slump was worse than you expected. Maybe there’s a new competitor in your space. You don’t have a lot of time to think about the details, but you need do to something with impact. Now.

With a short-term sales incentive, it takes a one-two punch to motivate sales teams and channel partners:

#1 – A Left Lead – Get Their Attention with Rewards.

Points programs are great for this. So are plateau programs and experiential awards, including sports tickets and individual travel. Whatever rocks their world, they can have it. And that’s inspirational for most people. You set the reward level based on your projected incremental increase in profit. When you reward based on results, you have automatic ROI.

#2 – A Right Cross – Communicate

Nobody knows about your program unless you communicate it. It’s a busy world and you will have to fight for sales’ mindshare, just like you do with leads and prospects. Make rules easy and clear. Make goals attainable, but challenging. Let everyone know what they stand to gain by working even harder on what you need from them.  Then communicate often, with great visuals, to keep them focused.

Some people will tell you it’s easier to just use cash to get results. It may be easy, but it’s not as effective and there’s research to prove it. Here’s what you should know:

• Mentally, cash is quickly confused with compensation and forgotten
• Tangible rewards or travel are far more memorable
• People unintentionally inflate the value of tangible awards compared to cash
• Socially, it’s acceptable to talk about tangible awards, but not money and you want everyone to talk about your program and how they benefited to get traction on the next campaign.

Need more information on why cash isn’t king? Let’s talk about how you can quickly launch a program and get results. Or, check out our blog here: https://nxlperformance.wpengine.com/blog/ask-an-expert-is-cash-king/ for more insight.