How to Create, Measure and Maximize your "Sales Incentives"

A business will never be profitable if the sales department does not exist. Maximizing sales is a process that deserves your time and attention. It is because of the sales department that customers invest in new products and schemes. Their good customer service skills help build a feeling of trust and loyalty with the customers. To achieve the required goals, it is essential to keep your sales team motivated and encourage them to create more sales. Hence, it becomes important to invest time and effort in creating, measuring, and maximizing the 'Sales Incentives' for the growth of your company.

Creating 'Sales Incentives'

Creating a plan for your sales team is not an easy task. One will need to identify what the employees want and create a plan that will be beneficial to them. With so many different design choices out in the market, it becomes even more difficult to understand what would work best for your company. Having a perfect balance and taking into account all the design choices and then selecting the best one is a difficult but crucial step. Some ways of creating 'Sales Incentives' include:

• Set Fair and Achievable Quotas
  The need to understand that each territories potential differs and that their sales numbers will not be the same plays a key role in making any compensation plans. Setting targets that are practical and achievable is not only a more efficient way to increase sales but it will also make the employee satisfied and happy with their performance.
• Know your team
  What works for ‘A’ need not necessarily work for ‘B’. Make the sales incentives plans according to what your employees want. Customize the sales incentives based on what the employees would prefer. This will make them excited for work and will ultimately help the company grow. If what the company demands is achieved by the sales team, reward their behavior with appropriate sales incentives. As mentioned in our previous blog, 65% of employees prefer non-monetary incentives. Choose the best non-monetary incentives that can be offered to your sales representatives.
• Choose the right metrics
  Creating a ‘Sales Incentives’ plan can be a smooth process if the sales performance metrics chosen are appropriate for the employees and the organization. Being a leader, you know all things you need to take into consideration. Make sure sales representatives know about the criteria and work in a direction that will improve the quality of their work.
• Be open to feedback
  Getting to know what your plans lack and how you can improve the functioning and desired results of your company can never be a wrong idea. Be open to receiving feedback from your employees and provide them with real-time visibility. A certain level of transparency is important in regards to sales incentives as it will build trust between employees and their seniors.

Measuring ‘Sales Incentives’

Success in creating sales is a great step and is going to help the company reach new heights. But measuring the ‘Sales Incentives’ of the company is just as important. To achieve growth and success in today’s world is not a piece of cake. You should be prepared with all your data, charts, lists, everything. It gets challenging for some companies to measure their sales incentives, and it's not an easy task. How you measure the incentives, which process you choose, matters the most. Buying a Sales Incentive solution that is not just effective on paper but can be implemented and effective in real life is important too.

• Create well-defined Incentive Programs:
  Important things do not have to be complicated. Break it down and make all the steps clear to every person who is involved in the process. After achieving the desired outcomes, the case should not be one where no one knows who is accountable for the next step. Make it very clear among the employees what their role is.
• Incentive Program ROI:
  ROI or Return on Investment refers to the measure of financial outcomes. Work on the Incentive program ROI before the commencement of the program. This will help you understand how to proceed with the program. How much you need to invest, what your ROI will be like. It will also help you create a certain target for the company. You may also access a detailed guide to increase ROI of your Incentive Compensation Solution.
• Compare it with the Pre-incentives:
  A comparison between how it started versus how it's going now will help you realize the areas of improvement. It will make your work in targeting particular areas and dedicating time and effort to improving those ideas for the growth of the company. Use the data and analyze the situation. What you can do to improve, how have your previous ideas worked? Lessons learned from experiences are the most important.

Maximizing ‘Sales Incentives’

After understanding the importance of the sales department and their role for the company, it should become crucial to know that Sales Incentives are what motivates and ignites the spark in the Sales representatives. Maximizing ‘Sales Incentives’ will help create a strong, effective sales team which will help the company achieve more. There are a few ways a company can maximize ‘Sales Incentives’:

• Increase the competitive spirit:
  Sales profession is a very competitive profession, and for the right reasons. Everyone wants to bag the best sales incentives and make their company attain more success. Use this spirit to ignite competition between sales representatives. Healthy competition is always a good idea as it improves productivity and leads to positive and profitable outcomes.
• Celebration:
  Make them know that their work is being noticed. Celebrate their success, celebrate the company’s achievements. Use these celebrations to announce winners of the month in the sales department. This will make all the representatives fight for that award and work more for the same.
• Be clear:
  Make sure that you are clear with your goals and your vision for the company. Then make the sales department understand what you expect from them and how their work will impact the company.

Conclusion

Sales Incentives play an important role for the sales representatives. The key is to understand what the company demands and what the employees demand. Striking a balance between the two can be hard but it will lead to the functioning of a smooth and successful sales department.