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Eight Innovative Incentives for New Retail 4.0

Eight Innovative Incentives for New Retail 4.0

How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values

Retail 4.0, or the new realm of retail, entails customer engagement across omnichannel. The objective is to offer customers immersive experiences. One question worth considering at this juncture is – who will deliver these immersive experiences to the customer?  

Since phygital or Retail 4.0 is the culmination of the best of worlds of the physical store and the digital world, it combines new-age technologies and your frontline employees, who will be liable to offer customers high-end experiences. While for the technological infrastructure, you need to invest in robust and cutting-edge ecosystems; for the HR element, you must invest in your manpower. Not just getting the right talent onboard but also keeping them motivated enough to deliver top-notch experiences to your customers!  

Will your current incentive program work in the new era? Unfortunately, no. This is because it needs to be tailored to meet the needs of the latest Retail 4.0.  

You may be prepared for the challenges of Retail 4.0, but this is one aspect that you need to focus on at the earliest. You must think ‘disruptive’ to make your incentive program relevant, viable, and productive.  

Here are eight innovative recommendations to incentivize your retail employees in the phygital world.  

1. Tenure-based Incentives 

Tenure is the duration that an employee spends with a brand. One of the easiest ways to make your retail staff feel ‘belonged’ and ‘special’ is to reward them for their loyalty. For not being a part of the attrition race. These are people who have been around for years.   

The best way is to create a pathway that is milestone-based. For example, award your employees for completing a certain number of years and compound the rewards with an increasing number of years. 

2. Upskilling Incentives 

In the new-age Retail 4.0, frontline staff needs to be well-trained digitally or in handling customers. By providing them with an ecosystem where learning and development are a part of the ecosystem, you prepare them for the immediate future and their long-term career progression. Thus, upskilling is a way to keep your staff engaged meaningfully. Furthermore, they can be incentivized to demonstrate the skills they learned during such training sessions.  

3. Teamwork Incentives 

Organizations have realized that the best performances are delivered when people work together as a team. In Retail 4.0, teamwork will be the champion, so it is imperative to incentivize the team as a whole. While team incentives may be a part of your current program, remember, in the new retail era, incentives should be more about achievements than mere numbers (as in sales). Hence, your need to pre-decide non-sales targets like customer satisfaction, upselling, teamwork, etc., to incentivize. These are gain-sharing incentives. There could also be merit–based incentives wherein frontline employees are given incentives based on their efforts and not the end result. 

4. Value Add-On Incentives  

We agree that in Retail 4.0, sales cannot be the only determinant for incentives. You need to look for value-added services your employees provide to reward and motivate them. For example, incentives are given to help create a holistically happy buying journey for a customer. If the customer was delighted at every touchpoint during the purchase cycle or had moment-to-moment satisfaction, the concerned retail employees should be rewarded. Similarly, if the frontline workers are helping customers by equipping them to make better buying decisions in the integrated format, they should be incentivized. 

5. Career Progression Incentives 

Along with upskilling, think of incentivizing your hardworking and smart frontline employees through a career progression path. Not just vertical growth in the company that is more of moving up a ladder of designations, but also consider horizontal movements, from retail to purchase, inventory, or finance, depending on the individual’s choice. Keep sharing this information with your employees occasionally and announce new progressions so that employees are aware and know that their interests are important to the organization. 

6. Company Value Incentives 

Most companies have missions, visions, ethics, and values as part of their organizational evolvement process. Still, these are usually limited to becoming posters stuck to the wall or the employee handbook given to a newcomer on the date of joining. To enforce the values, you can incentivize your staff to adhere to or uphold these values. For example, if honesty is a part of the value system and a frontline employee showcases this value in their daily work life, incentivize the said employee for their behavior. This serves as a reminder to others so they can also do the same in their day-to-day functioning. 

7. Gamified Incentives 

Work can be fun, and this type of incentive helps do that. By duplicating a game-type environment at your storefront and introducing aspects like levels, leaderboards, badges, etc., you can help your employees enjoy the process of customer handling and selling. It also helps bring a fun-filled positive competitive spirit to the team. Motivate your employees to move up the levels or the tiers by creating the right incentives at each step. 

8. Negative Incentives 

If you want your retail staff to avoid certain behaviors or outcomes, introduce this incentive program. It is like setting a lower permissible limit for behaviors and activities acceptable in the workplace. It works best when combined with a positive incentive. For example, retail frontline employees can be incentivized to achieve their sales target. Still, alongside, they can be informed that the incentives will be lost if the storefront gets a certain number of escalations or customer complaints. This way, employees will go the extra mile to ensure minimal discord in customer experiences at the store. 

Conclusion  

The new Retail 4.0 comes with plentiful promises. Companies must sync multifaceted aspects of their operations to make every shopping experience truly valuable for customers. But, they need to remember that minus the retail staff, only a little can be achieved in this gamut. So, the need of the hour is to innovate novel methods of motivating and incentivizing staff.  

To know more about the incentives for Retail 4.0, download the complete guide here. 

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 


HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 


2. 
Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 


4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

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What can Motivate Retail Staff in Retail 4.0?

What can Motivate Retail Staff in Retail 4.0?

How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values

Global shoe brand, Adidas, has been a leader in developing holistic phygital customer experiences. Through 32 3-D rendering touchpoints at its physical stores, the company has been offering superior immersive shopping experiences. The storefronts offer individualized concierge services, hype walls, RFID mirror-fitted rooms, hanging chandeliers, and more. Every touchpoint is a form of enablement for the customer to move ahead in the decision-making process.  

Welcome to the world of phygital, Retail 4.0. This is a new-age world where the best of both worlds – digital and physical – come together to create seamless omnichannel experiences for the customer. The personal interactions of the physical environment are combined with the convenience of the digital world to ensure customers have rich and immersive experiences. 

Customers, however, are one part of the story. The other part, and the one that is integral to the success of your brand, is your retail staff. These employees are the face of your brand at the retail storefront. Therefore, the experiences of your esteemed customers eventually depend a lot on how your frontline staff treats them during the entire duration for which the customer is at the physical store.  

That is why, it is crucial to keep your staff happy; your internal stakeholders need to perform their best, which is why they need to be motivated optimally.  

Keeping Retail Staff Motivated in Retail 4.0  

Incentivizing your frontline staff is the best way to keep them motivated. But, traditional incentive plans can no longer work or produce desired results in Retail 4.0.  Why? Because traditional incentives have ‘sales’ as the critical target. In other words, the number of sales is directly proportional to the kind of incentives the staff receives in the traditional model.  

In Retail 4.0, it won’t work simply because customers can buy across omnichannel. Sales might not necessarily happen in the storefront. It means that if more customers buy online, the sales volumes of retail outlets will decrease, and so will the incentives for the salespeople.  This model has several shortcomings.   

  1. It does not consider the kind of experience the customer was provided when they visited the physical store. Suppose your frontline people are going out of their way to enhance the buying experiences of the customer by providing information and helping them make informed choices. In that case, you will have no way to incentivize the staff for their efforts under the traditional incentive program. 
  2. Staying ‘sales-centric only’ can hamper the work culture in the storefront. In addition, it can demotivate employees and may contribute to attrition. Attrition, in itself, is a big reason for worry because of the costs involved in hiring new employees, training them, and providing them with the resources to sell better. 

The new-age world of Retail 4.0 demands that your incentive program is re-invented. It needs to consider not just the end results but the efforts, initiatives, and loyalty of the employees. Using specific tactics, the modernized incentive program can be redesigned.   

Here is some food for thought.  

Incentivize your people for:  

  1. Tenure: Motivate people to be a part of your organization. Celebrate the milestones of individual employees so that they can inspire others to stay loyal to the company.  
  2. Upskilling: Offer training and skill development opportunities to your employees to empower them to handle customers better, for now, and later.  
  3. Team Incentives: Rewarding the entire team for non-sales achievements or based on merits can strengthen the team spirit and make your retail employees extra collaborative on the ground. 
  4. Value-add-on: Reward your frontline employees for their efforts in helping customers at the store with their queries and needs. As well as reward them for convincing customers to adopt integrated behaviors.  
  5. Career: Offer your employees the opportunity to grow vertically and laterally in the organization. This will motivate your current team and create a strong brand value in the job market for your organization. 
  6. Company Values: Incentivize people for respecting and enforcing the company values in their day-to-day work. Doing this will inspire others to stick to the values as well. 
  7. Gamification: With the help of digital technology, you can make your incentive program fun and extra engaging. This will drive momentum at the storefront with levels, badges, leaderboards, etc. 
  1. Negative Incentives: This kind of incentive can be introduced to eliminate certain negative behaviors or support certain positive behaviors. 

Download the complete guide here to read all the details of how to keep your retail employees motivated in Retail 4.0. 

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 


HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 


2. 
Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 


4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

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Tips for measuring the effectiveness of a sales incentives program

Tips for measuring the effectiveness of a sales incentives program

How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values

Sales need motivation, therefore, you need to have an incentive program in place. Creating a sales incentive program and rolling it out is no joke. A lot of work and brainstorming needs to go behind creating a program that’s holistic and realistic. From setting achievable goals to having customized plans to being open to feedback, there’s a lot that goes into designing a well-planned incentive program.  

Once the ball sets to roll, you might want to relax because you know that you have a winner on your platter. But, that’s where most incentive program champions go wrong! There’s a crucial part that you need to address – measuring sales incentive ROI.  

After all, the stakeholders of the program would be keen to know how it is progressing and what are the returns. There are certain objectives that the program needs to meet and it’s only when you measure certain key sales incentive metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that you’ll be able to justify the budgets and the investment. 

If you thought designing and executing the program as a task, measuring it becomes even harder as it depends on tracking the required data and deriving insights from it.  

Tips for Tracking Sales Incentive Success 

Micro-Plan the Program 

Break down the program. Create a flowchart with clear steps and an action plan. Accountability has to be clearly mentioned for every step/process. Keep it concise, easy to understand, and transparent. It is one of the prerequisites for the accurate determination of sales incentive results. 

Where to start? Begin by making someone from the leadership team in charge of the incentive program – appoint a champion. Share this information with everyone – sales, finance, marketing, HR, etc., so that people know whom to contact in case of doubts. Similarly, there needs to be someone accountable at every step.  

The Chief Research Officer at IRF (Incentive Research Foundation) puts it across this way, Once the program is implemented, the tendency can be to put it on ‘autopilot.” This is especially prevalent when a program is designed by a team and once it is launched, the team disperses and no one is assigned to or accountable for the program’s operation and ultimate success. 

Evaluating sales incentive programs and their success can be a tough fight in this case.  

Record the Pre-Incentive Scenarios  

To know that you have made progress with the program, you need to know clearly what it was like before. Therefore, record scenarios that existed before the incentive program is rolled out. For example, if your program aims to reward the achievement of sales volumes and targets, you need to have data regarding existing sales. 

You will also need to analyze in micro bits and not just the overall figures. In the above example, if you find that the sales went up but by a small number of units in the quarter just after implementation, your obvious take would be that the program is not a success. However, when you track the performance of salespersons participating in the program versus those that are not, you may find that participating salespeople sold double the units compared to the units sold in the pre-incentive duration while non-participating salespeople sold less than half of what they sold previously, you could term the program as a success even though, overall, the sales were not dramatically high. 

Set SMART Goals 

Another tip for determining the impact of sales incentives is to strategize smartly. In this case, SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals. What we mean are goals for the incentive program because unrealistic and unattainable goals can only lead to frustrations and unlimited challenges.  

Decide the Duration  

As per the Incentive Research Foundation, it is important to determine the duration of the program so that the assessment results are validated. The IRF says the program should run for a year at least. Even if you have planned quarterly sales contests, you must run them for a whole year to gauge the true potential and impact of the program. 

Use an Incentive ROI Calculator  

Typically, measuring sales incentive ROI has a simple formula to it. It is  

ROI = (Value – Investment or Cost)/ Investment or Cost 

For example, if you have invested Rs. 1,00,000 in the incentive program, and the revenue achieved due to the program is Rs. 2,00,000, then you have achieved 100% ROI which is great news.  

Incentive ROI calculations can be more complicated than this example. You will need to check with your incentive solutions partner if they can provide an ROI calculator for calculations. Consequently, you will be able to assess what money to invest, what to expect, and how to grow it further.  

Use Technology to Gather Data 

There are tools for sales incentive results and your incentive program partner can guide you on the same. Generally, you need to keep a close watch on: 

  • Sales Performance: Ensure that the platform has functionalities for sales reps to prove their claims so that distributing rewards becomes an accurate process. 
  • Activity: The platform will generate data to show how sales reps have been using the program. Tech platforms offer real-time data and exportable reports that will throw light on the usage of the platform. 
  • Engagement: This parameter can be evaluated by checking out metrics like email open rates, email bounce rates, email click rates, and so on.  

These details can be further analyzed to see how your sales team is responding to various facets of the incentive program. 

Take Help From The Incentive Solutions Partner 

Let the partner offer key metrics and analytics because it is their forte and not yours. Don’t look at them just as a software provider. They know more about sales incentives, and what works and what doesn’t. Hence, keep them in the loop, and don’t hesitate to ask for regular program reviews so that the pain points can be highlighted and addressed. 

The Bottom Line 

Measuring sales incentive metrics is important because it lets you know if the program investment was worth it or if it was a waste of time and money. These tips will help you measure the results effectively. 

Remember, however, that the sales incentive program is not just about sales growth and revenues. It should also take into account other aspects like the motivational levels of your salespeople, how involved they feel with their job and targets on hand, how happy they are with the rewards system, and so on. 

Try incentivizing your sales team with My Incentives, a new-age tool that’s helping many companies manage their incentive programs effectively.  
 

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 


HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 


2. 
Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 


4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

top-view-paper-man-with-wood-pieces

Make Sales Incentives More Exciting with Gamification!

Make Sales Incentives More Exciting with Gamification!

How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values

Daniel Debow, VP at Salesforce says this about gamification,” It’s  play that helps us do serious things better.” 

Gamification was a buzzword for the tech community till a few years back but not any longer. It is a term that is becoming immensely popular in the non-gaming context, especially in the corporate sector. Infusing gaming aspects into the workplace is becoming a rapid trend. An increasing number of companies are embracing it with the hope that it will help enhance performance and more importantly, employee engagement.  

Sales gamification may already be a part of your sales incentive program, even though it may exist subtly. For example, sales targets are assigned to each salesperson each month or quarter, and they need to ‘level up’ to get a reward, just like in a virtual game. Or, every quarter, your sales head must be ‘resetting’ the targets, again an essential aspect of an online gaming strategy.  

Let’s dive deep into gamification in sales and find out how the strategy can make incentives more exciting.  

What is Sales Gamification?  

Gamification is about lodging game-like mechanics in a non-gaming environment with the objective of keeping the concerned people motivated and stimulated. Just like in virtual games, sales gamification entails encouraging salespeople to take action and providing guidance throughout the process. Keeping things competitive and exciting, the features are meant to appease the innate human desires of acknowledgment, achievement, competition, and status.  

This is a technique that brings an ethos of gaming into sales tasks. Subsequently, the sales team can earn badges and points as they complete different tasks or levels.  

The main purview of gamification is to use gaming mechanics and elements to make sales tasks more interesting and exciting.  

Just like in games, there’s an undertone of competitiveness with gamification in sales. Consequently, there’s more engagement, fun, and focus as your sales team goes about completing their work ambitiously.  The good part is that these techniques can be used to benefit the business bottom line, as in, get better sales, faster conversions, more leads, and so on. 

Another aspect of gamification is that this methodology comes with automating many parts of the sales process. This gives each individual salesperson the time to work harder on the real sales challenges on the ground.  

What do statistics say about gamification? One study by MarketsandMarkets shows that the market for this technique is growing at a phenomenal rate of 27.4% compounded annual growth rate. It further states that the APAC region has the fastest growth rate with countries like India, China, Japan, New Zealand, and Australia taking the major share of this technology.   

Why Does Gamification Work? 

  • Sales motivation is not just about money only, anymore. They want more. The attitude is more about winning a sales competition, making progress, and so on. This attitude can be fueled by using gamification techniques. Thus, you can expect more energy, more focus, and higher levels of excitement in the team. 
  • Gamification automates the process where you can set monthly/quarterly goals for your team members in a realistic and achievable manner. 
  • Gamification gives clarity on the progression path to the team. This is because the technique gives different kinds of incentives to different levels of performance. For example, a salesperson who has a got a few leads will get a different incentive than a salesperson who has clinched a few deals. With sales leaderboards, it is all visual – this means that everyone can see what gets better incentives or what is there at the next level and accordingly improve their performance.  
  • Also, the technique encourages incentivizing all performers and not just the top performers. There’s something for everyone here. It helps create a fair workplace culture. 

Gamified Sales Incentives – How To Go About It?  

Sales incentive programs should be designed in a way that your salespeople are thrown out of their comfort zones and give them the motivation to achieve the given sales targets. Gamification can help with these elements: 

  • Sales competitions or sales contests make the job engaging. For best results, create contests for all levels for better participation. In these contests, the salespeople are competing with one another like in a game with the purpose of achieving the mission. 
  • Make a mission strategy for an incentive program or a sales contest. A mission is a gaming mechanic that pushes the team to perform high-value tasks to facilitate the achievement of long-term goals.  
  • Missions end the guessing game because everything is clearly spelled out. For example, ‘The region that sells the maximum units by 31st December will get a fast start badge and 1000 points per person.’ This mission is a good way to encourage collaborative work.  
  • Plus, a mission makes rewards instantly available. And you can tweak the missions as and when required. 
  • The scoreboard or the sales leaderboard is another gift of gamification. As Vince Lombardi from Green Bay Packers mentions, “ If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?” Winning is important and salespeople need to finetune their focus and performance accordingly. In a sales competition or contest, gamification allows your people to have quick and visual access to their progress and that of others. They can celebrate achievements, work better together as a team to achieve team targets, and even congratulate the top performers. Thus, there’s a positive competitive spirit amongst all and each tries to give their best and outdo the other, all in a friendly manner. Ensure that the leaderboards are displayed around the office for everyone to see them. 
  • Gamification goes beyond the usual commission and cash reward plans to incentivize your salespeople. Point systems are used to get your people to do the desirable jobs – like points for making a cold call, giving a demo, generating leads, conversions, and more. Therefore, there’s the built-in concept of getting and redeeming points against a range of options. These could be merchandise or experiences, or any other form of reward that is usually out of the purview or budget of a salesperson. For example, a sponsored foreign tour for the family. This gives them the feel-good factor with, of course, the bragging rights within their immediate social group.  
  • Peer-to-peer recognition is an integral part of gamification. With sales leaderboards and transparency, everyone comes out to appreciate the good work of a fellow team member.  
  • Badges are the best way to recognize people for their work. It’s a psychological need and will motivate your people endlessly. Badges should be given only for inspirational or recognition-worthy work. 

Conclusion  

Gamification can do a lot of good. It’s a powerful tool in your weaponry to keep your sales team motivated and achieve the desired results.  

Looking for a gamified sales incentive software. My Incentives is the perfect answer. Call us today for a demo! 

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 


HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 


2. 
Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 


4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

Robot handshake human background, futuristic digital age

How to use technology to manage and administer a sales incentives program?

How to use technology to manage and administer a sales incentives program?

How To Create a Company Culture That Illustrates Your Core Values

Ready to take your sales incentives program to the next level? You are at the right place because today, we will specifically talk about the automation of sales incentives and how technology can be your biggest asset here.  

Sales motivation and sales incentives go hand-in-hand. Introducing technology as a means to strengthen the incentive program and make it result-oriented involves broadly two things – one, consists of using technology to empower your salespeople, and the other empowers the back office to ensure timely and effective calculations, disbursements, and more.  

Sales Incentive Platforms for Administrators 

Over-dependence on spreadsheets, especially Microsoft Excel, to manage and administer your sales incentive program is cumbersome. Because Excel, unfortunately, was not designed for the management of a complicated gamut like sales incentives. Thankfully, technology has evolved at a neck-breaking speed in the last few years. Today, we have multiple sales incentive software that have helped resolve innumerable problems posed by manual handling and spreadsheet calculations.  

The Answer Lies With Technology 

That’s true!  Be it the risk of factual and calculation errors, speeding up the process of incentivizing your sales, or saving up on redundant work, automation takes the program several steps ahead.   

The right sales incentive software puts your incentive program on the fast track. Meaning the software, with its intuitive and analytical features, powered by the cloud, AI, and other latest technologies, empowers the program to be driven in real-time, relevantly, and effectively.  

Continue reading to understand how a sales incentive platform will help manage and run your sales incentive program viably, end-to-end.  

To ensure the thorough and flawless working of your tech-enabled sales incentive program, you need to focus on four core areas:  

  • Platform Type 
  • Integrational Aspects 
  • Data flows & Processes 
  • Reporting Needs 

 

1. The type of platform will help resolve administration complexities. 

Broadly, there are two types of sales incentive systems that you can work with. One is the self-managed platform, while the second is a tailored software system curated for your organization.  

Between the two, the former or the self-managed platform is a system that is available off-the-shelf and customized or tweaked as per the specific needs of the enterprise. It is either a no-code or a low-code software and comes with reusable modules. Admins must use and rearrange these modules to prepare various components of the incentive program. Since, in most cases, there’s zero coding, and most of these platforms have graphical user interfaces, the work of admin is pretty easy, and they can visually create a complex plan without having any know-how of the underlying source code.  

When you go in for the creation of a software solution from scratch, you need to hire an IT vendor with developers having deep knowledge of coding and technicalities. The admin, in this case, is mostly dependent on the vendor for customization of the software as per changing needs of the incentive program. Additionally, the enterprise will need to spend a lot on engineering and hardware support, which can make the incentive software costly.   

2. Integrations with your existing tech stack 

Backend integration is an essential part of the sales incentive software. This means that whichever software system you use for your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), payroll system, etc., the sales incentive app or platform should work in tandem with these systems. 

Seamless working means that all the concerned software systems have to be synced to facilitate faster and more accurate pulling of data from one to the other. You need to find out about system lags and processing times before signing a contract with a vendor for the incentive app.   

3. The Data Workflows of the Platform 

Data is a crucial deal today because it will help you understand how your salespeople operate and their possible challenges; second, most of your competitors are taking the help of data to make their sales verticals foolproof and performance-oriented.  

The right sales incentive software provides data not just to the administrators or the higher–ups in the system but puts it right in the hands of the people who can use it effectively – your sales team. They can do their calculations in real-time, obtain summaries, gain visibility into their performance metrics, and more.  

The purpose is to empower the team while ensuring that the incentive program is fair and relevant. In addition, ensure that the software system’s data processing capabilities are at par with the best technologies available in the gamut today.  

4. Reporting Needs 

The drive behind going in for complete automation of the incentive program is the reports that the system can generate and give you key insights. Whether it is about the day-to-day functioning or the annual audits, the system has to generate reports at the granular level to support the existing program and commission cadence. To top it off, the reports should be a part of the admin dashboard customized as per your organizational needs.  

Features That a Sales Incentive Platform Should Have 

  • Real-time calculations of commissions  
  • Capturing sales data and calculating incentives accurately 
  • Have pre-built incentive plan templates and creating of new plans 
  • Real-time visualization of crucial metrics for the admin on an integrated dashboard 
  • Intuitive User Interface with zero coding requirements for the backend team 
  • Seamless integration with your existing software systems 
  • Self-management of commissions through embedded commission trackers 
  • Visibility to sales reps to track their performance and payouts in real time 
  • Analytical and compliance reporting tools 
  • Supports multiple currencies 
  • A SaaS-based software app that works on the cloud 
  • Mobile support 

 
 

All in all, a modern sales incentive app should have features that facilitate your sales team to perform their best and stay motivated. It should have a robust backend that enables easy and transparent incentives management and promote high-growth business.   

Interested to know more? We have a specialized platform powered by sales motivation technology. Call us for a demo and see My Incentives in action! 

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 


HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES
 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 


2. 
Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 


4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

Choose Reward Program Partner

How to Choose the Right Rewards Program Partner?

How to Choose the Right Rewards Program Partner?

How to Choose the Right Rewards Program Partner

R&R or Rewards & Recognition is a complex gamut, whether you are using it to drive the in-house sales team’s performance, your channel partners’ loyalty, or employee productivity. Despite knowing the value a great rewards program can drive, companies don’t often have the expertise, tools, or resources to do justice to the work. That’s where roping in a holistic rewards program partner can help. A partner who can design, execute, and manage the entire program since they are specialized in the niche. These R&R partners will have the right tools, technology, and resources to make your rewards and recognition program truly successful. 

Of course, finding the right partner is no easy task.  

So, if you’re considering a rewards program partnership, here are a few things to consider depending on your budget, business objective, and the goals of your rewards program.  

But before we jump to that… 

Why Should You Have the Best Rewards Program Partner?  

A trusted rewards program partner can make a big difference in the success of your loyalty and rewards program. Here are some of the reasons to hire the best one:  

  • Program Success: A rewards partner will always have an eye on the success of your rewards and loyalty program. Your program’s success is also ultimately their success. The right partner will not only define and ensure adherence to program objectives, they’ll also keep your business objectives at the heart of the rewards program.  
  • Develop Programs for Every Target Group: A reward partner will have the expertise to design programs that drive higher engagement rates from the targeted groups. For example, the rewards program for your own sales team would be different from that of the channel partners. Every program will, therefore, be aligned with the target group’s nature of the job, targets, performance factors, etc. 
  • Help Translate into Resource Retention: With the right R&R program, companies look at increasing retention rates, be it of their own employees or their network of channel partners. With the best rewards program partner onboard, there’s a lot that can be achieved in this sphere because the program will be designed for long-term engagements. 
  • Contribute to Strengthening Your Brand Value: A strong and expert rewards program partner will work with the motto of strengthening your brand image and monetary value in the market. On the contrary, a not-so-well-designed program can be a disaster, not just internally but also lead to the deterioration of the brand value.  

How to Choose a Rewards Program Partner?   

Since the rewards program partnership is extremely important, you need to choose the best rewards program partner out there. But what are the things to look for?   

Expertise and Experience  

Without any doubt, these are the two most critical elements to look for in your potential R&R partner. Niche specialists can do an unparalleled job as they are well aware of the nuances and the nitty-gritty of the work and hence, never compromise on the program quality.   

Expertise, in this context, has to be more in terms of the partner’s understanding of the psychology of rewards, how channel partners or employees and sales teams work, what factors influence their loyalty preferences, how has the network changed in recent years, what is the competition doing, and so on.  

The Capability to Provide a Holistic Program  

This necessarily means that the partner has the capabilities to develop, manage, market, and optimize the program, all under one roof, as a turnkey provider. It shouldn’t be that they are working in bits and pieces and you need to find different partners to handle the various aspects of the program and also someone to integrate it. With one dedicated partner, there are minimal chances of gaps, and the program is guaranteed to work seamlessly. To add to it, a committed partner will work towards a strategic partnership and will take full charge of the program, taking the full load off you.  

Is the Partner Armed Enough to Provide the Latest Features?  

The niche of loyalty and R&R programs has been evolving dynamically in the last few decades. As a result, modern-day R&R programs are robust with interesting and excellent features like gamification, personalization, etc., that take the entire thing to another level. It is imperative to go in for a rewards program partner that has complete knowledge of the most advanced technology and tools in the niche.  

Data-Led Rewards Program 

A loyalty program can give the brand real-time & first-party data. To choose the best rewards program partner, understand their competence in offering data for analysis and reports. This data can offer rich insights into multiple aspects of your sales team and channel partners and help streamline the program further.  The program partner should be able to offer solutions that effectively help is data visualzation and putting up relevant reports.  

A Futuristic Partner 

It is not enough that the rewards program partner knows what works best right now, they should also have an idea of what will work in the future. You must collaborate with a rewards partner that invests in state-of-the-art processes, learning, training, and development activities.   

The best rewards program partner will work as an extended arm of your brand. They must be aligned with your business and brand goals. They will always go the extra mile willingly for your program’s bottom lines and have a collaborative mindset in the best interest of both companies.  

All the best!  

If you’d like to engage with us as your rewards partner, please drop us a note right here. 

R&R or Rewards & Recognition is a complex gamut, whether you are using it to drive the in-house sales team’s performance, your channel partners’ loyalty, or employee productivity. Despite knowing the value a great rewards program can drive, companies don’t often have the expertise, tools, or resources to do justice to the work. That’s where roping in a holistic rewards program partner can help. A partner who can design, execute, and manage the entire program since they are specialized in the niche. These R&R partners will have the right tools, technology, and resources to make your rewards and recognition program truly successful. 

Of course, finding the right partner is no easy task.  

So, if you’re considering a rewards program partnership, here are a few things to consider depending on your budget, business objective, and the goals of your rewards program.  

But before we jump to that… 

Why Should You Have the Best Rewards Program Partner?  

A trusted rewards program partner can make a big difference in the success of your loyalty and rewards program. Here are some of the reasons to hire the best one:  

  • Program Success: A rewards partner will always have an eye on the success of your rewards and loyalty program. Your program’s success is also ultimately their success. The right partner will not only define and ensure adherence to program objectives, they’ll also keep your business objectives at the heart of the rewards program.  
  • Develop Programs for Every Target Group: A reward partner will have the expertise to design programs that drive higher engagement rates from the targeted groups. For example, the rewards program for your own sales team would be different from that of the channel partners. Every program will, therefore, be aligned with the target group’s nature of the job, targets, performance factors, etc. 
  • Help Translate into Resource Retention: With the right R&R program, companies look at increasing retention rates, be it of their own employees or their network of channel partners. With the best rewards program partner onboard, there’s a lot that can be achieved in this sphere because the program will be designed for long-term engagements. 
  • Contribute to Strengthening Your Brand Value: A strong and expert rewards program partner will work with the motto of strengthening your brand image and monetary value in the market. On the contrary, a not-so-well-designed program can be a disaster, not just internally but also lead to the deterioration of the brand value.  

How to Choose a Rewards Program Partner?   

Since the rewards program partnership is extremely important, you need to choose the best rewards program partner out there. But what are the things to look for?   

Expertise and Experience  

Without any doubt, these are the two most critical elements to look for in your potential R&R partner. Niche specialists can do an unparalleled job as they are well aware of the nuances and the nitty-gritty of the work and hence, never compromise on the program quality.   

Expertise, in this context, has to be more in terms of the partner’s understanding of the psychology of rewards, how channel partners or employees and sales teams work, what factors influence their loyalty preferences, how has the network changed in recent years, what is the competition doing, and so on.  

The Capability to Provide a Holistic Program  

This necessarily means that the partner has the capabilities to develop, manage, market, and optimize the program, all under one roof, as a turnkey provider. It shouldn’t be that they are working in bits and pieces and you need to find different partners to handle the various aspects of the program and also someone to integrate it. With one dedicated partner, there are minimal chances of gaps, and the program is guaranteed to work seamlessly. To add to it, a committed partner will work towards a strategic partnership and will take full charge of the program, taking the full load off you.  

Is the Partner Armed Enough to Provide the Latest Features?  

The niche of loyalty and R&R programs has been evolving dynamically in the last few decades. As a result, modern-day R&R programs are robust with interesting and excellent features like gamification, personalization, etc., that take the entire thing to another level. It is imperative to go in for a rewards program partner that has complete knowledge of the most advanced technology and tools in the niche.  

Data-Led Rewards Program 

A loyalty program can give the brand real-time & first-party data. To choose the best rewards program partner, understand their competence in offering data for analysis and reports. This data can offer rich insights into multiple aspects of your sales team and channel partners and help streamline the program further.  The program partner should be able to offer solutions that effectively help is data visualzation and putting up relevant reports.  

A Futuristic Partner 

It is not enough that the rewards program partner knows what works best right now, they should also have an idea of what will work in the future. You must collaborate with a rewards partner that invests in state-of-the-art processes, learning, training, and development activities.   

The best rewards program partner will work as an extended arm of your brand. They must be aligned with your business and brand goals. They will always go the extra mile willingly for your program’s bottom lines and have a collaborative mindset in the best interest of both companies.  

All the best!  

If you’d like to engage with us as your rewards partner, please drop us a note right here. 

Channel Incentive Programs Best Practices To Learn From2

Channel Incentive Programs: Best Practices to Learn From

Channel Incentive Programs: Best Practices to Learn From

Channel Incentive Programs Best Practices to Learn From

Incentivizing your channel partners can bring phenomenal results. It is time-tested. Rewarding your channel partners is as crucial as your internal sales team. However, there are chances that the program fails and backfires if it is not designed well or implemented correctly.   

If you are intending to launch or revamp your channel partner incentive program, you are at the right place. This blog will cover some of the industry-grade best practices.  

1. Goal Setting  

Like any other program, it is crucial that the objectives and strategies are well-defined at the onset itself.  This is a universally applicable best practice. Goals need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.     

Setting up SMART goals not just makes your task easier in measuring and tracking progress but also empowers the channel partner to work dedicatedly towards the set goals. There’s no place for ambiguity here. Refrain from assigning random goals – they should be well-researched and set as per the partner’s potential – in other words, the goals should be practical.  

2. Keep All Stakeholders on the Same Platform  

A major mistake that companies often commit is that they expect the incentive program to work in silos. Instead, you should keep all concerned stakeholders informed and on the same page.  

For example, your senior management needs to have complete information about the program. That way, they will ensure that the top executives are aligned and there’s no issue with resources.  

The internal sales team has to be involved in this from Day 1. These are the people who know the market in and out – hence, they can add value to your channel partner incentive program.  

3. Use Technology for Best Results  

One of the biggest areas of concern for channel partner incentive programs is the lack of an effective system to analyze real-time data. Channel partnerships generate valuable raw data. This, however, needs to be used effectively to understand the weak and strong points of the program and adjust accordingly in real time.   

With the help of advanced platforms, you can choose effective data management for accurate budgeting and sales volume outcomes.   

4. Provide Relevant Rewards  

Rewards that will truly motivate your channel partners will give successful results. Just like customer loyalty programs are customized as per customer needs, channel partner incentives should be personalized as per the partner’s interests and preferences. Not all partners look at the same rewards. Some want freebies, others paid trips, while some others may want training and participate with you in trade fairs.   

Hence, the best strategy for channel incentives is to understand what motivates the partners and design the program accordingly.  

5. Supplemental Rewards for Those Who Surpass Their Budgets  

 If a partner is surpassing the budget and doing the extra bit to get you sales, you need to reward the partner a bit more than usual. This way, the motivational streak is given a boost. Not just for the partner who is doing extra good, it also encourages other partners to go beyond their budgets.  

6. Communication  

 One of the best strategies for channel incentives is that you should communicate with your dealer network about the incentive program. Giving them all the information helps make your program stronger. If the communication channel is disrupted, your channel partners are in the dark which can propel them to sell your competitor’s products more.  

Regular update to partners is the key to keeping the program at its best.   

 8. Monitor and Tweak  

 The entire crux of the incentive program is dependent on how well and regularly you monitor it. Doing so helps analyze the data and make changes wherever required. Expecting your program to work on auto mode is too risky.   

The strategic analysis should be an ongoing process. This will, in turn, ensure that your program is always optimized for performance.   

9. Training  

Rewards are fine but ensuring that your channel partners are well-equipped to sell your products is your responsibility. They need to have full knowledge of the products. For this, you need to conduct training sessions and empower them. Also, it is a good idea to conduct workshops for your channel partners once in a while where they can improve their skills. It is going to do good and build loyalty amongst your partners.  

10. Automate the Process  

Thankfully, we live in a time when automation is not a dream but a reality. With the latest technology at our behest, your organization can gain plentifully from automation. It will certainly make it easier to track performance and reward the best performers. From generating customized reports to analyzing data, there are many pros of automated systems. Invest in automation to make the process seamless and cost-effective.  

11. Use A Channel Incentive Platform to Make it Easy for Your Partners to Participate  

Your objective should be to make things easier for your channel partners. Participating in the channel partner incentive program should not be time-consuming or a big deal. If it is, it can demotivate your partners. 

From communicating clear steps and rules for registration to having a system that they can use easily, on the go, 24×7, and from any place, will make your program an instant hit. Use a system like My Incentives that make enrolment, incentivizing, and disbursements an easy affair. Such a system becomes the central hub that can be used for sending updates, communicating with individuals, making announcements, and more. If you have tiered incentive programs, the platform can help manage all of them from one central window. Additionally, if the incentives are customized and differ from partner to partner, the platform can make your processes faster, error-free, and more effective.  

Conclusion  

A channel partner incentive program is as good as you design it to be. With continuous communication and the use of a cloud-based channel incentive platform, you can make it the biggest winning factor for the organization.  

Incentivizing your channel partners can bring phenomenal results. It is time-tested. Rewarding your channel partners is as crucial as your internal sales team. However, there are chances that the program fails and backfires if it is not designed well or implemented correctly.   

If you are intending to launch or revamp your channel partner incentive program, you are at the right place. This blog will cover some of the industry-grade best practices.  

1. Goal Setting  

Like any other program, it is crucial that the objectives and strategies are well-defined at the onset itself.  This is a universally applicable best practice. Goals need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.     

Setting up SMART goals not just makes your task easier in measuring and tracking progress but also empowers the channel partner to work dedicatedly towards the set goals. There’s no place for ambiguity here. Refrain from assigning random goals – they should be well-researched and set as per the partner’s potential – in other words, the goals should be practical.  

2. Keep All Stakeholders on the Same Platform  

A major mistake that companies often commit is that they expect the incentive program to work in silos. Instead, you should keep all concerned stakeholders informed and on the same page.  

For example, your senior management needs to have complete information about the program. That way, they will ensure that the top executives are aligned and there’s no issue with resources.  

The internal sales team has to be involved in this from Day 1. These are the people who know the market in and out – hence, they can add value to your channel partner incentive program.  

3. Use Technology for Best Results  

One of the biggest areas of concern for channel partner incentive programs is the lack of an effective system to analyze real-time data. Channel partnerships generate valuable raw data. This, however, needs to be used effectively to understand the weak and strong points of the program and adjust accordingly in real time.   

With the help of advanced platforms, you can choose effective data management for accurate budgeting and sales volume outcomes.   

4. Provide Relevant Rewards  

Rewards that will truly motivate your channel partners will give successful results. Just like customer loyalty programs are customized as per customer needs, channel partner incentives should be personalized as per the partner’s interests and preferences. Not all partners look at the same rewards. Some want freebies, others paid trips, while some others may want training and participate with you in trade fairs.   

Hence, the best strategy for channel incentives is to understand what motivates the partners and design the program accordingly.  

5. Supplemental Rewards for Those Who Surpass Their Budgets  

 If a partner is surpassing the budget and doing the extra bit to get you sales, you need to reward the partner a bit more than usual. This way, the motivational streak is given a boost. Not just for the partner who is doing extra good, it also encourages other partners to go beyond their budgets.  

6. Communication  

 One of the best strategies for channel incentives is that you should communicate with your dealer network about the incentive program. Giving them all the information helps make your program stronger. If the communication channel is disrupted, your channel partners are in the dark which can propel them to sell your competitor’s products more.  

Regular update to partners is the key to keeping the program at its best.   

 8. Monitor and Tweak  

 The entire crux of the incentive program is dependent on how well and regularly you monitor it. Doing so helps analyze the data and make changes wherever required. Expecting your program to work on auto mode is too risky.   

The strategic analysis should be an ongoing process. This will, in turn, ensure that your program is always optimized for performance.   

9. Training  

Rewards are fine but ensuring that your channel partners are well-equipped to sell your products is your responsibility. They need to have full knowledge of the products. For this, you need to conduct training sessions and empower them. Also, it is a good idea to conduct workshops for your channel partners once in a while where they can improve their skills. It is going to do good and build loyalty amongst your partners.  

10. Automate the Process  

Thankfully, we live in a time when automation is not a dream but a reality. With the latest technology at our behest, your organization can gain plentifully from automation. It will certainly make it easier to track performance and reward the best performers. From generating customized reports to analyzing data, there are many pros of automated systems. Invest in automation to make the process seamless and cost-effective.  

11. Use A Channel Incentive Platform to Make it Easy for Your Partners to Participate  

Your objective should be to make things easier for your channel partners. Participating in the channel partner incentive program should not be time-consuming or a big deal. If it is, it can demotivate your partners. 

From communicating clear steps and rules for registration to having a system that they can use easily, on the go, 24×7, and from any place, will make your program an instant hit. Use a system like My Incentives that make enrolment, incentivizing, and disbursements an easy affair. Such a system becomes the central hub that can be used for sending updates, communicating with individuals, making announcements, and more. If you have tiered incentive programs, the platform can help manage all of them from one central window. Additionally, if the incentives are customized and differ from partner to partner, the platform can make your processes faster, error-free, and more effective.  

Conclusion  

A channel partner incentive program is as good as you design it to be. With continuous communication and the use of a cloud-based channel incentive platform, you can make it the biggest winning factor for the organization.  

Employee Incentives

Types of Employee Incentives You Should Know About

Types of Employee Incentives You Should Know About

Types of Employee Incentives You Should Know About

Workplace incentive is crucial to express appreciation for work well done by employees. It is imperative, however, that employee incentive programs are strategically designed and implemented. If your employees are happy with the incentives, they will stay motivated, their productivity levels will be consistent, and the workplace will transform into a desirable place to work. Such happy vibes within a commercial establishment are good for the overall wellness of the employees as well as to help boost business profitability. 

The big question is, “what is the best incentive plan for employees?” Cash or non-monetary incentives? While this question has a subjective answer, overall, it has been seen that incentives of four types drive the best results. These are recognition, cash rewards, gifts, and experiences. Examples of gifts, in this case, are electronic items, gift cards, discount vouchers, etc. Experiences are things like tickets to sporting events, concerts, offsites, etc. 

Continue reading to know about the different types of employee incentive plans 

Types of Incentives for Your Employees 

 Broadly, these are the four main types of employee incentives:  

1. Compensation Incentives 

These are also called monetary or financial rewards. There’s no doubt that for employees, financial compensation occupies the highest place in their motivational ambit. These are some of the common examples of incentive programs of this type: 

  • Salary incentives: Offering higher remuneration to employees that are more productive and bring better results. This is one of the commonest types of employee incentives. Annual increments are a common feature in most companies across the world. Employees that achieve or over-achieve their targets are given handsome pay rise showcasing to others that hard work pays. 
  • Profit-sharing: If you want to retain your best talent, consider sharing your profits not just with your shareholders but also with your top productive employees. This is an excellent individual incentive plan example
  • Shares: Many top companies in the world offer their best-performing employees shares of the organization. This is also popularly known as ESOP or Employee Stock Options Plans. HDFC Bank in India is a leading example – it recently announced offering about  4,173,730 equity shares to its employees this year. This is an effective management incentive plan example and is used quite widely to motivate managers. 
  • Bonuses: Another common form of individual incentive are the annual bonuses given to employees with the best performances. Some companies offer monthly or quarterly bonuses too. There are festivity-related bonuses also like in India, Diwali bonus is a very common feature. 
  • Commissions: Commissions are given as a certain percentage of the sales value to employees who have generated maximum sales within a given timeframe. 
  • Retirement incentives: In India, the most common retirement incentives include provident funds and pension schemes. 
  • Dearness allowance: In most cases, dearness allowances are given by government offices to their staff members to combat inflation. This is an additional amount over and above their salaries. 
  • Fringe benefits: Some companies offer fringe benefits to their best-performing employees like paying the education fees of kids, medical benefits for employees, etc. In this context, companies like Microsoft and Google are companies with the best incentive programs. 

    2. Recognition Incentives 

As the name implies, ‘recognition’ is taking cognizance of employees who have worked hard to achieve or over-achieve their targets/KRAs. In a survey conducted by Michael C. Fina Recognition, amongst about 300 HR professionals, it was revealed that workplace recognition is a big thing for employees though it costs barely anything to the company. Your recognition programs do not have to be lavish – small and simple things can make a huge difference. Here are some types of employee incentive schemes that recognize employees for their work:  

  • Delegation: Making your employees responsible for their tasks makes them feel valued.   
  • Authority: Do you wish to make your top-performing employees feel empowered and motivated? Give them authority – let them be a part of the decision-making committee for the next project. Ask them for their ideas and suggestions during meetings.  
  • Thanking Employees: ‘Thank You’ has a big effect on employees who prioritize work and deliver to expectations. Patting the back of an employee who has done it makes a lot of difference to the person at an individual level. Such expressions of gratitude should be a common feature in organizations and should be multi-directional. Managers saying thank you, peers and colleagues saying well done, etc. are all examples of this.  
  • Certificates: Offering certificates is another way of acknowledging good work by your employees. Things like ‘Employee of the Month’, and 5-year or 10-year completion certificates matter a lot and are great individual incentive plan examples.  
  • Promotions: Promoting employees who are consistently performing in the top few not just motivate those individuals but also sets examples for others.  

    3. Reward Incentives 

Some organizations offer tangible rewards instead of monetary incentives.  

Some good choices of reward incentives include: 

  • Paid Vacations: Another common type of employee incentive plan is sending the employee and his/her family on a paid vacation to acknowledge their hard work. 
  • Gift Cards: Companies offer gift vouchers and cards to their employees to reward them for their dedicated work. These can be festivity-related or otherwise. 
  • Gifts: A bouquet of flowers, chocolates, cakes, etc., are other ways to show that you care for your employees who give their 100% to work.

 4, Activity Incentives 

This type of incentive is meant for teams where the organization conducts events or activities to express its gratitude for teamwork, collaboration, and achievements. Some common examples of different incentives for employees in this context are: 

  • Celebrations: Many organizations throw parties or short trips to celebrate certain milestones. It helps your employees feel important and rewarded boosting their morale.  
  • Birthdays: Celebrating the birthday of employees is a great way to make them feel valued and cared for. It gives a lot of boost to the employee. 
  • Paid Lunches: Once-a-month lunches on Fridays are another way of encouraging teamwork and also letting your employees know that the company cares for them.  

Conclusion  

No matter which employee incentive program you choose, you must take the extra effort to ensure that these programs excite your employees. Another key bottom line for ensuring the success of the incentive program is to ensure that the rewards are given only for meeting employee targets. It is never advisable to dilute the essence of such programs by utilizing them for non-performance-related occasions like birthdays, etc. 

My Incentives is a one-stop platform that integrates end-to-end all tasks related to employee and channel sales incentives. Call us for a demo to know more about the features of this new-age online software and keep your employees motivated in a hassle-free manner. 

Employee Engagement is top of mind for leadership teams, and companies are willing to find ways to keep their employees engaged and motivated as time and again it is proved to lead to employee productivity. 

How many times an employee participates in any group activity alone doesn’t signify the employee’s engagement (EE) at the workplace. It is related to the employee’s commitment to the company. And this is one of the driving factors for the success of the business. 

Employee Experience (EX) on the other hand is a total of all the touchpoints an employee has with the company – be it cultural, physical or tech-enabled interactions with the workplace or work environment. It begins from the day the employee becomes a candidate in the organization until they become an alumnus. 

Employee engagement is the byproduct of employee experience; hence, the company needs to actively shift its focus to employee experience which will eventually lead to higher engagement. 

How technology is changing the future of work

Technology is shaping the future of work in every little segment at the workplace be it Robo advisory in finance, client relationship management (CRM) and cloud software in Sales or Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Marketing and e-Commerce,  and in the more recent years the role of AI in different areas of human resource. 

Advancement in technology at the workplace is not just about reducing human dependency and speeding up the work but also making work systematic and error-free. Though AI is taking over human dependency it does not mean that it is taking away the job. Employees will have to shift their focus to value-added activities to get a better result and improve productivity; while technology takes over the repetitive and mundane tasks. 

We at Buzzz agree that 2020 is the rise of the digital workplace and there is no looking back. Where physically the world has come to a standstill, the digital world has helped to keep things going and helped everyone to stay connected. 

Role of HR in employee experience and employee engagement

Hiring, firing, recruiting and training employees have been the most prominent role of Human Resource and is often known only for these responsibilities, but a silent and more important role of HR has always been to enhance employee experience at every stage of the employee’s work-life. This leads to employee engagement and therefore builds a strong workplace culture. 

Culture is built by understanding the needs of employees, learning about the values of employees, supporting them to reach their corporate goals, rewarding them for their efforts that help the organization achieve their mission, and ensuring all the resources are available for employees to enable them to have an extraordinary experience. 

Here are 5 ways in which AI can positively help you boost employee engagement and experience:

While some organizations use certain metrics to gauge employee engagement, companies will have to understand that one metric won’t fit or apply to every employee. 

AI helps organizations to make rational decisions and change the way a company approaches engagement at the workplace. It also supports companies’ work towards providing a great employee experience  with user-friendly software.

-Improve internal communication

Interpersonal communication at the workplace plays an important role to define our relationship with our colleagues. 

Artificial Intelligence has the power to evaluate each employee’s strength, weakness, style. With the help of AI, organizations can track the relation and coordination between employees and get key insights about how each employee interacts with each other. Organizations can use it to their advantage by pairing employees together who make a great pair for a particular project based on the SWOT analysis. 

Chatbot at the workplace can make employee communication more interactive and collaborative. One of the most common examples of chatbot cases is Starbucks who uses Facebook Messengers in their order and delivery process. (Source: SHRM)

-Monitor mental health

A machine to track or monitor the behaviour of your employees that help organizations learn about their mental health and raise an alarm before it’s too late will be one of the top finds of technology. There is research underway that could monitor an employee’s enunciation and tone of voice to detect stress and predict depression. Monitor the typing speed, detect the spike in heart rate and also analyse facial expression, but then again this is the future. 

Companies like Sephora and Pinterest offer a chatting platform to their employees that instantly offers them direct counselling service. The employee types a word based on their feeling and the platform uses the word to understand their situation and recommends the best approach to coach employees. (Source: Roboticsbiz)

Similar to this, the Mood-o-Meter, an AI-based tool helps to track the mood of employees and calculate their happiness index. Our feelings influence our behaviour and that has a big impact on our day at work. The Buzzz Mood-o-Meter is designed to help an employee learn to recognize their emotions and develop strategies for managing these emotions. Likewise, organizations can analyse the daily mood of their employees and also find reasons behind their mood. 

For example, if the majority of employees feel unhappy highlighting one particular reason prompts HR and organization to immediately take some action to find a gap in their work culture. 

-Recruitment & onboarding

From saving valuable time to finding the right candidate, AI can simplify the recruiting and onboarding process for HR.  AI pre-screening of the candidates before inviting them for interviews is a common practise at large multinational companies who hire thousands of employees each year and unsurprisingly attracts millions of applicants. 

AI in recruiting helps access candidates before they are invited for the interview where they are tested and assessed on their cognitive and emotional features while avoiding demographics like race, gender and socio-economic status. 

Multinational brand Unilever uses a chatbot that uses natural language processing to answer employee’s queries and questions in a simple, human language. 

-On-the-job training

Well, learning doesn’t stop after you are placed in the organization. In fact, it begins from there where employees can learn new things that will help them in work. AI plays a part in the ongoing training of the new hires as well as for the existing employees in future. 

One of the engineering giants developed a tool which takes advantage of augmented and virtual reality along with AI to record the experience of work and lessons from existing or old employees which can be passed on to new joiners. This captures the correct and valuable information that can be used anytime and gives a top-notch experience to employees. 

-Improving remote work

Earlier where remote working was mainly associated with tech jobs where coders and engineers would work on projects from home or other areas without coming to office every day or never. Now, remote working has become a new normal for a majority of white-collar jobs globally. It can also be framed as displaced working where managers struggle to monitor and encourage employee productivity. AI is applying data power to streamline operations, enhance communications and improve services. 

Under remote working, AI amalgamates legacy systems like CRM and AI planner helps employees significantly improve data handling, planning and customer retention.

One very recent example is a collaboration of Otter with Zoom where otter automatically transcribes your zoom meetings as they happen. The notes it generates can include text, audio, video or key phrases which can be searched later. It also includes the speaker ID of all the participants involved in the meeting to see who said what. This saves the time of noting down the meeting notes. Accenture also uses this AI-backed tool at their workplace. 

Conclusion:

HR and AI are joining forces to understand employees better and transforming the employee experience at work at different levels. The idea is not just to minimize manual work but also to enhance employee experience that leads to an increase in productivity and efficiency. 

AI also finds the gap where employees are struggling or are unable to connect with the company and underline the area for management to take immediate actions ensuring that employees are engaged throughout their professional journey with the organization.   

Business people with startup rocket

Boost Sales Performance by choosing the Right Incentive & Engagement Software

Boost Sales Performance by choosing the Right Incentive & Engagement Software

Boost Sales Performance by choosing the Right Incentive & Engagement Software

Considering that the customer is the king, and the sales team – in-house, franchised, or dealer network – are typically the first, second, and the repeated points of contact for your brand, it is crucial to know how effectively they are working in creating value in the customer’s mind. In other words, not letting the customer forget ‘you.’ Are they doing their job of listening to the customers effectively, and if they are, how fruitfully is the organization listening to them!

Employers expect their in-house sales team, including inside and outside sales, remote and onsite teams, to work at their optimal best! That is fair – after all, the team is being paid to do so. However, sadly, sales representatives, in many cases, spend half their day complaining about their targets being too high, or the unjustified division of the sales territory, or being overworked vis-a-vis salary and sales incentives, being unhappy and demotivated with their commission structure and payout systems, and so on. It is a tough job and · As per a recently conducted The State Of The Global Workplace survey, sales, office staff, and construction workforce is the most disengaged employees in the workplace.

  • It mentions only a 12% engagement rate for these three sections of people.
  • Employee engagement in the sales team is a universal issue – at a given time, only one-third of your sales executives are engaged and motivated. On the other hand, things can be way more challenging when it comes to your extended sales team like distributors, agents, your franchised and dealer networks.

What makes channel incentive programs complicated is that your organization does not directly employ them – they are a part of a distribution network that resells your products and services. In many cases, they are selling not just your products but that of the competitors too. For dealers and agents, customer preferences make a difference, not your sales targets and profits as much. Hence, as a brand that aims to grow, you need to have a robust sales incentive program to have middlemen selling your products heartily. While you may want to directly reward and recognize the salespeople of your extended network for their hard work, the middlemen in between can act as a big resistance to an external-sponsored incentive program. Some, however, give all their support because they are unable to afford such top-of-the-line incentive programs.

Why Incentivizing and Engaging Your Sales Team is so crucial?

The relationship is simple – the sales team is responsible for earning revenues for the company. There is enough data to prove that only a motivated and engaged team can fetch the desired results that establish that the sales team’s motivational levels and performance are directly proportional.

While many organizations do not have properly defined sales team engagement modules in place, the others use very basic incentive modules without considering factors outside their control. Many use the generic employee engagement tools to drive the performance of their sales teams and incentive them. But, is it enough?

Unquestionably, automated employee recognition and sales incentive platforms are the need of the hour. A futuristic customized performance-driven solution can boost the sales team’s excitement levels and push them meaningfully out of their comfort zone.

But, what parameters should be assessed when choosing these platforms for seamless integration and yielding the desired results? In this article, we will cover the nine top features to look for when deciding on an employee recognition platform or a sales incentive tool.

1. Choose a highly secure, cloud-based solution that is SSO certified

Broadly speaking, businesses can choose from cloud variants versus on-premise platforms. The former is a better option for multiple reasons – easy management, minimal administration and maintenance hassles, numerous flexible and scalable options to choose from, minimal upfront investment, 24×7 accessibility, remote access, and more. Cloud-based tools are good to go with, especially for a scattered sales network, including channel partners, while ensuring that these are equipped with enhanced security features and compliance. It is advisable to look for a tool that is SSO-certified. Single Sign-on options come with innumerable benefits:

  • The application can be accessed from one portal with a single log-in. The user can access all the required resources from the portal or the app with a single click. Helps expedite tool access for one and all and saves time.
  • Removes the risk of typing or remembering passwords every time. Helps companies in strong password enforcement.
  • Both the above points stimulate end-user adoption rates of such applications making it apt for a heterogeneous sales structure.

2. Look for robust analytics and dashboards

A robust analytical dashboard helps in the rapid understanding of various pre-defined performance parameters and metrics. The dashboard aptly offers a synopsis, a true representation of how things are, offering a bird’s eye view. Besides analytical insight, such dashboards are interactive, helping managers and team leads effectively interpret the trends for deeper analysis of sales performance.

3. Insist on a native mobile app

Native mobile apps are designed and optimized for specific use and platform. Such apps are responsive, fast, and powered with robust APIs and programming languages for superior performance. One of the best aspects of native apps is the high-security features. The apps can be customized, offering the end-user a smooth and superior experience. The apps are intuitive and interactive, minimizing the end-user learning curve and fastening the adoption rate for your extended sales team. The usual complexities involved in being a part of a channel sales program get removed with easy-to-understand and easy-to-use native mobile app features.

4. Link to global rewards and fulfillment

An effective sales incentive program needs to have a power-driven and well-balanced reward and recognition scheme. The best way to inspire and motivate the team is to devise ways to reward them fairly, proportionally, aligned with their performance. While cash incentives are a great motivator, organizations can look at other global reward types. Some such options of non-cash rewards are:

  • Gift cards where the team strives for a physical prize.
  • Tech gadgets are another great option. With the millennial and Gen Z crowd spending handsomely on digital devices like smartwatches or tablets, offering such products as incentives can be a great motivator.
  • Perks like choosing from a variety of shopping and discount cards.
  • Learning opportunities where organizations can sponsor classes or workshops or training programs related to a specific hobby or skill of the best performers.

5. Explore budget management and tracking

For the sales team, targets and budgets are integral tools that help them maintain their performance. Instead of the conventional budgeting and tracking methods, it is good to consider an incentive or an employee engagement platform that helps them manage and track their budgets at a single platform.

6. Lean towards gamification and fun elements

More and more organizations use gamification strategies to coach their workforce and sales teams to remain focused on their goals. Gamification is strategies used in online games but can be used in non-game situations to inspire desired actions. The techniques used involve real-time coaching blended with fun elements and consistent feedback. The right platform will include a combo of well-designed incentives with sales contests. Focus on platforms with game mechanics for encouraging salespeople to fulfill high-value activities in the form of missions.

7. Ensure both leader and peer-to-peer recognition

Reward and recognition work best for all employees. While one cannot dispute the significance of monetary rewards, honoring people for their outstanding work or consistent performance is a good way to keep the team motivated. Look for a platform that applauds top performers on a social-media kind of a platform, posting compliments, feedback, and videos to recognize their efforts. People from all levels can use an effective platform to pat the performer, be it their team leaders, managers, CEOs, or peers.

8. Look for quick and easy setup

Complicated setup processes that require high-end technical skills can be a big demotivator. Choose platforms that can be installed within minutes and do not involve intricate processes. Simple, straightforward, easy, user-friendly, intuitive, and smart – these features are a must-have for an effective employee engagement platform.

9. Access to run programs and campaigns

Engaging employees and the sales team involves running different campaigns and programs by different teams and departments. Using a platform that offers easy access to employees at different levels to initiate, create, track and monitor specific campaigns gives a lot of flexibility to your workforce. Individual team leaders and managers who know their team members the best can design programs and implement the same to inspire their teams, being accountable for the campaign goals and the overall results.

These are nine generic ways to shortlist the best-suited sales incentive and employee engagement platforms for your organization. Businesses are different; they vary in scales and organizational goals and culture; industries differ, and their targeted customers differ. But, the common thread is the presence of inspired and motivated employees and salespeople. Since innate human nature remains constant, the way to motivate and engage your workforce, more or less, remains the same. Even though the factors that determine the right sales incentive and employee engagement platform are business-specific, these nine factors mentioned here can help you choose a robust platform that makes every team member intense, focused and persistent in their performance.

Considering that the customer is the king, and the sales team – in-house, franchised, or dealer network – are typically the first, second, and the repeated points of contact for your brand, it is crucial to know how effectively they are working in creating value in the customer’s mind. In other words, not letting the customer forget ‘you.’ Are they doing their job of listening to the customers effectively, and if they are, how fruitfully is the organization listening to them!

Employers expect their in-house sales team, including inside and outside sales, remote and onsite teams, to work at their optimal best! That is fair – after all, the team is being paid to do so. However, sadly, sales representatives, in many cases, spend half their day complaining about their targets being too high, or the unjustified division of the sales territory, or being overworked vis-a-vis salary and sales incentives, being unhappy and demotivated with their commission structure and payout systems, and so on. It is a tough job and · As per a recently conducted The State Of The Global Workplace survey, sales, office staff, and construction workforce is the most disengaged employees in the workplace.

  • It mentions only a 12% engagement rate for these three sections of people.
  • Employee engagement in the sales team is a universal issue – at a given time, only one-third of your sales executives are engaged and motivated. On the other hand, things can be way more challenging when it comes to your extended sales team like distributors, agents, your franchised and dealer networks.

What makes channel incentive programs complicated is that your organization does not directly employ them – they are a part of a distribution network that resells your products and services. In many cases, they are selling not just your products but that of the competitors too. For dealers and agents, customer preferences make a difference, not your sales targets and profits as much. Hence, as a brand that aims to grow, you need to have a robust sales incentive program to have middlemen selling your products heartily. While you may want to directly reward and recognize the salespeople of your extended network for their hard work, the middlemen in between can act as a big resistance to an external-sponsored incentive program. Some, however, give all their support because they are unable to afford such top-of-the-line incentive programs.

Why Incentivizing and Engaging Your Sales Team is so crucial?

The relationship is simple – the sales team is responsible for earning revenues for the company. There is enough data to prove that only a motivated and engaged team can fetch the desired results that establish that the sales team’s motivational levels and performance are directly proportional.

While many organizations do not have properly defined sales team engagement modules in place, the others use very basic incentive modules without considering factors outside their control. Many use the generic employee engagement tools to drive the performance of their sales teams and incentive them. But, is it enough?

Unquestionably, automated employee recognition and sales incentive platforms are the need of the hour. A futuristic customized performance-driven solution can boost the sales team’s excitement levels and push them meaningfully out of their comfort zone.

But, what parameters should be assessed when choosing these platforms for seamless integration and yielding the desired results? In this article, we will cover the nine top features to look for when deciding on an employee recognition platform or a sales incentive tool.

1. Choose a highly secure, cloud-based solution that is SSO certified

Broadly speaking, businesses can choose from cloud variants versus on-premise platforms. The former is a better option for multiple reasons – easy management, minimal administration and maintenance hassles, numerous flexible and scalable options to choose from, minimal upfront investment, 24×7 accessibility, remote access, and more. Cloud-based tools are good to go with, especially for a scattered sales network, including channel partners, while ensuring that these are equipped with enhanced security features and compliance. It is advisable to look for a tool that is SSO-certified. Single Sign-on options come with innumerable benefits:

  • The application can be accessed from one portal with a single log-in. The user can access all the required resources from the portal or the app with a single click. Helps expedite tool access for one and all and saves time.
  • Removes the risk of typing or remembering passwords every time. Helps companies in strong password enforcement.
  • Both the above points stimulate end-user adoption rates of such applications making it apt for a heterogeneous sales structure.

2. Look for robust analytics and dashboards

A robust analytical dashboard helps in the rapid understanding of various pre-defined performance parameters and metrics. The dashboard aptly offers a synopsis, a true representation of how things are, offering a bird’s eye view. Besides analytical insight, such dashboards are interactive, helping managers and team leads effectively interpret the trends for deeper analysis of sales performance.

3. Insist on a native mobile app

Native mobile apps are designed and optimized for specific use and platform. Such apps are responsive, fast, and powered with robust APIs and programming languages for superior performance. One of the best aspects of native apps is the high-security features. The apps can be customized, offering the end-user a smooth and superior experience. The apps are intuitive and interactive, minimizing the end-user learning curve and fastening the adoption rate for your extended sales team. The usual complexities involved in being a part of a channel sales program get removed with easy-to-understand and easy-to-use native mobile app features.

4. Link to global rewards and fulfillment

An effective sales incentive program needs to have a power-driven and well-balanced reward and recognition scheme. The best way to inspire and motivate the team is to devise ways to reward them fairly, proportionally, aligned with their performance. While cash incentives are a great motivator, organizations can look at other global reward types. Some such options of non-cash rewards are:

  • Gift cards where the team strives for a physical prize.
  • Tech gadgets are another great option. With the millennial and Gen Z crowd spending handsomely on digital devices like smartwatches or tablets, offering such products as incentives can be a great motivator.
  • Perks like choosing from a variety of shopping and discount cards.
  • Learning opportunities where organizations can sponsor classes or workshops or training programs related to a specific hobby or skill of the best performers.

5. Explore budget management and tracking

For the sales team, targets and budgets are integral tools that help them maintain their performance. Instead of the conventional budgeting and tracking methods, it is good to consider an incentive or an employee engagement platform that helps them manage and track their budgets at a single platform.

6. Lean towards gamification and fun elements

More and more organizations use gamification strategies to coach their workforce and sales teams to remain focused on their goals. Gamification is strategies used in online games but can be used in non-game situations to inspire desired actions. The techniques used involve real-time coaching blended with fun elements and consistent feedback. The right platform will include a combo of well-designed incentives with sales contests. Focus on platforms with game mechanics for encouraging salespeople to fulfill high-value activities in the form of missions.

7. Ensure both leader and peer-to-peer recognition

Reward and recognition work best for all employees. While one cannot dispute the significance of monetary rewards, honoring people for their outstanding work or consistent performance is a good way to keep the team motivated. Look for a platform that applauds top performers on a social-media kind of a platform, posting compliments, feedback, and videos to recognize their efforts. People from all levels can use an effective platform to pat the performer, be it their team leaders, managers, CEOs, or peers.

8. Look for quick and easy setup

Complicated setup processes that require high-end technical skills can be a big demotivator. Choose platforms that can be installed within minutes and do not involve intricate processes. Simple, straightforward, easy, user-friendly, intuitive, and smart – these features are a must-have for an effective employee engagement platform.

9. Access to run programs and campaigns

Engaging employees and the sales team involves running different campaigns and programs by different teams and departments. Using a platform that offers easy access to employees at different levels to initiate, create, track and monitor specific campaigns gives a lot of flexibility to your workforce. Individual team leaders and managers who know their team members the best can design programs and implement the same to inspire their teams, being accountable for the campaign goals and the overall results.

These are nine generic ways to shortlist the best-suited sales incentive and employee engagement platforms for your organization. Businesses are different; they vary in scales and organizational goals and culture; industries differ, and their targeted customers differ. But, the common thread is the presence of inspired and motivated employees and salespeople. Since innate human nature remains constant, the way to motivate and engage your workforce, more or less, remains the same. Even though the factors that determine the right sales incentive and employee engagement platform are business-specific, these nine factors mentioned here can help you choose a robust platform that makes every team member intense, focused and persistent in their performance.

success concept ladder with glowing light bulb

Sales Motivational Quotes You Can Use

Sales Motivational Quotes You Can Use

Sales Motivational Quotes You Can Use

The job of a salesperson is pretty difficult, to say the least. Of course, no job is easy and we do not mean that either. Marketing, production, HR, admin, Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Procurement, Logistics, Warehousing, Front Office, Back Office – none of these domains have ‘as easy as pie’ jobs. But since the sales team needs to fetch business, get leads, prospect, and convert them, the going gets tough most of the time.  

Dejection, rejection, failures, etc., etc., are a part and parcel of a salesperson’s everyday routine. The grinding mill can become pretty suffocating often. Sometimes, a simple sentence, a sales motivation message, or a phrase is enough to get your team charged up and ready for the kill. Even the most motivated and enthusiastic team member needs a bit of motivation, pumping up, from time to time. And those team members who are prone to experience a dip in their self-esteem regularly, need to be inspired more often.  

As a manager, it is a good idea to have a repository of ready-to-use motivational quotes for the sales team. These are inspirational and realistic quotes; quoted by industry leaders who have worked their way through the ladder fighting the tribulations faced by salespeople routinely.  

Sales motivation quotes 2022  

Motivational quotes for the sales team for success  

  1. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier  
  2. “I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela  
  3. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs  
  4. “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D Rockefeller  
  5. “Success looks a lot like failure up until the moment you break through the finish line.” – Dan Waldschmidt  

Inspirational sales quotes for attitude  

  1. “Don’t bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.” – Peter Dinklage  
  2. “Quality performance starts with a positive attitude.” – Jeffrey Gitomer  
  3. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time” – Thomas Edison  
  4. “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”- Zig Ziglar   
  5. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin  
  6. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King Jr.  
  7. “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willie Nelson  
  8. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee  
  9. “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” – Abraham Lincoln  
  10. “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” – Dale Carnegie  
  11. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”- Robert Collier   
  12. “Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.” – Gary Vaynerchuk  
  13. “How you sell is more important than what you sell.” – Andy Paul   
  14. “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t have to rely on luck or get a better territory. You just have to plan your work and work your plan. It works every time it’s tried.” – Kelly Riggs  
  15. “The focus from years of negative conditioning is to look at weaknesses or talents ranked lower instead of focusing on those strengths or talents ranked higher. To increase sales leadership, we must begin with knowing one’s talents not one’s weaknesses.” – Leanne Hoagland-Smith  
  16. “The top salespeople are usually the ones with the most activity; it doesn’t guarantee you will close more deals, but if you have no activity, you won’t be closing any deals.” – Colleen Honan  
  17. “What differentiates sellers today is their ability to bring fresh ideas.”- Jill Konrath  

Sales motivational quotes related to sales processes  

  1. “Treat objections as requests for further information.” – Brian Tracy  
  2. “You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” – Patricia Fripp  
  3. “If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, neither will your prospect.” – Frank Bettger “Buyers don’t believe anything you have to say to them about your product or service until they first believe in you.” – Deb Calvert  
  4. “It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter  
  5. Buyers do business with you, not with your company and not with your technology.” – Joanne Black  
  6. Humanize the sales process or perish – Steli Efti   
  7. “Sellers who listen to buyers carefully and then give them the missing ingredients – those are the ones who stand out.” – Deb Calvert  
  8. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”– Zig Ziglar    

Your sales team needs to be motivated, yes. Inspirational sales quotes are a wonderful way to pep them up. But for results, you might need some more things than simple quotes. Ensure that your sales incentive program is failproof. Find innovative ways to boost employee engagement. Use a high-tech platform like Buzz and My Incentives for result-oriented performances.  

The job of a salesperson is pretty difficult, to say the least. Of course, no job is easy and we do not mean that either. Marketing, production, HR, admin, Finance, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Procurement, Logistics, Warehousing, Front Office, Back Office – none of these domains have ‘as easy as pie’ jobs. But since the sales team needs to fetch business, get leads, prospect, and convert them, the going gets tough most of the time.  

Dejection, rejection, failures, etc., etc., are a part and parcel of a salesperson’s everyday routine. The grinding mill can become pretty suffocating often. Sometimes, a simple sentence, a sales motivation message, or a phrase is enough to get your team charged up and ready for the kill. Even the most motivated and enthusiastic team member needs a bit of motivation, pumping up, from time to time. And those team members who are prone to experience a dip in their self-esteem regularly, need to be inspired more often.  

As a manager, it is a good idea to have a repository of ready-to-use motivational quotes for the sales team. These are inspirational and realistic quotes; quoted by industry leaders who have worked their way through the ladder fighting the tribulations faced by salespeople routinely.  

Sales motivation quotes 2022  

Motivational quotes for the sales team for success  

  1. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” – Robert Collier  
  2. “I never lose. I either win or learn.” – Nelson Mandela  
  3. “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs  
  4. “If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.” – John D Rockefeller  
  5. “Success looks a lot like failure up until the moment you break through the finish line.” – Dan Waldschmidt  

Inspirational sales quotes for attitude  

  1. “Don’t bother telling the world you are ready. Show it. Do it.” – Peter Dinklage  
  2. “Quality performance starts with a positive attitude.” – Jeffrey Gitomer  
  3. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time” – Thomas Edison  
  4. “Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”- Zig Ziglar   
  5. “If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.” – Seth Godin  
  6. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” – Martin Luther King Jr.  
  7. “Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones, you’ll start having positive results.” – Willie Nelson  
  8. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” – Bruce Lee  
  9. “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.” – Abraham Lincoln  
  10. “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” – Dale Carnegie  
  11. “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.”- Robert Collier   
  12. “Please think about your legacy, because you’re writing it every day.” – Gary Vaynerchuk  
  13. “How you sell is more important than what you sell.” – Andy Paul   
  14. “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room. You don’t have to rely on luck or get a better territory. You just have to plan your work and work your plan. It works every time it’s tried.” – Kelly Riggs  
  15. “The focus from years of negative conditioning is to look at weaknesses or talents ranked lower instead of focusing on those strengths or talents ranked higher. To increase sales leadership, we must begin with knowing one’s talents not one’s weaknesses.” – Leanne Hoagland-Smith  
  16. “The top salespeople are usually the ones with the most activity; it doesn’t guarantee you will close more deals, but if you have no activity, you won’t be closing any deals.” – Colleen Honan  
  17. “What differentiates sellers today is their ability to bring fresh ideas.”- Jill Konrath  

Sales motivational quotes related to sales processes  

  1. “Treat objections as requests for further information.” – Brian Tracy  
  2. “You don’t close a sale; you open a relationship if you want to build a long-term, successful enterprise.” – Patricia Fripp  
  3. “If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, neither will your prospect.” – Frank Bettger “Buyers don’t believe anything you have to say to them about your product or service until they first believe in you.” – Deb Calvert  
  4. “It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.” – Mark Hunter  
  5. Buyers do business with you, not with your company and not with your technology.” – Joanne Black  
  6. Humanize the sales process or perish – Steli Efti   
  7. “Sellers who listen to buyers carefully and then give them the missing ingredients – those are the ones who stand out.” – Deb Calvert  
  8. “Every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.”– Zig Ziglar    

Your sales team needs to be motivated, yes. Inspirational sales quotes are a wonderful way to pep them up. But for results, you might need some more things than simple quotes. Ensure that your sales incentive program is failproof. Find innovative ways to boost employee engagement. Use a high-tech platform like Buzz and My Incentives for result-oriented performances.