It’s impossible to talk about non-sales motivation without including sales in the discussion. At the end of the day, every activity in an organization should be making some contribution to the sale of a product. And the sales role is not what it used to be. Today, the salesperson functions as a resource coordinator, account strategist, and overall steward of the customer relationship. More importance is being placed on account profitability, strategic achievements, effective account management, and customer satisfaction.

All of this is increasing the importance of non-sales positions in the sales process. Over the past 10 years, most companies with incentive programs have used them to motivate non-sales employees along with sales personnel. While that has been a positive step, simply offering incentives to non-sales staff is not enough. Incentives that link the contributions of sales support staff and other departments—such as customer service, technical support, and product specialists—have to be connected to sales goals.

Non-sales employees generally don’t see all the work sales-
people do; most feel they bear the burden of special handling, extra service, and last-minute rushes. Creating an incentive program that recognizes non-sales contributions to the sales process is a way to gain the same commitment from both sales and non-sales employees.

It also helps to focus everyone on the fact that whatever their jobs are, the ultimate goal of their efforts is making the sale. Sometimes, employees can forget that their jobs depend on sales success. Here’s a seven-step outline for designing a non-sales program that can be tied to the goals of a sales program.

1. Choose a measurable objective from your sales plan that involves special handling from the greatest number of departments. For instance, a measurement for the number of service contracts sold or renewed could be directly tied to the administrative staff’s productivity goals for processing the contracts and the benchmarks for field service reps.

2. Set the budget and list the potential areas where you want to motivate the sales force with incentives and estimate the investment required to achieve results in those areas. Then, list possible tasks and functions the non-sales ersonnel need to perform to achieve success in those areas, and estimate the amount you are willing to extract from your budget to reward them.

The type, value, and source of your incentives will depend on your past experience, company policies, and your own creativity. For example, a manager can reward ustomer service representatives for passing on leads to the sales force.

3. Meet with senior management for approval of a shared incentive program and request resources for the program. The more commitment you gain from the top of the organization, the more likely the plan will succeed.

4. Meet with department heads individually or in a group. Seek high interest and commitment. Exclude passive involvement; a shared incentive program with commitment from all those involved is critical to success.

5. Present your ideas and suggest a second meeting date and a program kickoff date. Seek participants’ ideas and try to find ways to tie their departmental goals into the organization’s sales objectives and which can be measured and rewarded.

6. Work independently with all of the departments to build a final program that retains an ultimate focus on sales while defining the role of other objectives (such as quality, safety, productivity, response time, etc).

7. At the second meeting, finalize a program with all the involved departments. Contributing a portion of the budget to incentives for their departments makes a strong statement that you appreciate their efforts and realize their contributions to your objectives.

But that doesn’t mean that the budget for the entire program comes out of the sales budget. If the program is funded entirely by the sales department, it decreases the likelihood of gaining real commitment from the other department managers. Sharing the cost of the incentive program introduces an entrepreneurial commitment to all the departments. This page is protected by Copyright laws. Do Not Copy