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Motivation@Work: Recognizing Your Front-Line Sales Force When the Chips Are Down
October 05, 2009
By Tommy Lee Hayes-Brown and Lisa Massiello
The sales industry has been hit particularly hard in today’s tough economy. With people keeping a tighter grip on their purse strings and resisting the temptation to splurge or add extra expenses, motivating your sales force to sell is a challenge. Many recognition professionals may be feeling the sting of the economy as companies cut budgets, especially in the sales arena.
A large portion of the sales industry uses only cash and elaborate trips as forms of recognition. While these incentives can be effective short-term solutions for reaching specific goals, for long-term employee engagement timely and meaningful recognition programs that tie in daily performance with corporate objectives are needed.
Go beyond just the highest sales metric and use a variety of meaningful sales metrics to recognize a variety of sales contributions.
Employees should be recognized for daily work, projects, and team contributions that move the company toward goals. There are plenty of employees who do not regularly make the top producer lists, yet they make contributions to the bottom line and keep the company successful. Recognizing only the highest sellers or using total sales as the sole measure of success can leave the majority of your staff feeling deflated and unmotivated. Recognizing key sales metrics such as improvement over the prior year, retention of clients, and up-selling of existing clients can be one way to pay tribute to those who do not regularly attain top sales numbers.
Recognizing more often yields better results more often.
Consider dividing up your current yearly incentive program to monthly or even weekly initiatives to motivate your sales associates more often. It is psychologically easier to imagine oneself winning a monthly sales program compared to a yearly one. Think about an employee of the month program versus an employee of the year program; while both recognize achievement, the monthly program has 11 more opportunities to recognize employees.
In addition to sales metrics, recognize behaviors that mirror company core values.
The sales team often can be left out of recognition that the service side of the house depends upon. Collaboration, problem-solving, innovation, community service, and self-improvement are just a few of the core values that may be important to your company, yet oftentimes the sales team does not get recognized for these important core values.
Use rewards other than cash to recognize the sales team.
Sales campaigns with prizes are useful, timely, and often are perceived as having higher value than cash-based campaigns. Cash will be spent and forgotten, but an MP3 player or a bike can be enjoyed for a long time.
Keep recognition going when times are tough.
When sales are down, an effective recognition program can help bridge the gap. Now is when you need your employees focused and engaged the most and is not the time to cut back or stop your recognition program. Keeping (or increasing) the amount of recognition in your company during hard times sends a direct message to your employees that they are important and that their value does not diminish or increase with the stock market.
Lisa Massiello, CRP, is the new president of Recognition Professionals International. Tommy Lee Hayes-Brown, CRP, is vice president of RPI. They host the popular Motivation Chats at RPI’s Annual Conference. To learn more, visit www.recognition.org.
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