Methods to drive sales behavior through incentivesPosted by Alexis Powell on May 22nd, 2017 Does your business enterprise believe in the concept of incentives? If an organisation is sales-centric, it is extremely important for them to embrace the viewpoint that incentives have an innate ability to drive up everything- innovation, dreams, progress, and competition. In brief, it can be said that incentives possess the ability to move in a forward direction. Let us discuss some of the best methods through which we can drive sales behavior. • Build a certain level of trust with the sales executives A growth-oriented business enterprise shouldn’t just email their sales executives and agents working in lead generation services informing about their compensation statements. This could very well lead to a case of shadow accounting. Instead, it is highly recommended that we showcase full transparency about how much money they have made, and could have made. It is imperative to show them that we expect the best results for them as it would lead to a prosperous future for both the business enterprise as well as the individual in question. It is also recommended to evaluate their performance based on key performance metrics that align with our business strategy. • Monetary incentives are of paramount importance Sales executives should be given the leverage to forecast their incomes at every possible step of the sales cycle, be it an opportunity level within our CRM system or later when they build a specific quote for their prospective clients in their systems. It is important to note that incentives entrenched in the sales cycle has the potential to infuse a sense of urgency in their sales activities and drives cross-selling and up-selling prospective. To summarise it in brief, intertwining incentives along with fixed compensation can be a big boost to closing bigger deals quickly. • Payment of incentives at regular intervals How long does it take for a business enterprise to calculate and payout the commission earned by the sales executives and agents working in lead generation services vertical? We have witnessed several business entities that take several months to calculate their incentives on a spreadsheet. If an organisation takes so long to process the incentives, sales executives often tend to get frustrated and are often distracted from their core job of selling and rather divert their attention towards ensuring that they get paid for every deal that they crack. In the age of instant results, a business entity must consider paying out commissions on a monthly, weekly, or in some cases, even on a daily basis. Experts from various industries agree that paying sales executives on a daily basis can be instrumental for organisations to retain the best sales talent. • Judicious utilisation of SFIPs Sales performance incentive funds, commonly known as SFIPs, are often top management’s go-to solution to garner results at a relatively quicker pace. It is a tool that is recurrently used by many organisations to push a product launch or quicker movement of inventory among multiple locations. They are also used by companies to gather maximum amount of leads from executives working towards delivering proficient lead generation services. It must be noted that clarity of objective, sales enablement activities and timing hold the key to making SFIP a successful initiative. Communication of goal of our SFIP in a clear manner and that too in early part of the quarter enables our sales force with the right collateral, and also gives them enough time to emerge successful in their endeavors. We can comprehend from the above discussion that incentivising our sales force is extremely vital to quicken up the sales growth in a business entity. These act as major drivers and motivates the employees to go the extra mile to achieve organisational objectives. Like it? Share it!More by this author |