What You Should Know About Sales Incentive Plans

What is a Sales Incentive Plan?

A sales incentive plan is a very popular and effective tool which managers and business owners use to motivate and reward a salesperson or sales staff to meet established sales goals, and can further reward them for exceeding them.

It is a time-proven, successful “add-on” to a sales person’s standard compensation.  A sales incentive can take a variety of forms, anything from non-monetary compensation like travel incentive plan or a sales performance incentive fund, also known as an SPIF.

What are some examples of sales incentive plans used to motivate salespeople?

Ultimately, it is up to the business owner or manager to establish both the sales goals and the sales incentives types they wish to use to motivate their sales team.  Some examples include:

  • Setting Sales Targets and Quotas

Make a saleperson’s pay variable based upon their sales results. The most historically popular sales incentive is the sales target-based incentive. It helps to motivate your sales team while rewarding performance.
 
  • Team Bonuses

As the name implies, compensation based upon the sales team’s total effort.  A winning technique when more than one salesperson is aboard.

  • Giving the Salesperson Pre-Sale Incentives

For long sales, that may take time to close, some businesses offer milestone payments as a deal goes through it’s various stages until its conclusion.

  • Rewarding for Milestones/Action Incentives Even if a Deal Doesn’t Consummate

Even if the buyer may walk from a deal, the salesperson is rewarded based on their actions to maximize sales; a very progressive way of understanding the action and energy have value, and deals may die for various reasons outside the salesperson’s control.

  • Providing Paid Sales Staff Training as an Incentive

Incentivize staff by adding training to their reward, building more value and expertise for the employee while giving them this value as part of their compensation.

  • Titles and Awards

People still respond favorably to recognition and public acknowledgement. With the advent of digital media and marketing, this recognition can mean even more to a sales person than posting a plaque in an office. 

  • Paid Time Off or Products from The Company

Pretty self-explanatory from the title, but incentives which take other forms.  Group travel incentive programs feed our desire to travel on the company dime while building comradery amongst your sale team.

How do you create an incentive sales plan?

The easy answer?  Call Cataline Sales Incentives today at (888) 337-2574 or contact us today online.

What Will be The Steps You will take to Create A Sales Incentive Program?

  • We work with you to audit/analyze your current situation, collaborate on identifying your goals and objectives.
  • We help determine what the employees want and set earnings goals/thresholds to meet or exceed those objectives.
  • Based upon these factors, we work with you todetermine which incentive or incentives is/are most appropriate to meet your objectives. 
  • We then set the metrics and tweak the sales incentive program as necessary, adapting based upon what we are all seeing in real time.

At Cataline Sales Incentives, we’ve developed and implemented sales team incentive plans for over 20 years and helped make our clients millions of dollars in what would have been unrealized revenue.  Data has proven over and over that sales incentives plans not only work, but are a key pillar in a company’s sales strategy. Compensation can take many forms, not just cash for results.

Our sales incentives programs require that you do very little.  They are turnkey processes that can easily be implemented by your company’s sales division. In addition, we have had enormous success implementing and managing programs like Employee Travel Prizes and Company Sales Trips. Not only will these sales incentives programs motivate your sales team, they will also be recruiting tools for future prospects and attracting top new talent.  In 2021, a salary alone won’t do it.  Top sales people are in demand, and we are here to help you get the results you seek.