Beyond Bonuses: Fresh Ideas to Fire Up Your Sales Team

Effective sales incentives are the lifeblood of a successful sales team. This is according to the experts over at Motivation Excellence. Nevertheless, coming up with fresh, creative ways to motivate and reward your star salespeople can be challenging for any sales leader. Cash bonuses and gift cards are nice, but they only go so far. At a certain point, they lose their appeal and motivating power. So how do you fire up your team and convince them to keep going full throttle, especially during slow seasons? Use these innovative suggestions to energize even your most experienced representatives.

Engage Their Competitive Spirit

Competitive personalities thrive in fast-paced sales roles and contests tap right into their drive to win. Instead of individual rewards, create teams and run sales competitions to capture your team’s interest. “Men vs. women” showdowns or dividing reps by region triggers their instinct to beat the other side. Run short contests over a few weeks with daily leaderboards to reveal which team is in the lead. Offer the winning team prizes like a half-day off on a Friday or tickets to a local sporting event. Rotating teams and matchups with each contest prevents the same people from dominating long term.

Money Still Matters

While a good sales contest can spark some excitement, cash and prizes should still play a role in any well-rounded sales incentive program. Use spot bonuses throughout the year to catch reps by surprise and acknowledge standout achievements as they happen. For instance, give $100 on the spot to the first person to hit their monthly target and make a big show of the unexpected over-achiever bonus or reward an entire team with an early dismissal and lunch on the company if they hit a collective stretch target. Spontaneous bonuses reinforce goals and demonstrate that money is still a meaningful motivator.

Gamify Goals And Metrics

Inject an element of surprise and friendly competition into your sales tracking methods. Software tools and apps that gamify performance metrics with points, levels, challenges and leaderboards turn the mundane task of updating CRM and sales data into an engaging experience with a fun twist. As reps log information and record new deals, they unlock badges and virtual rewards, which tap into people’s natural drive to achieve and level up. Visible rankings also allow your team to see how they stack up against peers, motivating everyone to aim higher and surpass the next rep on the board.

Get Creative With Personalized Rewards

Explore distinctive prizes and perks aligned to what actually motivates each of your sales reps beyond run-of-the-mill monetary bonuses. Does one rep love football? Gift them tickets when their favorite team is in town. Is another obsessed with true crime mysteries? Give them a subscription to a streaming service to indulge their hobby. Personalized and unexpected rewards that tie into their unique interests make them feel valued as individuals, not just sales tickets. By paying attention to their personal lives and interests outside of work, you show you value them as individuals, and not simply as employees.

Conclusion

Motivating a seasoned sales team takes some creativity and effort beyond conventional sales incentives, like spot bonuses or gift cards. Contests, games, celebrations, perks and gestures that tap into competitive drive, individual personalities and informal acknowledgment of effort combine to reignite your team’s vigor. Experiment with the incentives mix to determine what resonates most with your team and don’t be afraid to change things up if energy drops. An incentivized, motivated sales team translates directly into happier customers and healthier revenue.