What are the best sales incentives to inspire your team?

The best way to inspire your sales team members to be engaged, committed, and productive is by rewarding them when they demonstrate these behaviors. By offering desirable sales incentives as prizes to those team members who are consistently engaged, who routinely achieve their quotas, and reliably generate a high volume of sales, you’ll be able to transform your team into an unstoppable sales machine. But what are the best sales incentives to offer?

In this article, we will go over what sales incentives are and why they work. We’ll also look at some of the very best sales incentives that you can offer your team members to encourage the highest levels of productivity, engagement, and sales revenue.

What are sales incentives?

Sales incentives are basically prizes that you award to sales associates for achieving objectives, such as a certain number of sales. By gamifying your sales teams and turning your sales process into a friendly competition that awards cash and prizes, you will be able to turn an otherwise stressful environment into a fun and exciting place full of productive, high-performing sales talent.

Why should you offer sales incentives?

Offering sales incentives is arguably the very best method by which to foster a high-performance sales environment. When your sales associates learn about the various prizes and rewards that they stand to gain by performing well, they will be inspired to work harder and achieve the best that they are capable of with the hopes of gaining something such as a cash bonus or a physical prize.

The amount of money that you invest in sales incentives is, in almost all cases, well worth it, as sales gamification has a net positive effect on team engagement, productivity, and overall sales performance. You can offer various sales incentives as prizes to employees that exceed their targets and achieve the desired results.

Let’s go over some of the best sales incentives which have been proven to be effective motivators for gamified sales teams reaching for the upper echelons of high performance.

The top seven sales incentives

Keep in mind that the following sales incentives are not the only sales incentives; feel free to get creative and come up with prizes that will inspire your employees to increase their engagement and double down on their sales efforts. That said, the following incentives are a great place to start.

1. Money

By far the best sales incentive if you want to get your team excited about succeeding, and making sales is a monetary reward. Offering a one-time lump sum cash bonus to employees who achieve a certain target is a fantastic way to bring about a little friendly competition amongst your sales team staff.

Offering a significant cash bonus to the person who makes the most sales this month will almost certainly result in increased productivity from everyone on the team. Monetary sales incentives can be given out on a day to day, week to week, month to month, or yearly basis, but prizes given out weekly or monthly seem to be the most effective motivators.

2. Prizes

Other than monetary rewards, physical prizes are the next best thing and can certainly encourage your sales team staff to put forth a great effort with the hopes of winning an awesome prize. Keep in mind that company-branded knick-knacks are not awesome prizes, much to the dismay of many unsuccessful sales managers.

The key is to offer prizes that are actually valuable and that will truly excite your sales team staff. Electronics such as TVs, tablets, smartphones, cameras, and other such devices make great prizes and are excellent sales incentives for promoting engagement within your gamified sales unit. Other great prizes might include home appliances or gift cards which are always a hit with everyone.

3. Tickets

Tickets are an exciting option. Offering your sales associate’s the chance to win seats to an upcoming concert, sporting event, musical, or other such venue is a great way to encourage active participation from each member on your team; just make sure that the event is one that will be of interest to everybody otherwise you will risk enticing some of your staff to put in an extra effort but other team members who have no interest in the event will likely feel unincentivized and may even feel left out.

4. Services

Services can be a fantastic sales incentive especially monthly or yearly services such as free meals for a month or house cleaning services for a year. These are larger prizes that you might want to give out quarterly to the sales associate who registered the greatest volume of sales over that period of time. Other services that you may want to consider include spa packages, massages, and other such services, which are less expensive and can be given out as weekly or monthly rewards.

5. Leisure

This category of sales incentives includes a number of powerful motivators such as paid time off, additional vacation days, and other such prizes that allow team members to spend time away from the office when they would otherwise have to work. These can be small awards such as an extra-long weekend, or they can be large rewards given out to the top-performing sales associates for the year, like all-expenses-paid getaways or vacations.

6. Recognition

Believe it or not, recognition is a fantastic incentive that you can offer your sales team staff when they perform well, meet their quotas, and exceed expectations. Now to be clear, you should always recognize when your sales staff is doing a fantastic job, but the types of incentives we’re talking about with this category I’ve rewards goes beyond just mentioning the great job that they’ve done in a Monday morning meeting.

Some great options include a plaque on the wall with their picture, unemployed of the month award, an upgraded nameplate for their desk, or anything else that will make them feel as though their contribution has been recognized and they’re a valuable member of the team will not only inspire your sales associates to try their hardest, and produce their best results, but it will also increase their engagement, performance, and productivity.

7. Personal Development

Most people in general, but especially in sales, seek to improve themselves through personal development and educational enrichment. By offering sales incentives that are geared towards personal development, you will be able to inspire those teammates who already desire to improve; this can have fantastic results for everybody involved.

Some ideas for personal development sales incentives that you can include in your sales gamification schema include:

• Free or paid training courses
• Seminars, workshops, and conferences
• Tuition reimbursement
• Career advancement

Basically, you are making an investment in the employees who are already performing well for you, which is a win-win scenario in almost all cases.

Summary

Incentivizing your sales team is perhaps the most effective way to ensure that they are motivated and committed to producing the best results. By offering sales incentives that are attractive and enticing, you will be able to generate more engagement from your employees, resulting in more sales and a more enjoyable overall work environment.