Creative Ideas for Rewarding Your Staff and Keeping Them Motivated

Does your sales team reach their monthly and annual sales goals? Do they feel motivated to take on new projects and clients? Are you seeing continuous progress and success? 

As a leader in the workplace, it’s your responsibility to motivate your team in the best way you can. For most businesses, the sales team is the driving force for revenue. Sales reps call clients, meet with prospects, and close deals on your company’s behalf. 

Consider how you can raise the stakes when laying out a strategy to keep your team engaged and motivated. What would motivate your team to go above and beyond? What incentives can you offer that gives them that extra push throughout the day?

We’re here to walk you through the rewards and incentives you can use to motivate them throughout the workweek.

Here’s our list of staff reward ideas to help with sales motivation:

The Importance of Rewards and Incentives

A recent study found that 88% of employees feel that companies should reward employees for their hard work. Rewards and incentives are tools your company can use to push your team to do more than just the bare minimum. 

When there’s a reward or incentive on the table, sales reps will be more motivated and engaged with their workweek tasks. They’ll send a few extra emails to prospects, book additional demo calls with customers, and continue to stay on their everyday workweek tasks. 

To truly understand the importance of rewards and incentives, you must step into your team’s shoes. What would help motivate you during the work week? Is there a reward that you’d find the most appealing? If you knew there was a reward on the table, would it push you to go the extra mile during your work day?

Rewards and incentives are powerful tools you can leverage to push your team to reach and exceed their goals. Whether it’s a small reward for a weekly competition or an end-of-the-year reward for the top performer – you can use these incentives to your advantage.

10 Creative Ideas for Rewards and Incentives

Ready to start offering rewards and incentives to your team? You’ve come to the right place. We created a list of 10 creative reward ideas you can use as inspiration to improve sales performance measures.

Here are our top 10 ideas:

Cash Prizes

Let’s face it – everyone could use some extra cash! A cash prize or bonus is a great incentive that keeps your team members on track to meet their goals. If they know that additional income is possible, they close a few more deals or book some extra demos – they’ll keep pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and looking for new opportunities. 

With cash prizes, you can use them in a few different ways. Here are some of our favorite ways:

• Sales reps get bonuses for reaching their goal for the month
• Competitions and sales contest themes 
• Group cash prizes for team activities
• Cash rewards for the most improved, highest revenue, or the most new deals
• Give your team a commission percentage based on how much they bring in

Get creative and think outside of the box! Just because you choose to go with a cash prize as your incentive doesn’t mean it needs to be boring. 

All Expenses Paid For Vacations

If you’re looking for a fun, end-of-the-year reward that will excite your team – we have the perfect option for you. This is a somewhat expensive and “big” incentive you can use to motivate your team to stay ahead of their sales goals. Every call your sales managers make, email they send, and appointment they book with a new client – they’ll remember that reward is at the end of the tunnel. 

For this reward to work, you’ll always want to keep it top of mind, especially if you won’t reward the winner until the end of the year. Don’t forget to remind your team regularly of the reward and to bring it up during meetings. You can use leaderboards and progress bars to show your team how close they are to winning the ultimate year-end prize and keep them motivated throughout the year.

Gift Cards 

Gift cards are an easy-to-get, crowd favorite. Whether it’s a gift card to a fancy restaurant, Target, or Amazon – when you choose to go with gift cards, you can feel confident that everyone will find a use for it. The incredible part about this incentive is that you can use it throughout the year. 

Whether it’s the reward for a mini competition, your team’s monthly revenue numbers, or a weekly challenge you put together to improve company morale. You can choose how much the reward will cost your company with gift cards. Whether it’s $10 or $100 -it will motivate your team to go the extra mile!

Extra Vacation Days

We can all use some extra vacation days, right? Extra vacation days give your team members freedom. It allows them to travel with friends and family and enjoy some much-needed time to themselves after putting in hard work for your company.

When you use extra vacation days as an incentive, you’re sure to spark some friendly competition among your team. Everyone will stay motivated between 9-5 and continue to push themselves to do more – knowing they might get a few extra days off that year! 

With extra vacation days, we recommend creating a tiered system where everyone is a “winner” For example, you can give three days of PTO to the person who brings in the most sales for some time and two days to anyone that comes in second, and so on. When you spread the incentives, everyone feels like a “winner.”

Self Care Services 

When your team makes time for themselves, they’ll be happier where they work. Using free massages, pedicures, and spa days is a great incentive that encourages self-care and motivates your team. 

Throw an Office Party 

Want to celebrate the entire team? Throw them an office party! An office party is a perfect reward for a successful month, quarter, or year. During the celebration, you can recognize the top performers, hand out additional rewards, and remind your team that all of their hard work and contributions to the workplace never go unnoticed. 

Consider hosting a virtual happy hour if you have a hybrid or fully remote team. You can send your team free snacks and drinks they can enjoy while getting some much-needed time to step away from their desks to connect with their coworkers. 

Host a Company Picnic 

Looking for a fun-filled summer activity to celebrate your team? A company picnic is the perfect idea. For this reward, we recommend giving your team a half day. 

You can gather your team outside at lunch for some much-needed team bonding and socializing. You can provide free drinks and food while recognizing the top performers for their hard work.

Branded Apparel 

Whether it’s a jacket with your company logo or a custom-printed tumbler – branded items are always a top choice for a reward or incentive. These items are functional and useful. When you choose to go with branded promotional items, you can feel confident your workforce will appreciate and use them regularly. 

We recommend branding high-end or well-known branded items like North Face, Yeti, or Nike for the best results. This will increase the value of the reward and be more appealing to your team members.

Charitable Gifts

If you’re looking for a fun way to give back to a good cause, consider inspiring your team by giving out charitable gifts on their behalf. To do this, have everyone on your sales team pick a charity of their choice. If they reach their sales goals for the specific time period, your company will donate to the charity. This is a reward-driven challenge that works great during the holiday season. 

Concert Tickets 

Is there a big name coming to town? Consider buying front-row tickets you can use as an incentive! This is a great way to inspire your team and encourage them to take some time off to enjoy a concert with their friends or family. 

Motivate Your Team With Spinify

Rewards and incentives are so much more than free items you give to your team members. They’re tools your business can use to motivate your sales reps and keep them focused on a common goal. Whether you’re giving out cash prizes or extra PTO – these small initiatives can drive the best results. 

However, for a reward system to be successful, you need to stay consistent, communicate the rewards, and continue to keep your team inspired. With sales gamification tools like Spinify, you can motivate your team using game elements. Our platform uses game design elements like leaderboards, progress bars, and other tools you can use to keep your team engaged with their workweek activities. 

Spinify’s powerful AI-generation feature, Sidekick, will even help you generate prize suggestions that your team can redeem in our Spinify Rewards store. Every aspect of our tool is tailored to meet your company’s and your budget’s unique needs.

By integrating our sales gamification software into your workweek, you can help your team visualize their success and continue to push them to reach and exceed their goals. Our platform also tracks your team’s KPI performance in real-time, so you don’t need to stay ahead of their sales numbers manually. 

Ready to gamify your workplace? Book a demo today to learn more.