While there may be only one team that’s officially called “sales,” in reality, every team is ultimately working toward the same goal: finding customers to buy your product. To that end, the idea of creating programs that offer incentives to boost sales shouldn’t be reserved solely for the sales team.
Employee rewards across the company are an important part of building a positive culture in the workplace, keeping team morale high, and recruiting and retaining top talent. But consider adding these three teams to any additional sales incentive programs you have.
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Without the product teams, your salespeople have nothing to sell. You first have to offer a product that people want to buy, whether that’s physical items or software or services. Product teams may not have benchmarks that are as easily quantifiable as sales, and the way you decide to structure their incentives will differ greatly based on the nature of the product you sell. But it’s still important to set goals and reward their continued work and innovation. Perhaps you offer incentives based simply on the successful release of a new feature. Or for a software company, maybe you offer incentives based on the number of bugs found and resolved.
All those sales leads come from somewhere, and that somewhere is often the marketing team. That means any rewards you offer to your marketers are, in the end, incentives to boost sales. How you structure your marketing rewards depends on the size of your team, since benchmarks for larger teams will likely vary by role, as well as how you measure your marketing success. Possibilities include:
No matter how good your sales teams are, if your company isn’t providing great customer service, you will have trouble hitting your sales goals. Customer service and client success teams have a huge role in retaining existing customers, obviously, but also in attracting new ones. Customers often leave online reviews based on their support experiences. Since 91% of customers report that they read reviews before deciding to purchase a product or service, what people say in those reviews is of utmost importance. Incentivize your customer service teams with benchmarks such as retention rates, post-support survey ratings, and number of resolved tickets.
Building a sales incentives strategy must reach beyond just the sales team. Despite their individual roles, every employee has the goal of helping the company succeed, which almost always comes down to the bottom line. Operations teams are looking to increase efficiency and trim costs. Human resources teams are dedicated to recruiting the best candidates to help further the company’s mission. Even legal teams are working to protect your brand and your transactions. As you set up or review your employee rewards programs, just remember that incentives to boost sales stretch far beyond your sales organization.
Offering employee rewards isn’t only about driving better performance. Read our blog to find out how the right types of rewards will help promote your teams’ well-being.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
Hannah is a reformed journalist who has more than 15 years of experience and now focuses on content marketing for innovative tech companies.
