Setting incentives for your sales team can be a way to motivate them to go the extra mile. It can be difficult to align your sales team’s performance with what your goals are. It is even more difficult to meet your goals when your incentives are based on criteria that doesn’t directly impact generating more revenue.
For example, if incentives are based on the number of calls made or appointments booked, it can be easy to game the system. Further, this could lead to a negative reputation with your prospects when sales reps call too often and send too many emails.
As the leader of a sales team, it is your responsibility to develop a great incentive plan that not only motivates employees to perform well, but also leads to more revenue for the company. Below are 4 tips to develop an incentive plan that will encourage your team to meet goals that really help your company.
Commission Tiers
Use commission tiers that increase depending on the amount of revenue brought in. This will encourage your sales team to keep pounding the pavement to get more sales each cycle to increase the commission value of each deal brought in.
Bonuses
Throw in additional bonuses for upselling additional services or getting a client to pay for a year upfront (instead of paying monthly, for example). Also, consider implementing quarterly bonuses when sales reps meet specific goals.
Encourage Service Upgrades
If you pay a commission only on the customer’s first year of service, you could offer an additional commission to the sales rep if they can get the customer to upgrade to a higher tier service for the next year. The commission can be paid based on the additional revenue that is brought in by the customer upgrading their service. This helps to ensure that the sales rep is doing everything they can to make sure the customer is happy so they will upgrade.
Pay Commissions Based on What the Customer Pays
Discounts can be great to get a customer who is on the fence to commit; but the commission should reflect this reduced revenue sale. For example, if the sales rep offers a free month of service, they shouldn’t get paid commission for that month of the contract. If the customer cancels after two months, they should only receive commission for that two month time period. This will help to avoid over-promising and under-delivering; if the customer cancels after a few months than this will affect their pay check.
Adapt these tips to your company’s sales model to help create an effective and motivated sales force.
We would love to hear from you! What are some ways your company has created incentive plans that helped to increase your revenue?