7 years ago
February 21, 2017

5 Creative Sales Incentives for Your Sales Team

If your sales team needs a boost, a little incentive might do the trick. Check out these creative sales incentives for your sales team. Read on.

Rhys Metler

When your sales people are in a slump and aren’t meeting their sales targets, it’s up to you to keep them motivated. And when the praise, high-fives, and recognition aren’t working, it’s time to look into creative sales incentives.

When it comes to motivating your sales team, money isn’t everything. Using fun, goal-oriented and creative sales incentives can create friendly competition and give your reps the boost they need to work harder.

1. Fantasy Sports 

People love partaking in fantasy sports, for hockey and football and other types of sports, so why not bring that type of competition to your sales department? Your reps build teams and act as players, working together and earning points for everything they do, from increasing pipeline to closing a deal. Share the results on a leaderboard that’s visible to everyone. By placing players in teams, you can create an environment of pressure and encouragement from peers. To win, all players much push each other to outperform the other teams.

2. Reward with Toys

Wouldn’t you love to have a ping pong table, massage chair, or beanbag chairs in the office? Your sales reps will. Instead of rewarding them with money for individually winning a contest, which usually ends up going to the same reps every time, reward them as a team for meeting or surpassing a certain goal by giving them toys and games for the office that everyone can enjoy.

3. Reward Rejection       

Sounds crazy, right? But sales is filled with rejection and this can be intensely demoralizing. If your sales people are using outbound cold calling as a selling technique, then they might procrastinate and not make as many calls as they could because they don’t want to hear yet another “no.” But you know that the more calls are made, the higher the possibility of getting a “yes.” To get your sales reps motivated to make those cold calls, reward the rejections, too. Track every time someone gets a “no” and the person that received the most rejection gets a gift card. The point here is that the more “no’s” you get, the closer you are to getting a “yes.” Rewarding rejection can significantly increase your outbound calls. Just make sure that your reward for actually closing a deal is much higher, so people still strive to make sales.

4. Free Pass to Come in Late or Leave Early

Work-life balance is important and sales reps are often on the road, working all night long, and coming in early for a meeting. They would love to get an extra hour to themselves on a workday to sleep in or beat traffic to spend more time with their friends and families, or just relax. You can even boost this idea up to a half-day Friday. This is one of the creative sales incentives that will not only increase performance but also increase employee satisfaction and morale. It’s a win-win.

5. Let Your Sales People Choose

What’s the point of giving a reward of a Walmart gift card if none of your reps shop there? What’s the point of giving away a new chair if everyone likes the chairs they have just fine? If you’re not offering the right types of incentives that your sales people want, they won’t work hard to win.

Your sales people know best what types of incentives will actually motivate them towards better performance. So instead of racking your brain for creative sales incentives, why not ask them what they want? Give up and let your team come together to design your next sales content campaign—within a budget, of course. Give them the parameters and the goals you have in mind and let them do the creative work. When your reps are going after something that they actually want—because they created the contest—they’ll work harder for the prize. 

Rhys Metler

Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.

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