The current sales landscape is far from plain sailing: 54% of sales professionals state that selling had been harder compared to the previous year. Inflation, competition, lack of good-quality leads, and difficulties in reaching decision-makers-all these have caused sales teams to juggle hoops in order to make an average of 21% sales win. Meanwhile, on the other hand, buyers love taking more control over the buying process. A whole 96% of buyers do their homework on the product or tool they are considering before contacting a sales representative. They have already made their decision.
Sales recognition programs keep your sales team motivated and focused to drive results in such an unfavorable environment. Such programs recognize, reward, and motivate the top contributors of your sales team.
Our guide will help you understand the benefits and best practices of running an effective sales incentive program. We’ll give you plenty of reward and incentive ideas to take away and even offer insights into how we motivate our sales team at Nectar.
Why Should You Reward Your Sales Teams?
The sale teams don’t get the respect and admiration they deserve because those outside the sales environment simply don’t know how deep the role truly is. According to a recent report on 2024 Sales Trends by HubSpot, sales teams spend two hours of the day selling and an hour on administrative tasks, with AI tools speeding up some of the processes. Beyond that, there is a lot of work with lead generation and prospecting and heavy involvement in relationship building.
Claire Maynard, Head of Marketing & Growth at Magical, pays her kudos to sales teams:
“I haven’t always had the best impression of salespeople.
I didn’t truly understand how complex the role was, but after the last few months trying my hand at sales, I have so much more respect.”. It’s so much more than I had thought in the way of process, persistence, creativity, and more. Sales, by nature, follows a structured process, yet there are so many outliers that can take up so much of your time. Long story short, hats off to the amazing salespeople out there! “
Here are more worthwhile reasons to appreciate and incentivize everyone in your sales teams.
Sales Representatives Drive Revenue
There is no business without sales revenue. It therefore, makes perfect sense to motivate and encourage the people driving it. Sales recognition programs acknowledge your top performers and remind everyone of their worth to the company.
Sales Teams Give Companies A Competitive Advantage
A motivated and capable sales staff enables a company to surpass its competitors. It also serves as one of the best recruiting tools. Whenever job candidates observe that the sales force is adequately taken care of and motivated, working becomes appealing. This may lead to more applications when job opportunities arise, presenting the company with a wider scope of talent to select from.
Recognizing Leads to Sales Productivity and Engagement
Nectar recently polled 800 full-time US workers to understand the positive impact of employee recognition. The results speak for themselves:
- 83.6% of employees feel that recognition affects motivation to succeed at work
- 77.9% of employees would be more productive if they were recognized more frequently
- 81.9% of employees agree that recognition for their contributions improves engagement
If you want your sales team to achieve impressive results for your organization and bring in the big bucks, recognition can drastically help them succeed.
What Types Of Sales Behavior Should You Recognize And Reward?
Before you come up with any successful sales employee incentive program, you need to know what types of behavior or activities you would want to see more of from your team. You may want to consider highlighting some of the following:
Exceptional Selling
Reward sales representatives who constantly blow through their quotas, close deals in less-than-average times, and provide exemplary customer service.
Teamwork And Collaboration
Sales tends to be somewhat competitive because of the heartiness of team members wanting to smash their sales targets each month or quarter. Recognize reps who go above and beyond to help their colleagues have success, collaborate on projects, or mentor newer team members.
Upselling Existing Customers
Upselling is important to any business; according to HubSpot, 72% of company revenue comes from current customers and only 28% from new customers. Recognize and reward reps who can do this because they’re driving revenue growth for your company without any incremental investment on their behalf in lead generation.
Building Relationships
According to HubSpot, 82% of sales pros say that building relationships and actually connecting with the people is not only the most critical part of selling but also their favorite part of their job. Recognize reps who take time to go out of their way to build rapport with leads and customers, remembering what matters and connecting on a human level.
9 Sales Recognition Program Ideas
There are many different ways to incentivize your sales teams to work harder, smarter, and more creatively to drive the outcomes your company needs. Consider weaving a mix of the following into your own sales recognition program.
1. Sales Challenges
Sales challenges are fun, short- or long-term initiatives you’ll set up for team members to participate in. We spoke to Nectar’s Co-Founder and VP Of Sales, Andrew Hollis, who shared with us some challenge ideas which our sales team uses at our company:
- Hit your dials for the month
- Create enough qualified pipeline
- Read books relevant to recognition or engagement
- Refer A-player friends from other sales organizations
Of course, we use our own Nectar Challenge tool to run these fun incentives, which works in the following way:
- Participants choose one of the open Nectar sales challenges and hustle their way through it before it expires.
- Participants provide evidence where needed for proof that they have completed the challenge in question, such as through screenshots of an email or pipeline management information.
- A sales manager will approve that challenge.
- The member will gain the Nectar points directly in their account for redemption against a set of rewards.
2. Sales Awards
Sales awards are a type of recognition often more formal than sales challenges, and they often include an awards ceremony along with trophies. Andrew Hollis describes the awards up for grabs here at Nectar: “We do monthly awards for reps that close the most amount of revenue. We also do an award for the person that has the highest quota attainment.”
Depending on your business goals and team composition, you may also want to give out prizes for the following categories:
- Rookie of the quarter
- Most improved rep for the month or quarter
- Team player of the month
CEO Tony Mariotti explains the success of RubyHome’s Client Happiness Award:
“It is a program that rewards those team members for going over and above the call in service to our clients, not just in sales numbers. This has really helped us in the development of a much more client-focused operation, which has meant that relationships with our clients are so much richer, and our sales performance reflects this. We’ve come to understand the use of more balanced recognition that appreciates the many facets of the sales process.”
Whatever sales reward you decide upon, you’ll need to select relevant metrics on which to measure progress and achievement. Perhaps you will center your attention around a number of deals closed, money made, customer satisfaction, or customer referrals.
3. Commissions And Sales Bonuses
Cash rewards continue hand in hand with sales recognition. In fact, you could include certain types of commissions or cash incentives into the overall compensation plans of your sales staff. Some of these options may include:
The base salary will be competitive, with a commission-based pay atop-perhaps higher as the rep progresses through their sales targets for either the quarter or year.
Bonuses when reps reach certain milestones, such as closing their first deal of the month or quarter.
4. Extra PTO
Paid time off is a great motivator for recognition, especially when reps are working hard toward attaining their number. A rest from the pressure of sales allows the individual much-needed rest and sets them up for being more motivated and productive upon returning to work.
According to the CEO Sayla Sabrin, this is why PTO has been a winner in her team at Vivipins:
“One of the most effective ways through which we have enforced employee recognition in our firm is by giving a holiday to those employees who attain maximum sales, sell maximum plans, for a day or two, allowing them to relax and spend quality time with their near and dear ones. I believe giving people time off to recharge after successful project completion is important as a reward when people and teams really pull out the stops on achieving goals.”
5. Experiential Rewards
Rewards don’t have to be something which one can hold in the palm of one’s hand or cash in. In fact, experiential rewards enable employees to go on new experiences either solo or en masse with their sales colleagues. From escape rooms and paintballing to rock climbing and bungee jumping, the types of experiences you can offer your hard-working sales teams are only limited by your imagination. Advertising expert Dave Kerr with Merged Dental Marketing explains how that type of incentive works in tandem with PTO well:
Other than the standard commissions, I think experiential rewards work incredibly well. When a sales rep exceeds their quarterly target, we reward them with a paid vacation day and $500 to spend on an experience of their choosing-a spa day, tickets to a sports game, a hot air balloon ride, etc. The excitement of earning these unique experiences is a pretty strong motivator.
John Pennypacker, VP of Sales & Marketing at Deep Cognition told us:
Experiences are rewarding; they appeal to personal and professional growth, and let’s not even mention well-being. In the end, if I am being honest, it’s a win-win situation because they even perform better when they come back fully recharged.
6. VIP Sessions
Another type of experiential reward is giving your sales pros access to seasoned experts who will aid their professional growth. For example, you can ask the sales members who won a challenge or award to spend time with very important persons, such as industry experts, sales managers for top brands, or even your executives.
Below is a motivational message from Fortador’s CEO and Head of Sales, Lev Tretyakov, describing the mechanics involved in the program:
“We have in place a program that recognizes the top 5% of sales reps each quarter, gives them access to special sessions with industry experts, and invites them to events as VIPs. It is a great motivator for our high-achieving sales and evidences a commitment to their growth beyond just normal awards.”
7. Public Recognition
In any recognition program, there’s always a tug between recognizing people in public or private for their hard work. Everybody isn’t the same, and managers must always respect personal preference, but we really think there’s room for public forms of recognition. Here’s how this works, according to Precious Abacan from Softlist:
“As part of our recognition program, we hold a yearly award ceremony before the year is out. I mean, a proper ceremony! Letting this be a yearly tradition keeps our team motivated to continue living the values of our company. As the sales and marketing team would say, knowing our work is appreciated by all may prove to be a good enough reason for us always to try doing better each year.”
That’s all well and good, but how do you actually call out the best in your sales team? Hallmark Timmins does things a little different, eschewing a ceremony for an annual meeting.
Founder and CEO Shawn Stack describes how it’s done this way:
So, we start every year with our sales kickoff meeting, highlighting and celebrating the success of our top reps from last year. We call out their biggest wins, tell stories about how they overcame obstacles, present them with a trophy to recognize them as an elite performer. That type of public recognition in front of peers is huge in motivating and inspiring the rest of the team to strive to be in their shoes next year.
No less important is internal teams’ praise: 63% of people surveyed from Nectar admit that they want to hear a “thank you” more often from their peers. Recognizing or showing appreciation peer-to-peer, internally via shoutouts, doesn’t have to be on a big budget or at an event with a big ceremony. It does work best when this is done frequently and consistently.
We talked to Dominic Monn, Founder and CEO at MentorCruise, who recommends creating “a system that enables team members to acknowledge others’ efforts. Such a system enhances morale but also tightens up the bonding of the teams. That would serve as a very strong approach toward building up a supportive and collaborative workplace.” Recognition from peers has this peculiar way of improving morale since it is coming from fellow workers who understand what happens day in and day out with their colleagues.
- Internal recognition ideas include the following:
- A Wall of Fame where sales managers highlight achievements of their team.
- A shoutout channel on the communication platform for public praise.
- A recognition budget whereby managers take people out for lunch or surprise them with small tokens of appreciation.
- A monthly newsletter featuring star performers of sales and what they achieved.
- A dedicated platform for recognition like Nectar.
Nectar Tip: Any appreciation message must have a thank you and a description of the positive behavior of the sales representative such that they can do it again next time. For instance,
“Carla, today you did a great job during your cold call with Company X. You were very confident and persistent, and you closed it. Thank you for your relentless commitment to our team.”
9. Gamification
After all is said and done, gamification boils down to motivation. Gamification can be described as the application of game rules and elements that have competitiveness outside game areas, in an endeavor to enhance engagement in practice or work situations. In so doing, employees can be engaged in a job and compensated for work done through employee points, rewards, badges, and prizes.
Nectar’s Andrew Hollis explains how gamification makes the sales role more enjoyable for team members; this, in turn, leads to great results:
“We design challenges that gamify some of the hardest parts of the sales job. When you create incentives for making cold calls and reviewing recorded demos, it creates a culture of investing in your employees. They recognize that the work is hard, but when they see Nectar put forth an effort to make their job more engaging and fun we have seen massive success.”
Bybrand’s Founder, Bernardo Castro, shared with us how gamified recognition works at his company and what features specifically drive sales performance.
“We add gaming elements we feel would motivate our sales teams most. Employees respond well to leaderboards and personalized progression bars. They can set their own goals for the week and look into statistics for areas for improvement. Competition with each other seems the challenge they enjoy.”