Sales numbers are some of the first numbers that C-suite executives and managers look at when they get quarterly numbers from the accountants.

How to increase sales using proper incentives

Boosting these sales numbers are on the agenda for just about every company in existence, not only to improve the perception of the sales team but also to improve the overall health of the company.

Here are a few ways that you can improve your sales with incentives.

The basic tangible incentives

Of course, there are always the basic incentives that sales managers go to whenever they want to boost their sales.

For companies that do not offer commissions, doing so can really motivate employees to make more calls and get more of your product out of the warehouse and into the hands of customers.

These commissions can be offered as a percent of total monthly or quarterly sales, which will come as a nice bonus check for the employees.

Another way to do commissions is by offering a certain percentage to certain customers, offering higher percentage commissions for that high margin or larger customers. You can even ask your employees how to determine their commissions and that can be an added bonus itself.

Another basic incentive that managers will use to boost sales, and that is quite effective, is to make each month a competition to see who can get the most sales, either in volume or dollar amount depending on the type of products or services that are being sold.

At the end of each month, a winner will be crowned and they will get a prize that is commensurate with the sales they have brought in. This could be anything from gift cards to a swimming pool or automobile.

The key to boosting sales with this method, however, is that it needs to be something that all of the employees want. If they do not want the prize, then this will not actually be an incentive for them.

The best way to ensure that most employees want the prize is to ask them to vote on what the prize should be each month, quarter, or year. The friendly competition between salesmen will also serve as incentive enough or some.

Some experience incentives

Experience incentives are given to sales employee as a way of showing thanks for their service. They can also be based on how many sales are made.

There can be tiered prize categories for the number or amount of sales that are made and a prize that is commensurate with that category.

For example, if your average salesman makes $100,000 in sales each quarter, then maybe there will be tiers for sales between $80,000 and $100,000, $101,000 and $120,000, $121,000 to $150,000, and anything over $150,000 in sales.

The tiers could include lunches with prominent figures in the company, better parking spots, certificates that can be turned in for days off, or anything else that will help to give the salespeople a better work experience.

You can never go wrong with days off

Let’s face it, many salespeople put in a lot of hours throughout the year, and without them getting the company’s products sold could be extremely difficult.

Salespeople sometimes sit and use a predetermined list or a sales dialer and are expected to be “on” all the time and in great spirits to sell products to people they have never met.

Sometimes they just want a day off.

Days off and half-days off are great incentives to offer your sales department for reaching a company goal

These sales incentives can be offered to each salesperson individually (i.e. if they meet their own goal for the year they will get a couple of paid days off as a reward) or as the entire department (i.e. if the department reaches the company goal then the entire department gets a couple of paid days off).

No matter what the incentives offered are, the sales manager has to make sure that they are incentives the employees want.

Otherwise, the incentives will not actively boost sales. It is always important to remember that a little healthy competition and recognition from the managers are sometimes incentive enough to boost sales.

How do you find these ways to improve sales? How do you motivate your sales team? Let me know in the comments below!

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