I offered a $2,500 sales bonus. My salespeople were NOT impressed!

“I thought salespeople were motivated by money!”

I was speaking with a sales manager a few weeks ago. Ted (his name was changed to protect the innocent) was telling me about his sales team and his challenges in motivating them. He told me his compensation structure is a basic commission against draw structure.

As all good managers do, Ted sets specific goals with each member of his sales team. If they achieve their goals, they should make a nice living. Like most sales teams, Ted has a variety of achievers – those who always hit their quota, those who are more challenged but managed to get pretty close and those who should find another line of work. Ted’s toughest job is figuring out how to get them all excited so they sell more.

Ted recently instituted a bonus plan designed to get his salespeople to produce more sales. If they achieved these “stretch goals,” they would earn an additional $2,500. He was convinced that they would sit up and take notice of this generous bonus and run out to aggressively pursue more contracts. “Salespeople are only motivated by money,” he said. “Whenever we ask them what they want, they always say ‘money!'”  So he was shocked when the offer of the bonus did NOTHING to change their motivation.

Does Ted’s situation sound familiar to you? Have you cracked the code on inspiring focus and follow-through with your sales professionals? I’ve heard this scenario played out across industries, in public and private companies, and in large and small sales teams. Yes, it’s true that salespeople are motivated by money. But the form of that money matters.

Lucky for Ted, we were able to re-think the bonus offering, how it was earned and how it was delivered. The top achievers exceeded expectations, many of the middle made their numbers and even some of the struggling salespeople worked harder to get the mentoring and direction they needed to improve their skills.

Matching the right incentive to your sales team matters and it should be win-win situation for your company’s bottom line and your salesperson’s ego.

If you’re thinking about implementing a bonus program, don’t do it until you’ve taken advantage of our early 2013 free offer.

We have a limited number of FREE STRATEGY SESSIONS on “Designing Effective Incentives”.  If you’d like to apply for one of these, complete the information at the link below.

Do it now while you’re here reading this.

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