How to Reward Your Inside Sales Team To Maintain Success
It’s the start of a new quarter and time to crunch numbers and analyze the performance of your team.There is nothing more refreshing than ending the quarter strong and rewarding employees for strong performance. On the other hand, there is nothing more disappointing than seeing a talented inside rep end their quarter poorly and miss their goals. I believe that the best way to ensure a rep never gives up on a month/quarter is to use a reward system throughout this time that helps to achieve consistent and optimal performance from your team. To avoid confusion, this isn’t the big commission check they receive after their quarter is wrapped up and all is said and done. Assuming that a strong and motivating commission plan is already in place, keep your team motivated with incremental weekly rewards throughout the month and quarter.
Short term rewards: Know what motivates your reps! Where do they like to dine or shop…what do they like to do on the weekends? Stay in close connection with your team and each of their numbers every day in order to set short term goals for your reps that need that extra push. As always, it’s important to only recognize strong performance. If your rep is struggling, make sure to set a challenging goal.
Sometimes the end of the quarter or even month can be so far out of sight and that next commission check may not be until the 3 months from now. Put it this way, think about how hard it is to envision July weather in the beginning of April in New England! If that’s the next time they see any sort of commission, make sure to have shorter term goals in place. They are sales professionals and motivated by money and rewards. What if they see a gift card to their favorite store on the horizon for this coming weekend? There’s the extra push to stay on pace with goal.
Unexpected rewards: It is important to always reinforce positive behavior. Reward your reps unexpectedly when they go above and beyond. The best way to encourage top performance at all times is to hand out rewards to your reps that deserve extra recognition when they are least expecting it. These don’t have to be large sums of money, but small tokens of appreciation. This sends the message, “I appreciate what you are doing, keep up the great work!” Think about how your other team members will react when they see the little and immediate perks their neighbor gets for being great at the job. This backs up a very important message in sales, “Stay consistent and good things will come!”
Skill set recognition: There is so much focus on rewarding reps for how well they do against their goal, make sure to also reward them for excelling at certain skills that help them to get there. For example,reward the reps that are getting the most quality conversations or activities in a day or week. If your reps are paying attention to the necessary steps to take – they are more likely to hit their goal at the end.
These smaller, more immediate rewards should be designed to maintain consistent performance throughout the month and quarter. It is important to stay as connected as possible to your team member’s numbers and what motivates them in order to customize a reward program that will work best for your team. We are only a few days into Q2 and their next commission check is pretty farfrom sight.
Have you started to reward your reps that have already demonstrated a jump start on the month?