“Prevail, accomplish, compete, strive, thrive, triumphed, achieve, mastered, win, success, gain, attain.“
What do these words have in common?
When used appropriately they have the power to increase performance by 15% (or more!).
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Telling your “incentive story” with video creates greater engagement, higher recall, and an overall increase in IC plan knowledge.
If you’ve seen the Academy Award-winning movie, Schindler’s List, at the mention of the girl in the red coat, you can probably recall the specific scene I’m referring to vividly. This singular scene often stands out as the most revered and remembered scene in the movie. If you have not seen the movie, it is a black and white film yet in this specific scene there is a little girl walking through a crowded ghetto in a red coat.
Her red coat stands out vividly in comparison to the black and white coloring of the rest of the film. It captures our attention and draws our eyes to focus our attention on her. We follow her among the throngs of people and watch as she comes in and out of our view.
So what does this have to do with incentives?
Incentive compensation professionals work hard at developing incentive plans that drive employee motivation while also meeting their company’s strategic objectives.
In the past, this has been achieved by using rules of thumb and stringent financial analysis. Yet, hard work is not enough in today’s turbulent times.
Several years ago, we worked with a large Fortune 500 company whose IC Director was frustrated with low performance.
The metrics were there, the incentives were good, but the understanding was low… and sales were short. How could a well-designed plan that they had spent months developing not be working?
In today’s hyper-competitive world, you need an equally competitive advantage to stay ahead.
As sales professional your time and energy should be focused on selling not on trying to decipher the communications you receive from your organization.
Understanding how your incentive and rewards programs work should be easy. Today’s competitive tool for outperforming your goals is better communication.
Your comp plans and rewards may be good, perhaps the best, but if your company is not investing in communication, you often miss out on their true potential.
It’s no secret that as a salesperson you want to win.
You want to sell, to be on top, to surpass your target, and to join that award trip. You want to be rewarded for the hard work and sales that you bring in.
But that can be hard to do if your company isn’t telling you what you need to do to win. Companies often spend significant time and energy designing those metrics and fall short when it comes to communicating them to you. This puts you in a tough position between your intentions and the outcomes of the plan.
You are out there every day working hard and selling to your customers – shifting with each change that is thrust upon you and dealing with the uncertainty that has come with these trying times.
It can be stressful, it can be challenging, but you believe that what your company does is important and that you are bringing value to your customers.
In return, you deserve to be fairly rewarded for growing your business and helping the company succeed. And yet, when you get your quarterly bonus check, it is less than ideal. This shouldn’t happen.
The Lantern Group and Behavioral Grooves have teamed up to create the 100 Behaviors 2021 Decision Series Calendar!
We’ve boiled 12 of the most common biases and influences that guide our decisions down into a visual and easy to understand 2021 calendar with actionable advice on how to overcome or leverage them. Check it out here and get yours today!
Start the new year off right by joining us in January at the Nudge it North Conference – a digital Behavioral Science conference taking place on January 8th, 2021.
The Lantern Group, Behavioral Grooves, Behave MN have collaborated to bring together an all-star cast of speakers that includes industry veterans, world-renowned experts, and amazing new voices in the field.
This article highlights the key learnings from Kurt’s presentation at the “2020 World at Work Spotlight on Sales Conference”. The original slide deck is available below.
In 1937, paleontologist Gustav von Koeningswald was working on the island of Java in Southeast Asia, searching for new evidence of our early human ancestors. To achieve this goal, he needed to find fossils, and the apex of fossils was the skull. With an intact skull, paleontologists are better able to distinguish between ape and human.
But skulls were rarely are found intact.
Instead, paleontologists needed to piece together a multitude of small skull fragments in a complex 3D puzzle. It was difficult work – difficult to find all the pieces and difficult to fit them together in the right way to reform the original skull.
To help alieve the burden of searching and finding the skull pieces, von Koeningswald enlisted the help of people from the local village. He did this by giving them an incentive. He paid them 10 cents per skull fragment that they delivered to him.