The
best approach to sales recognition is almost always the simplest one. The award industry offers a vast array of awards
and recognition systems from which to choose and for whatever reason sales
management rarely starts their investigation of how to recognize sales people using
the KISS principle. They often choose
the most complex way of handling an issue that should fundamentally be very
easy and straightforward. And in the
process they commit large budget dollars to the administration of these
systems, essentially taking those dollars away from getting to where they will
do the most good….the salespeople themselves.
When
you think about it, recognizing sales performance should be a simple (and
happy) thing to do. But for some reason everyone
wants to complicate it.
Over
the years, the reward companies have dreamed up elaborate schemes to sell their
awards, often priced substantially over retail.
But are these elaborate systems what you really need? We’ve seen countless numbers of them that
have feature after costly feature that are rarely used. One of these features is a training program
to teach your management how to recognize employees. Frankly it’s a shame that has to be
done. Every sales manager should have at
least the ability to thank someone for doing a good job.
To
begin, throw out the complicated stuff and just tell your managers to simply
recognize salespeople for doing a good job whenever and wherever possible. Measure the managers to make sure it gets
done, and give them a budget to do it.
If
you think you need to give a tangible award for sales performance there are a
lot to choose from. Having managed
salespeople for years, our feeling is to let them choose the award they want.
If
you want a good one with terrific flexibility and value, we’d be happy to send
you samples of two high value, low cost and easiest to implement systems in the
industry.
