How to create a sales incentive program

A sales incentive program should motivate sales reps to meet or exceed their sales goals with cash and non-cash incentive rewards. This method gives salespeople rewards and recognition in addition to their sales compensation plan.

Sales incentives not only motivate sales reps to surpass their goals, but they also drive greater revenue, boost rep retention, and act as a competitive advantage to attract and recruit top talent.

Just how beneficial is a solid sales incentive program? Check out these study findings:

• Properly constructed incentive programs can increase performance by as much as 44 percent.
• After money, recognition is the second most important sales rep motivator according to Hubspot’s Sales Strategy & Trends Report.
• According to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 68 percent of HR professionals agreed that employee recognition has a positive impact on retention.
• In the same SHRM survey, 56 percent of HR professionals said employee recognition programs also help with recruitment.
• An Incentive Research Foundation survey found that 60% of top-performing tech companies strongly agree incentive and recognition programs are effective recruitment tools, but only 25% of average-performing companies agreed.

Now that you know the value of well-designed sales incentive programs, let’s walk through some key elements you need to know to create your own effective strategy.

What are the types of incentive programs?

There are five types of sales incentives including role-specific, presales, split incentives, analytics-based, and omnichannel. The approaches you choose for your sales incentive program depend on your sales process and what behaviors you wish to motivate your sales reps to adopt. 

Let’s review these different types of sales incentives.

1. Role-specific sales incentives

Role-specific incentives are created based on individual roles and responsibilities. This approach enables you to acknowledge reps based on their job function.

For example, a sales manager has different duties than a business development rep (BDR) who prospects and identifies leads. You can reward a sales manager based on their results against the requirements of their position. And, the same is true for the BDR.

2. Presales incentives

Presales incentives reward salespeople at different stages of the sales process before closing a deal. 

For teams with longer sales cycles, more touchpoints, and buying committee members, this model keeps reps motivated throughout the process by rewarding them in the short term and at the close.

In lieu of offering only a larger incentive once the rep secures the deal, this approach keeps reps focused and motivated throughout the entire deal cycle. 

For example, you could give reps incentives after completing specific activities like scheduling meetings with prospects or running a sales demo, and upon contract signature. 

3. Split sales incentives

Adding split incentives to your sales incentive program is a great way to reward sales reps working together on the same deal or project. 

This approach allows you to split the incentive between the salespeople when the deal closes or the project ends. You can designate an even split between everyone involved or specify rules for split calculations.

For example, if two sales reps collaborate to close a large deal, you can reward them equally or based on their specific roles throughout the sales cycle. We see this model commonly implemented for sales engineers.

This model ensures all involved team members receive compensation for their work. Plus, it encourages communication and collaboration between teams by rewarding each party. 

One thing to note, when incorporating a shared commission structure into your sales incentive program, create the incentive structure and expectations to avoid misunderstandings when it’s time to distribute payouts.

4. Analytics-based sales incentives

All businesses analyze data to make accurate sales forecasts, set realistic goals, and create an ideal sales cycle. 

Analytics-based sales incentives reward reps based on their behaviors that align with the best practices gathered from data.

For example, if data from prior years indicate that achieving designated revenue goals requires a sales cycle length of a specific number of days, sales reps earn rewards or bonuses when they close deals within that timeframe.

5. Omnichannel sales incentives

Finally, the last type of program is omnichannel sales incentives. 

With buyers embracing a digital-first approach to the buying process, salespeople often interact with prospects online and over the phone before directly engaging with them. 

And, depending on the specific product or sales process, it’s possible for a prospect to sign up for a free trial or purchase online without a rep’s assistance.

Adding omnichannel sales incentives to your sales incentive program rewards reps for the support and value they provide to prospects–even if they aren’t directly involved when the buyer makes their purchase.

You can connect a closed deal to a rep by tracking who first contacted a lead via email or when a buyer made their purchase following a product demo.

Best sales incentive plans

Knowing the types of sales incentives is only one aspect of creating a sales incentive program. You must also understand what key elements will ensure your incentive program is successful.

The best sales incentive plans share the following common characteristics:

• Drive the right selling behaviors
• Motivate reps
• Reward overperformance
• Align with business goals and metrics for the quarter or the year

Keep these in mind when designing your sales incentive plans based on what you want to achieve as well as your sales reps’ preferences.

To get started, here are some of the best sales incentive plan ideas to inspire your sales team to greater achievements:

1. Monetary rewards

A popular and easy way to motivate sales reps is by offering cash incentives. These might include:

• Commissions: Give reps a percentage of each new sale in addition to their regular earnings.
• Bonuses: Reward salespeople with extra money as they meet or exceed quota to motivate them to reach higher.
• Pay raises: Periodic salary increases for your top performers are a way to display appreciation for their consistent overachievement. It’s also a way to show other team members that you reward success in your organization. Using sales leaderboards ensures transparency while rewarding sales leaders.

But one size does not fit all when it comes to incentives. Oftentimes, sales reps are motivated to work hard for other rewards and recognition.

So, what other sales incentive options are effective?

2. Physical items

Non-cash incentives can be more powerful motivators than cash prizes if the reward is appealing to your sales reps. So, you need to know your audience or get to know what they like so they’ll be motivated to work for the designated prize.

Physical items like tech gadgets, coffee brewers, or sporting goods can inspire your sales team members and drive them to meet or exceed their goals. At QuotaPath, we even have a WWE championship belt that gets passed around to the top seller.

Plus, physical rewards act as a future reminder of why they were rewarded and evoke positive memories of the winning experience.

3. Extra paid time off (PTO)

A popular non-cash sales incentive is additional vacation time. Sales is hard and can be very stressful. So, giving reps extra PTO to decompress promotes work-life balance, boosts mental health, and shows that your company cares.

Offering PTO as a sales incentive may inspire your reps to work harder, plus they’ll be rested when they return from their holiday.

4. Self or professional development courses

Access to upskilling is a sought-after employee benefit and a powerful employment attraction tool, according to a Gallup study. So, it makes sense to offer additional development opportunities as an incentive.

Providing these types of rewards in your sales incentive program helps reps advance their careers, improve skills and performance, and increase productivity.

Plus, you’re likely to boost sales rep retention by offering development courses as an incentive. According to a Talent LMS study, 76 percent of employees are more likely to stay with a company that provides continuous training, while 66 percent say it improves their company loyalty.

Professional development incentives you might offer include:

• Sessions with a professional sales coach
• Registration for an upcoming sales conference
• Advanced sales technique courses
• Workshops or guides to learn the best way to use sales tech to streamline work processes or to learn ways to improve their business writing skills

Also, some personal development options to consider as incentives are:

• Cooking classes
• Fitness memberships
• Art classes
• Online courses of the reward recipient’s choosing

5. Public recognition

Gallup research shows that recognition is a desirable reward that boosts employee well-being, engagement, and a sense of belonging while increasing productivity.

So acknowledging hard-working sales reps who consistently meet and exceed their sales targets is a win-win. The salesperson receives the reward and knows that they are appreciated. Plus, you increase the odds of retaining this top talent and inspiring them to continue their hard work.

Some examples of ways to offer public recognition as an incentive are:

• Inviting them to attend a special event with the company’s CEO
• Honoring them with an announcement on the company’s Slack channel
• Giving them bragging rights like salesperson of the month or year
• Acknowledging them in front of the entire team

6. Gift cards

Personalized gift cards can acknowledge sales reps and give them an opportunity to splurge on special items they’ve been wanting to buy.

This is why it’s essential to know your sales team members’ preferences so the reward you offer motivates them effectively.

Some gift card ideas to consider are a gift card for an exclusive restaurant, a subscription box, and a gaming certificate if you have gamers on your team.

7. Spinning the prize wheel

If you find pinpointing one reward challenging, consider putting a variety of options on a wheel so reps can spin to see what their reward is.

Spinning the wheel for your incentive adds an element of surprise and excitement to the experience. Plus, being the one who gets the opportunity to spin the wheel enhances the recognition element of the reward.

8. Activities and entertainment

Entertainment incentives are good motivators because they give your sales reps the things they’d love to do but aren’t necessarily willing to splurge on.

You don’t have to break the incentive budget to offer these rewards. They can range in value depending on how much you want to spend. For example, some higher-cost incentives might be front-row concert tickets, a romantic dinner for two, or tickets to the big game. And some other options include:

• Rock climbing
• Movie passes
• Bungee jumping
• Zipline
• Escape rooms
• Travel incentives

9. Office upgrades

Boost rep productivity by offering upgrades to their office as part of your sales incentive plan.

This is especially popular with the rise in remote and hybrid sales teams where each person has set up their own home office, possibly on a shoestring budget.

Examples of office upgrade incentives include:

• High-quality office chair
• Dual-monitor system
• Lighting or other office accessories
• Standing workstation
• Noise-canceling headphones

10. Allow reps to select their own reward

If your sales team consists of various types of personalities with diverse tastes, hobbies, preferences, and needs, it may be easier to allow them to choose their own incentives.

In this case, you can designate a budgetary limit for the reward that motivates each individual rep. Then encourage your reps to envision what they would select if they won at the beginning of the incentive period to motivate them to work harder.

Sales incentive structuring

Now for actually structuring your sales incentive packages.

Follow these tips as you create your incentive program to increase its effectiveness at the business and rep levels. 

1. Include all comp plan stakeholders from the beginning

Streamline the creation of your sales incentive program by involving all affected departments as you initiate the planning process. These vary based on your organization’s structure and include functions such as:

• Human Resources (HR)
• Sales Compensation Analysts and Admins
• Finance
• Sales Operations
• Senior Sales Leadership
• Legal

2. Review historical sales data for possibilities

Analyzing previous years’ sales data reveals seasonal sales trends. Once identified, commonly slow periods are candidates for incentives like SPIFs to help remedy these shortfalls. If you don’t have previous historical data, use conservative numbers and leverage any research you can find in your market and industry. 

3. Include non-monetary incentives

Although everyone needs money, it very rarely is the sole motivator.  Average and lower-performing sales reps may be more motivated to improve by non-cash incentives. 

4. Create role-based incentives

Customization is essential to the success of your overall comp plan, so it makes sense to incorporate role-based incentives. This enables you to drive specific role-specific behaviors to further boost sales and revenue results to meet business goals.

Your customer journey and sales process will help you determine which behaviors contribute the most value to customers while improving sales.

5. Allocate funds for short-term incentives

Historical data can reveal consistent trends, but short of having a crystal ball, it’s nearly impossible to anticipate all challenging sales periods. That’s why it’s advisable to reserve at least 3-5% of your total incentives budget for SPIFs, short-term bonuses, and accelerators to help close the gap during those times.

6. Incorporate some team incentives

Including team incentives or competitions can be fun, increase collaboration across the sales team and create healthy internal competition while boosting goal achievement. Competitive options include pitting territories, verticals, or small groups against one another to grow sales.

Group incentives encourage cross-departmental relationships and teamwork. They are especially effective when combined with SPIFs to hit goals.

7. Add fun incentives

The addition of fun or unexpected incentives injects some excitement into your plan and can be quite motivating. Some examples of fun sales incentives are raffles, randomly selected lottery numbers, or grab-bag-style prize giveaways. These can be very budget-friendly while energizing reps to participate.

Other fun bonuses include group team-building activities like golf, paintball, and dinner or happy hour after work.

8. Rank your incentive plan against the industry average

Make sure your sales incentive plan is realistic and attainable to ensure the likelihood that it will motivate your sales reps.  Gauging its appeal against your industry’s average incentive plan and then exceeding it as cost-efficiently as possible is advisable. This helps boost rep retention and gives you a competitive hiring advantage.

9. Complete a compensation risk analysis

Sales compensation is complex, so you can’t be too careful when creating a sales incentive program. Proactively review the practices and rules relating to your program to identify any potential risks to the organization before implementing it.

10. Get sales rep input

Most sales reps want a personalized incentive plan. Although this may sound like an impossible task for large organizations, it’s important to make the effort by requesting rep feedback. This helps involve reps in the process and will improve rep buy-in. 

11. Confirm that your selected incentives will promote the right behavior

The goal of any sales incentive program is to encourage behaviors to achieve business goals such as more leads, revenue, or profits. So, it’s essential to ensure that you are choosing incentives that will motivate your sales reps appropriately.

12. Fine-tune your sales incentive plan

Creating a sales incentive plan is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. It’s likely you won’t get it 100% right on the first try.

It’s best to get started, then analyze your results, adjust accordingly, and test different elements to see what is most effective.

Some variables to experiment with include:

• Payment amounts or multipliers
• Payout triggers
• Points awarded per sales dollar
• Timing of reward (Each time? Quarterly? Yearly? At milestones?)
• Form of reward (points, cash, trip, etc)
• Segmentation methods such as by vertical, product, or territory
• Team-based goals
• How much you pay
• Activity or behavior-motivated elements
• Long-term activities and behaviors vs. payouts only for transactional sales

13. Clearly communicate the sales incentive plan

It’s essential to clearly explain your sales incentive plan to sales leadership and the sales team. 

Otherwise, you’ve wasted valuable time and effort designing your plan.

No matter how wonderful the plan might be, it won’t motivate sales reps if they don’t understand the sales incentive plan.

It’s essential that salespeople understand how they can earn more or win rewards on the new plan. So present the comp plan effectively to inspire your desired behaviors and hit your targets.

Sales incentive program management

Next, you need to think about how you will operationalize sales incentive program management.

Sales incentive program management is the use of supplemental rewards in addition to the standard compensation structure to drive better business outcomes. This strategy accomplishes this by more closely aligning sales rep behavior with the company’s goals.

Incentives include things like:

• SPIFs: Short-term incentives designed to motivate sales reps to focus on specific activities, like selling a particular product or service or targeting a designated customer segment.
• Bonuses: Monetary rewards in addition to commissions, often awarded for meeting certain goals, such as attaining a sales quota or booking a deal with a new customer.
• Commissions: The most common type of sales incentive program, paying salespeople a percentage of the sales they make based on the specific compensation plan.
• Prizes: Gifts awarded for completing specific activities or exceeding a designated target. These include things like gift cards, dinner for two, and movie tickets.
• Awards: A trip or other major reward given to top-performing salespeople who meet specific criteria.
• Recognition: Public acknowledgment of sales reps exceeding expectations. Recognition can be given in ways such as leaderboards, awarding a trophy, or a simple announcement in front of the team or a broader audience.

A properly managed sales incentive program motivates sales reps to exceed their goals, boosts revenue, increases sales rep retention, and provides your organization with a competitive hiring advantage.

Sales incentive software

When it comes to calculating sales incentives, many companies still calculate commission in Excel. This may be effective if your organization employs less than 5 salespeople.

But as teams increase in size, and add layers of commission tiers and streams, a spreadsheet can become cumbersome to manage. Not only can the use of a spreadsheet become a major time suck, but it can also be a particularly error-prone process that can lead to an incorrect commission payout.

So, why not automate it with a sales incentive compensation platform like QuotaPath? Our commission tracker app  gives you and your organization:

• Transparency so sales reps understand their compensation plan and can track and forecast progress toward goal attainment.
• Source of truth for earnings to minimize earnings disagreements and discrepancies
• Helps Finance predict future revenue and retention performance by having historical data on how compensation plans impacted past performance
• Enables reps to see how they’re tracking toward their goal and enables them to translate their sales pipeline to actual forecasted earnings
• Operationalizes sales compensation