Assignments

Marketing Team: Most businesses under $50 million can run their own incentive program with just a little coaching. Beyond this, consult an expert like Hinda Incentives. Performance Improvement firms, like Hinda, will work with you to define your program, build a custom fulfillment web portal and handle all of the program details and ongoing, periodic communications. This is not something you want to in-source or try to do with a paper-based system.

Regardless of who administers your program, the rules will make it or break it. Here's my rulebook:

1. Objectives. You have a choice. You can reward for accomplishing an end-result or reward the behavior that leads to the goal. While it is certainly easier to set a sales quota and award on achievement, for example, it's a short-lived stimulus. On the other hand, by rewarding a pattern of behavior (e.g., your internal processes), you will eventually be able to take away the training wheels so employees can ride on their own. That's what you want anyway, right?
   
   
2. Participation. The most successful incentive programs reward everyone who helps accomplish the objectives, not just the Sales team.
   
   
3. Budget. Allocate a percentage of the forecasted extra revenue or profit earned when the goal is achieved. You will have to front-end-load your expenses, but doing it this way further demonstrates your confidence in your system ("follow my system and you'll win").
   
   
4. Awards. Since you're not going to offer cash awards, you will select between award travel and merchandise. A combination of both, of course, would be a huge score.
   
   
5. Follow-through. Make certain your awards are things people will really strive for, and when they reach an award level, ring the bell immediately and give it to them. Keep your surprise parties to employee birthdays.

You: Setting expectations for participants is clearly the most critical assignment. It should be this simple: Do this, earn that. Then put your money where your mouth is, as you roll out your program. Keep to an unvarying theme in all communiqués. Stand back and watch it happen!

Coaching Points

• Do not make cash awards. There's no trophy value. Ask anyone what they bought with their award money and you'll hear, "groceries."
  
  
• Contests do have their place, but for overall behavioral modification, you need to structure an incentive program where everyone who satisfies a particular objective wins something. Believe me, contests create both winners and losers.

Part Two: Surveying Customers for Valuable Data

JOHN M. FOX is the president and founder of Venture Marketing, a marketing firm for growing companies. He is the author of Marketing Playbook: The Manual for Growing Organizations. Visit www.venturemarketing.com for more information.