Why Choose Travel Incentives

It’s obvious from industry surveys provided by the Incentive Federation that companies choose travel incentives over other rewards such as gift cards, attraction passes, cash and electronics because travel is the most widely appealing incentive. Your sales people will close more sales, your clients will enjoy an exciting vacation experience and your business will grow! Vacation incentives are one of the most powerful methods of attracting new business.

Today’s business environment has changed dramatically and it can be a real challenge to make a sale. Sales skills alone aren’t enough, you have to distinctively separate your business from the competition.

Consumers are shopping for the best bargains and they all want more than what they paid for. Every industry is looking for a competitive edge. Many companies have already discovered that discounting products just doesn’t cut it with the customers in our continuously changing economy. You have to appeal to your customers’ interests in order to get the results you are looking for.

Travel Incentive Return On Investment
With profit margins increasingly under duress, together with a growing need to have a motivated and productive group of employees, business leaders are challenged to spend their reward dollars against programs that will deliver the best ROI. The question becomes how to do so.

Determine Your Objectives: Describe where the performance improvement need is. Look out for short and long term goals and where they apply. Placing your immediate goals within the bigger strategic plan will give you immediate as well as longer-term value.

Focus and Communicate: Determine who ‘in’ your performance goal is impacted, NOT only the sales department, if your goal is to increase sales. Ensure that everyone who could affect the success of the strategy is informed. Employees who really understand the goal, will go the extra mile.

Be clear about the budget: Evaluate the direct costs of the incentive/program as well as the indirect costs. How will it benefit the bottom line? Elements could be : # of participants, length of the program, cost of collateral materials, cost of incentives.

Describe the desired results clearly: Whether it be to increase sales, improve productivity of a particular organization function, close more deals, improve customer loyalty etc., if you are clear on today’s measurement and can be clear about your goals, then you can readily determine impact.

Determine the Tools of measurement: Often the determination of success is left to a ‘feeling’ that it was a good promotion or left to simplistic sales volume measures. Remember that motivation is also state of mind – how to measure that? Perhaps a small survey, scoring the shift in perception among the participants, together with tangible type of measurements will give you a different point of view. When the things that need to be measured are clear, the measuring itself becomes easy!

Choose your rewards with care: You need to be sure that the rewards themselves, as well as your chosen promotion, fit both what motivates the recipient and serves your business goals. Getting employee input ahead of time in designing a performance reward program could be vital to its success.

Keys to a Successful Incentive Promotion!
It may seem easy to say that today’s managers need to be visionary, problem solvers, people leaders, tacticians and financial managers. Above all the need to meet the challenge of swiftly changing markets. So what makes their day a great one? Hassle-free and effective promotions!

Some simple tips on running a Successful incentive:

Plan ahead– reacting to pressure and accepting expedient solutions may lead to a temporary solution, but identifying the need/challenge, attaching a budget and describing ALL the players will make the task imminently more DO-able!

Involve your key players – going it alone may seem expedient, but the buy-in opportunity is lost. People motivate others in direct proportion to their own level of enthusiasm.

Know what you want to achieve/solve– get the team, including a trusted supplier to work out the real issues. Stay in-the-problem until everyone is clear. The solution will be far more potent.

Identify the Point Person – determining who will deliver each part of the incentive promotion is key to a smooth running promotion. Communicate with the team what your expectations are; of whom and by when.

Communicate the expected results – Nothing motivates more that knowing that the participant is within reach of the prize. Let the support staff know as well. They become a valuable impetus to stretch!

Make a Launch out of it – sometimes it seems expedient to ‘just start’. The added enthusiasm that comes with an internal broadcast launch of the program, its goals, and the incentive rewards, is wonderful to experience. It also makes for a powerful tool to focus the team.

Build simple program rules – participants and customers will judge the whole organization by the level to which they feel they CAN participate and win. Keep the rules simple so that everyone can readily see ‘What’s in it for me’

Fulfill your Promises– if everyone knows you can be trusted to deliver, whether an employee or customer, you are in a win-win situation. Make sure to publicize the winners, again whether internally, as in a performance reward scenario or to your market. Your commitment to excellence, customer loyalty and market competitiveness will be there for all to see.