Suppose you have been asked to lead a taskforce to develop a sales incentive plan at your firm. The taskforce is to generate a list of strategies and...

The
taskforce is attempting to create an incentive program, so your role will be developing a group
that can analyze what motivates peopleparticularly those in sales roles and similar positionsin
order to boost sales numbers and try to generate more income for your company. The best people
for the task group would be compensation analysts and human resources representatives who are
frequently tasked with understanding compensation, benefits, rewards, and incentives.

Once the group is assembled, the best starting material to discuss and look over are
incentive studies from the industry and academia as well as current sales reports and outlier
sales reports. You want to analyze the average and current sales projections to see what your
baseline will be and understand better what a typical months' sales look like. Then, by looking
at outliers, you can analyze both the highs and lows of sales projections and start to make
decisions based on what those highs and lows look like.

You can analyze the
high outliers to determine what the capability could be, and you could even discuss with the
individuals who created those numbers to understand what motivated them and helped them reach
those goals. On the opposite side, you can use the low sales numbers to understand what can
hinder sales and what things can act to deter motivation for salesmen.

Using
these boundaries, you can start to piece together what incentives you can create and what
targets you should aim for in the sales projections. The industry and academic reports will also
give you psychological and professional tools to use as motivation and help you design a
standard incentive package for those who reach higher sales targets. The goal will be to create
something that is enough of an incentive that those who are content with their sales numbers
will be motivated to go above and beyond.