Best Business Incentive Practices

1. A successful business incentive requires senior management support.
2. A successful business incentive must have clearly defined goals and objectives.
3. Every business incentive that you implement must generate ROI.
4. Your business incentive program must have an internal champion and leader.
5. An effective business incentive must clearly communicate “what’s in it” for the participant.
6. The incentive must be sufficiently funded and the points awarded on a timely basis for the business incentive to attract participation and credibility.
7. Utilize the incentive to continually communicate business goals to the audience.
8. Gain input and include your company’s sales force in the incentive if you are trying to motivate your business partners.
9. Measure and evaluate your business incentive regularly.
10. Accept the fact that an incentive has a ramp-up period and may need frequent “re-launching.”

Pitfalls to running an effective business incentive include:

1. Not establishing clear and realistic objectives that can be attained via the business incentive.
2. Not making the business incentive rules simple and qualifications clear.
3. Not establishing KPI’s (key performance indicators)for the business incentive.
4. Not attaining input from your audience that you wish to motivate in the business incentive.
5. Unclear and too many business incentive objectives at once.
6. Not targeting the correct sales cycle influencer with the business incentive.
7. Not creating a bonus for enrolling in the business incentive and also not promoting ongoing participation.
8. Not making the rewards bountiful and with excellent perceived value. Internet based merchandise incentives utilizing overnight shipping have been proven to be attractive and cost efficient.
9. Not rewarding positive business incentive behavior immediately and not trumpeting that to the entire audience.
10. Having a just one program champion can lead to failure if that champion leaves the company, therefore it is better to have a team of business incentive champions.
11. Not gathering critical business incentive participant information for future communications and profiling.
12. Do not consider the incentive for your business as being static, it is a living, changing program that must be adapted to succeed.
13. Not encouraging point redemption never lets your winners feel the rewards and be the winners they truly are. Business incentive programs are usually 2-5% of total sales. Making the point value negligible or the award difficult to redeem for will hurt the program’s success.
14. Not making the enrollment painless. Preregistrations and registering business incentive participants in-person is not optional, it is imperative.
15. Not effectively communicating the program’s relevance will hurt participation in the business incentive.
16. Finally, not having a thoughtful communication campaign is a prevalent mistake to successful business incentive.

Definition of Business Incentives
Business incentives, employee incentives, distributor incentives and/or dealer incentives relate to the offering of a rebate, spiff or loyalty points to a recipient in return for them fulfilling the sponsor’s stated objectives.

Business incentives vary from traditional advertising and promotions because the rewards for a business incentive are on a variable basis and are only paid-out when the sponsor’s goals are met.

Use of the term “business incentive” in a sentence:
ABC Corporation’s decision to implement an ongoing business incentive bolstered sales throughout its supply chain and subsequently increased market share by creating loyalty with its partners.