What’s the correlation between top-performing companies and incentive programs? That’s an important question that the Incentive Research Foundation has delved into in the past, but in a just-released study, the IRF has focused its gaze exclusively on the technology sector: What is it that high-performing tech companies do differently than average-performing tech companies when it comes to rewarding and recognizing their employees?
After looking at revenue or stock price growth, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and other metrics, the IRF sorted the 118 survey respondents into 69 average-performing firms and 49 high-performing firms and compared their responses. The in-depth survey looks at reward programs overall, as well as sales incentives and channel/dealer incentives.
Overall, the high-performing companies surveyed demonstrate a greater respect for the value of reward and recognition programs than average-performing companies. They are twice as likely to believe these programs give them a competitive advantage (86 percent versus 44 percent) and are 15 percent more likely to say that such programs are a critical tool to manage performance.
Here are five findings that reveal best practices for motivating a sales team. For sales incentives specifically, high-performing tech firms are:
• 13 percent more likely to have a variable number of winners, rather than a fixed number
• 20 percent more likely to have a top-performer sales award
• 23 percent more likely to include a group trip for top performers
• 20 percent more likely to have tiered reward programs
• 21 percent more likely to use financial metrics as program qualifiers
