Your sales force is the beating heart of your business’s bottom line. Without your entire team running at full steam ahead, you won’t make enough revenue to pay for your operating expenses, let alone acquire new customers or reach your brand awareness goals.

Therefore, most managers and business owners need to know how to boost sales. Gift card incentives and other incentive programs can be just what you need to inspire your sales team to go the extra mile and close more deals.

Today, let’s take a look at some incentives to boost sales.

What Is a Sales Incentive or Sales Incentive Program?

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A sales incentive is essentially a reward, perk, or bonus to a sales representative or sales department to sell more products or reach a certain sales quota goal. Think of them as prizes or rewards that your sales managers or team members will want to acquire by maximizing sales performance.

The Harvard Business Review reports that sales programs can affect a company’s bottom line even more so than advertising — which is why US companies spend three times more on incentivizing their sales teams than drawing in new consumers. HBR also reports that when it comes to rewards, more is more: Increasing the prizes as the number of top performers increases only results in even better outcomes.

Sales incentive programs are a bit more complex than one-off gifts or prizes. They can include long-running programs, like employee of the month programs, that strive to inspire healthy competition.

Regardless, sales incentives are crucial for motivating your sales team to perform as effectively as possible, especially when you face a demanding quarter or when your industry has a shakeup. Great incentives result in hard work and better metrics.

Sales Incentive Ideas

When it comes to sales incentive ideas, the sky’s the limit! In fact, your salespeople might like a wide variety of prizes and benefits. If you’re stuck, here are a couple of incentives to boost sales that to implement individually or as part of bigger programs:

• eGift cards. Options for digital gift cards are best when the recipient can swap one for another, like with the Prezzee Smart eGift Card.
• Fun gadgets, like smartwatches or noise-canceling headphones. These can be effective sales incentives to help you reach your sales goals if you choose the right prizes (they need to be in demand and trendy in most cases).
• Office equipment, like comfortable mice, tactile keyboards, or a standing desk.
• Subscription boxes for things like candy, clothes, fitness, or other goodies (this can prove problematic if you forget to cancel the subscription or if the recipient doesn’t enjoy it).
• Luxury home goods prizes, like a new coffee maker or office chair.
• Exclusive or discounted memberships or subscription plans, like a gym membership.

Sales incentive plans can also include tickets to sporting events or time off. You can also help boost further success by gifting access to professional development seminars, online courses, and much more.

In short, you can use any worthwhile prize as a means to motivate your sales team to do better than before. As a side bonus, incentives frequently result in more employee engagement, especially among top performers.

Why Use Gift Cards to Boost Sales Numbers?

Truth be told, there are tons of reasons why gift cards make perfect sales incentives, especially if you can’t hand out direct cash prizes.

They’re Easy To Send

For starters, gift cards are quite easy to provide. Instead of something like noise-canceling headphones, you never need to worry about there not being enough gift cards for you to provide to your employees — or a team member already owning what you send out, or the item not arriving safely to them.

Say that you need to provide a sales incentive to your entire sales department, which includes 30 people in total. That’s a lot of prizes if your sales force meets the set goals for the sales cycle. Sending out gift cards en masse is far faster.

If, for example, you want to designate a featured employee of the month, celebrate onboardings, work anniversaries, or birthdays, you can automate an eGift sending service like Prezzee API in four quick steps.

This ensures no one goes without being noticed, whether it’s their first day or their last. Automated reward programs will maintain an ongoing sales incentive program that doesn’t require too much time and attention on your part (allowing you to focus on other elements of running your business).

They Can Be Sent Individually or in Groups

Furthermore, eGift cards are great sales incentives since they can be sent to individual members or used as group gifts. With Prezzee Business, you can send one gift card or unlimited gift cards (if your finance team approves it, of course!).

They’re Non-Cash Rewards

Plus, gift cards are non-cash incentives. Non-monetary rewards are sometimes a better type of incentive since they don’t inspire as much jealousy and people who don’t receive them. This may or may not be a big deal for your organization. But if your sales team has a little less than healthy competitiveness, cash rewards might onboard the worst team member — the ol’ green-eyed monster.

On the other hand, gift cards are pretty safe gifts that people like to receive, but others won’t feel too bad about missing out on them until they have another chance to succeed. Questions are likely to center around “What brand is the gift card for?” rather than “How much was your bonus?”

The Benefits of eGift Cards as Sales Incentives

eGift cards, in particular, have extra benefits, particularly as sales incentives.

For example, eGift cards from Prezzee can be customized with a personal message from you, a manager or a business owner. In this way, you can directly thank or praise the employee who wins the digital gift card, showing them your appreciation in a unique and heartfelt way.

On top of that, eGift cards are perfect sales incentives since they don’t require you to breach any carbon neutrality goals for your organization. By definition, digital gift cards don’t use any plastic, so even if you order 100 of them, you aren’t contributing meaningfully to environmental pollution.

If you order a bunch of eGift cards from Prezzee, remember that they are available for over 360 major brands, like Target, and more. All that means is that you're sure to find a perfect gift card for every member of your team. Even if you give a salesperson a gift card to a brand they don’t normally shop at, it’s easy for them to simply swap the brand out for a different one.

Bottom line: if you’re going to use gift cards as sales incentives, which is a wise idea, opt for eGift cards instead of physical, plastic ones.

When To Use Gift Cards To Boost Sales
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It’s one thing to have some sales incentive gift cards on hand to reward your high-performing employees. It’s another to know exactly when to use those gift cards to inspire maximum performance and profits.

Generally speaking, there are four big times when you should use gift cards or other sales incentives to boost sales directly.

To Incentivize Fast Growth

From time to time, your brand might need to reach short-term sales targets without any delay.

Say that you have a specific goal: To expand by opening a new retail storefront or online shop. But you need money to make sure that expansion happens on time and on budget.

Therefore, if you need to incentivize fast growth, sales incentives could be just the ticket. Not only will your sales staff be able to earn more money through commissions (assuming that you pay them on a commission basis), but they’ll also have the prospect of earning a bonus or some other reward if they do even better than normal.

For many salespeople, this adds a little bit of spice to the thrill of the hunt. Tons of people become salespeople specifically because they like challenges and overcoming big odds. Give them what they need to motivate themselves, and you’ll be thrilled at the results.

To Reward an Employee of the Month

Perhaps your company has an employee of the month competition for your sales staff. Each month, the salesperson with the highest total sales receives a special prize plus a plaque that goes up on the wall.

The prize has to be pretty alluring to motivate each salesperson to do their absolute best, however. It’s not always enough to give them the satisfaction of receiving a nice plaque.

A gift card or some other sales incentive would help sweeten the deal and make the employee of the month competition more enticing for your sales staff. Sales incentives don’t always need to focus on the bottom line, either.

If you notice that one individual has dozens of assists or helps nurture fantastic relationships with VIP clients, that likely has boosted your business in more ways than one. Take the time to acknowledge the moves that build long-lasting business relationships with legacy accounts.

To Celebrate the Completion of a Tough Quarter

What if your sales staff goes above and beyond and completes a particularly tough quarter or business cycle? In that case, they might be due for some extra employee appreciation or rewards without asking for it.

Step in and hand out sales rewards to your sales staff without being asked: Your sales staff will remember that they were rewarded or incentivized for doing an incredible job without having to be told about it.

Then, the next time you face a particularly challenging quarter and your sales staff comes through regardless; they’ll know that they will be properly rewarded for their efforts. When the going gets tough, your sales staff needs to know that you have their back regarding reward and compensation. Sales incentives tell them that more effectively than any words possibly could.

To Reward Those Who Reach Their Sales Target

Most often, though, you’ll use sales incentives as a prospect of reward for your sales team to reach a specific sales target.

For instance, if you want your salespeople to sell $10,000 worth of products by the end of Q2 2023, you’ll incentivize reaching that goal by offering a prize, such as a set of eGift cards for the whole team, an extra cash prize, or something else entirely. It’s up to you!

But the point is that your sales staff needs to be motivated to reach particularly high goals, especially if they don’t think they can reach those goals initially.

Encouraging New Sales With a Click

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Ultimately, the right sales team incentives can be what you need to get your sales team geared up for a fantastically profitable quarter. Sales incentives like eGift cards from Prezzee are convenient, effective, and even customizable, helping you show appreciation to each sales team member who gets the job done in style.

Sign up for a free Prezzee Business account to bring new life to your corporate gifting strategy.

Sources:

Designing Compensation Systems for Sales Professionals | SHRM.org

14 Simple But Effective Techniques To Increase Sales | Forbes

Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works | Harvard Business Review

13.2 Customer Relationships and Selling Strategies – Principles of Marketing | University of Minnesota