5 original reward ideas for your sales challenges
Rewards play a particularly important role in the success of a sales challenge. In fact, before being caught up in the excitement of the event, rewards are the primary motivating factor for participants at the start of a challenge. It's therefore essential to provide rewards that attract attention and give an initial reason to participate.
Why an original award?
Above all, by definition, original rewards must be rare if they are not to become the norm. They should therefore be used sparingly. Our survey of incentive practices, carried out with our partner Glady, shows that 60% of challenge participants prefer gift vouchers as a reward. We therefore recommend using this type of incentive by default.
Nevertheless, an original reward has beneficial effects on employee commitment for several reasons:
- Collective emphasis: traditional rewards are often individual. A collective gift recognizes the effort made by the whole team, thus activating an additional motivational lever: cooperation.
- Personalization: one of the advantages of an original reward is that it can be personalized. Personalization for the employee on the one hand (his or her tastes and preferences), but also personalization to reflect the world of the gamification program or the company (branding, storytelling).
- Surprise: more unpredictable, this type of reward is ideal when you want to break the routine.
In short, the originality of the reward contributes to increasing its symbolic value and therefore the total perceived value. The following formula can be proposed: Perceived value = real value + symbolic value.
Here are the five original reward ideas you need to incorporate into your animation programs. Please note that all these ideas are based on real-life cases, and have been proven effective in the companies concerned. So don't hesitate to try them out now!
First idea: an outdoor adventure
Increasing the symbolic value of a reward also means giving it meaning. When you want to celebrate collective performance and the spirit of cooperation in a team, what could be better than sharing a real adventure? Climbing your first 4,000 m as a team, an introduction to bivouacs, your first night shift... Outdoor adventure is consistent with many team values: mutual aid, cooperation, effort, perseverance... with the goal in mind, then the pride and satisfaction of accomplishment. Rewarding with a team outdoor seminar or personalized gift cards can therefore be the ideal solution. The Explora Project agency specializes in low-carbon outdoor adventures.
Tip #2: Donate to associations
Using a reward budget to donate to associations is becoming increasingly common. There are many ways to donate. The employee can choose to donate his or her reward to an association from a predefined list. Alternatively, a team vote can be organized to choose the association. A company can also decide to dedicate one of its annual challenges to an association. Numerous solutions now exist on the market enabling managers and sales management to easily offer this type of reward. Examples include Sorewards and Charitips.
Third idea: a "physical" medal or badge
The badge is one of gamification's most emblematic rewards. Like the medal you win when you cross the finish line in a marathon, its value is purely symbolic. It symbolizes personal achievement. Traditionally, badges have been virtual, but today's companies have many ways of making them into "physical" objects and thus increasing their symbolic impact. Some companies even choose to organize an awards ceremony, at a sales convention for example. Here again, solutions like Panopli make it easy to create personalized gifts and badges.
Tip #4: A personalized gift from the manager
Rewards do not always have to be associated with a centralized incentive program at management level. Team managers can, at their own level, offer rewards to recognize an employee's efforts or performance. Spontaneity and responsiveness are often the forgotten ingredients of an effective incentive program. When a manager offers a box of chocolates to celebrate last week's excellent results, it's spontaneity that makes all the difference to the value perceived by employees.
Tip number five: Putting the employee first
Highlighting an employee or team for their expertise or results is also an excellent way to motivate. This activates both the lever of recognition and that of cooperation, since it is often accompanied by the sharing of experience and best practices. There are many channels to use in companies: corporate social networks, periodic newsletters ("Gazette") or even JT. The companies that have tested it report strong interest from employees in this type of system.
Conclusion: mix original and classic awards
Original rewards activate more "intrinsic" motivational levers. The additional perceived value, through symbolic value, helps to limit the budget required when setting up a sales challenge.
Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that the basis of an incentive program remains the classic reward, gift voucher or bonus.
As is often the case in animation, it's the mix that's recommended (mix of motivational levers, mix of rewards). This mix also needs to be defined according to budget constraints.
