GPI 430 – Pay your sales personnel incentives quickly when they bring a new customer order.

Many companies hire sales personnel to find customers.  If you ask them what is the most important thing they want the sales people to do, those firms say they want sales orders. Nothing else is more important.

Given this is the definitive answer, many companies structure their reward systems, incentive programs, incorrectly.  Emphasis is not on immediate reward, but delay.  Delay in payment erodes employee morale.  Consider doing these things, if possible.

Motivate your sales personnel by doing these things:

• Pay for new orders on his next check: When a sales person brings you a new customer purchase order, pay him an incentive on his next check. Even if you pay him off gross profit or net income from that sale, you want to reward his performance.  Getting the purchase order is half the battle.  If he is paid by gross profit, pay him half of the estimate up front.  Pay him something and pay him fast.
• For sales people, ignore profitability: If your firm screws up the order, do not blame the sales person.  Look internally for operation problems. The sales person is bringing you work.  Reward that behavior.  Do not mix the results of operations and those efforts of the sales person.  They are unrelated, especially when the sales person does not determine the sales price or, the sales price is determined by internal management.
• Get more orders: Encourage the sales person to go get orders. Tell him this and he is to tell you when he is detracted from this by anyone in the organization.  If he has any paperwork to do which detracts from getting orders, assign an internal person to perform those menial tasks if possible. His skills are getting orders; not keypunching.
• Assign an internal person for his contact: Have someone internally call him while he is on the road to take notes, enter data into your company’s sales order system in order for the sales person to increase face time in front of customers. That person can ask him every day what is holding him up, which department might he having problems with or what might help him to increase orders?  Ask for daily input.  He will tell you when you spoil him and pay him quickly for his performance.
• Tell him how much he will get: Keep an internal tab on how much that sales person is going to get on his next check so you can have it ready to tell him when he calls in.  Assign someone to keep track of the purchase orders he has submitted to the company weekly.  When he calls in, be able quickly to tell him with the addition of each purchase order, “Frank, so far you are going to receive $1,575.00 on your next bonus check this Friday, unless of course, you hustle and get us another customer purchase order before the cutoff.”
• Keep his accumulated bonuses on your website: Maintain his accumulated bonuses on the company website so if he wishes, he, as an employee, can log on and check his current balance.  This would help him since he might do this while out of town, sitting in a hotel room, or checking this earned dollar amount at lunch. You want his feedback because if he is missing a payment, you may be missing a customer purchase order he turned into someone on your staff.