11 Incredible Sales Incentives That Aren’t Cash

Did you happen to know that cash rewards are not as effective as non-cash rewards in motivating people and inspiring distinct behaviors? Thus, it’s high time that you look beyond the monetary-based sales incentives and explore more effective options of appreciating your sales team.

Sales is an art in itself. And that makes salespeople quite the organizational rockstars.

In a nutshell, sales incentives are a form of rewards used by the sales manager to reward exceptional performance. These incentives may be awarded when a sales rep completes a sales quota, outsells their team members, or even when the whole team achieves a recommendable feat.

Traditionally, sales incentives were synonymous with cash incentives. Bonuses, salary hikes, or commissions are the norm. Even non-monetary incentives are kept relatively formal such as promotions.

However, cash-based incentives are rarely seen as a recognition measure and more of a commission cut. As a result, sales reps are often plagued by high turnover rates, burnout, and even low engagement levels.

A significant prerequisite for employee loyalty is to obtain recognition from one’s place of employment. In this scenario, non-monetary incentives balance the need for recognition while ensuring that performance continues to improve. Either way you look at it it's a win-win scenario.

Top 11 Amazing Yet Non-Monetary Sales Incentives

To motivate your team, the sales manager has to respect their employees’ bottom line as well.

Your sales staff expect compensation that matches the hard work they put into converting the sale. At the same time, cash rewards do hit that sweet spot but very rarely effectively retain sales reps for the long term.

1. Luxe Dinner Experience

Everyone wants to see what lies on the other side of success. Luxury can prove to be an excellent motivator for your sales team.

Reward an exceptional sales performance through an exclusive night of fine class dining, expensive wine, and a 5-star experience with the company’s CEO and other channel partners. Being in the presence of industry leaders can make the winner feel critical about their work.

In short, make it an unforgettable experience that motivates the sales workers to do their utmost best to succeed.

2. Team Outings

It is an immediate morale booster for any sales representative to get out of the office for even a few hours.

Essentially, a team excursion serves two purposes. Firstly, it is an excellent concept for sales compensation because it’s cheap, fun, and allows people to destress.

Secondly, outside of work, team members have the opportunity to get to know each other better. In turn, that strengthens the team unity, which gets weakened due to the high competition a sales force faces.

Make the experience more enjoyable by planning adventurous things to do. Furthermore, give the sales team the chance to choose the destination they want.

Recommended Article: 32 Amazing Company Outing Ideas

3. Time Off

The sales process is extremely fast-paced, competitive, and stressful. Thus the sales rep faces a greater risk of potential disengagement and burnout compared to a typical office worker.

Your sales team needs a healthier work-life balance and an opportunity to reorient themselves, more often than not mentally. One of the most efficient non-cash based benefits you can provide is to give them compensated time off. It might be sabbaticals.

Well-rested staff are automatically more productive, happier, and can achieve better results in the long term. Moreover, these are short-term benefits that can be noticed immediately.

4. Gift Cards

Gift cards provide your sales team with the flexibility and ease of choosing the rewards they want. Additionally, gift cards are easy to store, distribute, and manage, thus making them the ideal form of compensation.

Giving a gift card is like gifting an experience. Employees can get a gift that they always wanted or even indulge in a shopping spree with their families. The countless options of things that can be purchased add to the charm.

5. Cover Happy Hours

There are two well-established facts.

• Being a sales rep is a taxing job.
• Most people like to have an occasional drink.

Happy hours that the organization is covering are an incredible incentive for the whole sales team. After a long week or month, it is the ideal chance to relax and celebrate your achievement alongside individuals who have contributed to it.

6. All Paid Vacation

For your star sales representative, an all-paid holiday is a great way to show appreciation for all the hard work they go in every day. To make the reward sweeter, take the staff’s recommendations about where they want to go and present an opportunity to take an extra person on holiday.

7. Wellness Gifts

Salespeople have a fragile balance between work and life, which in turn often affects their overall wellbeing. In short, mental and physical wellbeing are highly influenced by both.

A smart way to counter these problems is to provide the sales staff with wellness-based incentives, such as gym passes, meditation app subscriptions, nutritious food hampers, and more.

Recommended Article: Corporate Wellness Guide

8. High-End Electronics

Gadgets that are flashy and fashionable are a well-sought opportunity that everybody would enjoy. Specific products, such as Apple devices, are seen as a sign of luxury and can be used by sales managers to meet important sales targets or quotas.

Additionally, the number of options is daunting. Each electronic category has incredible choices to offer, starting from smartwatches, high def-TVs, headphones to laptops.

9. Self Care Services

There might not be enough time for the sales team to indulge in any self-care. Self-care is not only about physical enrichment but also about the mental glow-up. It is a generous gesture on your part to provide such self-care facilities, such as a golf course pass, painting classes, spa days, or even concert tickets.

10. Best-In-Class Essentials

Since sales representatives either spend a lot of their time in the office or on the highways, make sure they have access to the very best essentials to make it easier for them to perform better.

Digital organizers, personalized workstations, ergonomic chairs, quick snack options, free lunches- the possibilities are countless for designing a workplace experience that is comfortable and convenient for your team.

11. Learning Compensation

Every worker seeks to improve professionally as well as personally. For any training or course, covering the tuition cost is a perfect way to reward an employee while ensuring that the learning curve never ends.

As new technologies keep emerging, ensuring that your staff continues to upskill periodically will also help you in the long run.

Recommended Article: The Ultimate Guide to Corporate Gift Ideas

Summing It Up

Sales incentives are an essential component of the sales process because motivation is vital to perform well. Which sales incentives does your organization use to appreciate the members of your sales team? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.

This article is written by Barasha Medhi who is a part of the marketing team at Vantage Circle. Barasha can be found either searching for interesting HR buzzwords to write about or looking at pictures of cozy Bel Air mansions. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com.