Diwali shopping has all business owners in India are gearing up to close their maximum sales of the year. In fact with the beginning of the auspicious nine day period of Navratra, most of the businesses begin to experience a spike in their sales or at least a sense of expectations for improved sales.
It is also around this time that many FMCG companies, dealerships, service providing corporations, et al announce their big Diwali bumper discount schemes. While these are great at luring customers to the shops and the markets, but these alone are not very helpful in achieving the augmented sales targets.
The business owners should develop and announce attractive performance based incentive schemes for their sales teams which run simultaneously with the discount schemes for the customers. This two-pronged approach is extremely successful in achieving the desired sales goals.
Here are some of my suggestions for this type of a special incentive scheme:
- Every one of the sales executives should continue to receive the standard cash incentive on every deal closed by him/her individually.
- The business owner should announce a bigger sales target for the special month, and on the accomplishment of it, each member of the team should receive some cash award for the fulfillment of the combined bigger goal.
- To extract maximum business from the high performers, the business owner should fix a high sales slab scheme for individual performance, upon reaching each level of sales slab an award of increasing value should be given to the high performers only.
- Among the team, the high performers should be encouraged continuously by the team manager and the business owner.
- A team huddle should happen every morning with the sales team and its manager, wherein scores of successful deals of high performers should be compared in a table and presented before everyone. The intention and attitude should be of motivating the team and encouraging those members who are lagging behind or following in close footsteps of the leaders on the score-board.
- The day should end with an individual reporting and debrief of each member of the sales team with the team manager. This should culminate in the plan for the next day.
- At the end of the period of sales scheme, the top performers of the sales team should be rewarded during a Diwali party at the office with an item of use in the household, such as a laptop, a kitchen appliance, and the like, and the family of the recipient should be invited to receive the gift on his/her behalf.
The point is that there should be a pulsating atmosphere of heightened performance by all, the energy should be electrifying in the office and within the team, and the manager and the business owner should be completely invested in the performance of the team. Such a high charge is easy to maintain over a period of four weeks or so, hence the scheme should be shared at the right time and should be developed well in advance.
We at Philyra, can help you to design and execute your specific incentive scheme to fulfill your festive sales dreams.