Over the past year, we’ve started to experience something of a paradigm shift in the way we structure our points-based incentive programs. This shift has seen our yearlong programs pivot away from utilizing annual sales and purchasing goals to motivate participants, in favor of goals that reset at the start of each month. Thus far, the transition has been a positive one, with clients across industries realizing the benefits and beginning to adopt it for their own programs. But what gives? What is it about shortening the achievement window that’s helped our program participants stay motivated to produce consistently better results?
For Participants
Simplification: For one thing, the shorter window has made it easier for participants to keep their eyes on the prize. Short-term success is always easier to sustain than long-term success, so by giving participants a smaller time frame in which they need to stay energized, their motivation level never dips too low. Essentially, switching to monthly goals simplifies the engagement process.
A Fresh Start: Let’s say a participant has a lull in purchasing or sales—maybe there’s a dip in activity due to health problems, or a slow couple of months because the primary products are seasonal. Well, this participant doesn’t have to throw in the towel for the entire program on account of a couple of down months. He or she can always recharge and regroup the following month and be motivated to achieve, enabling them to maintain skin the game throughout the program. In this way, participants will never feel left behind.
But this kind of paradigm shift would never occur if it only made sense for the target audience. Indeed, a transition to monthly goals has proven advantageous to clients as much as it has program participants, and this goes beyond simply doing a better job of keeping participants engaged.
For Clients
Flexibility: This is the most important benefit for the corporate sponsor. Say a distributor has a contractor who does really well and easily reaches his or her goal in the first month. Well, the distributor can then move the goal forward the following month in order to “stretch” the contractor’s activity, or vice versa, depending on the performance. Ultimately, this approach enables clients to manage participant goals on a more regular basis, allowing them to more easily monitor and influence performances and thus giving them more autonomy over their own programs.
Of course, what often motivates any paradigm shift is enhanced technology, and this shift to monthly goals is no different. It’s because of our evolving technology platform that we’ve been able to offer this incentive solution to our clients. It’s allowed them to not only set monthly goals for a given program’s audience, but to also customize and modify these goals on an individual basis. In other words, clients now have the ability to set unique goals for individual participants operating within their program, and can alter them to maximize performances not simply across the board, but at the individual level. Needless to say, this type of incentive program structure offers tremendous potential, regardless of industry, and we’re looking forward to implementing it in more and more of our programs. The future of incentives looks bright, wouldn’t you agree?
For more information, contact HMI | 888.220.4780.
