20 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.

What Are Sales Incentives?

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.

Why Non Monetary Incentives?

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 20 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.

Vantage Circle provides its customers with a wide variety of gift cards to choose from. This makes for a much smoother gifting experience. To know more about Vantage Circle, Schedule A Free Demo Today

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 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: Why The Habit Of Continious Learning Is Important

12. Shoutout And Recognition

It is not always about tangible awards; recognition can be just as rewarding. Over 91% of HR professionals believe that recognition and reward make employees more likely to stay. An employee who has been recognized is 63% more likely to stay at his or her current job within the next three to six months, according to another study.

Vantage Rewards is your one stop shop for Rewards and Recognition. We understand and value the need for recognition of our employees amd strive to provide you with the best platform for Rewards and Recognition.

13. Remote Working Days

Remote working days are a simple yet effective way to reward your employees. On average, employees are 13% more productive when working from home. If your employees have responsibilities that can be managed remotely then you can let them work remotely for a few days.

Even a single day of remote work can greatly affect an employee's attitude. It takes off a lot of pressure from employees to travel to and from work and allow for more flexible management of their time.

Meeting clients may sometimes take up the entire working day. Traveling to the office just to report the task at the beginning and end of the day can put unnecessary pressure on your sales team. Remote working days will allow them to better manage their time and optimize productivity.

However, we have to keep in mind that not everyone is disciplined enough for such a remote setup or might not prefer the solitude it brings.

14. Extra Leave

Aside from remote working days, extra leaves serve as a great reward. Because who would say no to an extra day of rest?

Apart from weekends and other public holidays, an extra half day or full day off is always welcome. Getting an extra leave as a reward will make your sales reps feel recognized for all the hard work, and they will be motivated to work harder. However, you should do this depending on your business needs and how it affects your ROI.

15. Flexible Work Hours

Having a flexible schedule is something every employee dreams of. Flexible work hours allow your employees to enjoy more time with their families and friends and it also shows you trust them. Which is exactly what makes it such a great non-monetary reward.

If your sales team meets your expectations, then there is no reason not to let them have a flexible schedule. This also works well to better accommodate international clients or adjust to specific timings for more efficiency in work.

16. Opportunities To Volunteer

The current working demographic is made up of millennials and gen-z who want a balance of community involvement and self-development besides work-life balance. This is what makes volunteering opportunities an attractive incentive.

Employee volunteerism has been proven to reduce a company's employee turnover by approximately 50%

Providing your employees with an opportunity to volunteer and give back to the communities in which they live is a meaningful non-monetary incentive that increases employee engagement and pride.

17. Mentorship Program

Mentoring might not seem to be an incentive. However, sales, by and large, is an instinct driven field. Honing these instincts happens mostly while on the job. This is what makes mentoring an attractive incentive.

Mentoring allows one-on-one interactions. Pairing junior and senior team members, or cross-department peers from various departments who share identical interests or career aspirations, will produce a domino effect in which knowledge is easily transferred.

The juniors will learn from the experience of the more experienced employees, while the mentors will be able to develop leadership skills during the mentoring program. It is a win-win situation for both parties.

18. Employee Stock Ownership Plan(ESOP)

You tend to take better care of things if you own them. This is the basis of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan.

ESOP is a flexible enough plan that incentivises employees with ownership. An ESOP can reward an employee with considerable retirement assets if the person has been with the firm for a long time and the employer stock has increased in value prior to retirement. The ESOP is primarily intended to reward employees who have been with the company the longest and contribute the most to its success. Because stock is distributed to each employee’s account based on a contribution from the firm, there is no expense to the employee for this benefit.

19. Commuter Incentives

Commuting everyday to and from work especially during the rush hour can be tiring. Set aside a budget for commuting for your employees not just for everyday commute to office but also for any traveling your employees might have to undertake for work.

You can also incentivize your employees to take public transport options or to start a co-worker carpool and reward them with perks for doing so. This will not only help your company’s carbon footprint, but it’s the perfect fringe benefit for employees looking for alternate means of commuting.

20. Free Meals At Work

We all know how hard managing our time is. Taking care of work and the home and having three meals daily, especially when you live alone, can be overwhelming. You can help your employees by incentivizing them with free breakfast or lunch in the office.

This simple yet effective perk can go a long way in increasing employee morale.

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 your thoughts!

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.