Author: Rob Miklas

At Quality Incentive Company, Rob is responsible for leading the company’s business development efforts in both the employee recognition and sales/channel arenas. He has more than 10 years of experience in the recognition and incentive industry, having served as president and CEO of Atlanta-based Loyaltyworks before joining QIC in 2011.

Having an Employee Recognition or Incentive Program Is Valuable – Making It the Best is Critical

November 8, 2013 by

incentive program rewardsTwo recent publications, the 2013 Incentive Market Study (Incentive Federation, Inc.) and the 2013 Colloquy Loyalty Census, present a number of very interesting facts and observations about the recognition, incentive, and loyalty market. Among the more salient of those facts are:

  •  74% of U.S. businesses use non-cash rewards to recognize and reward key audiences, and
  • on average, U.S. individuals and households are enrolled in more than 20 loyalty programs.

Clearly, incentive, employee recognition or loyalty program has become a well-established and essential feature of U.S. commerce – for both the sponsor and the program participant. But that (fairly obvious) observation led me to a couple of questions that bear further examination:

1 – What are those businesses in the 26% that don’t sponsor recognition and incentive programs giving up?

2 – How does the program sponsor make his/her program stand out from all those competing programs in which their customers and/or employees are participating?

The answer to the first question is – a lot! As we point out in the Best Practices pages of our website, employee recognition and incentive programs are uniquely suited vehicles for communicating in a meaningful way with your employees and best customers – and for obtaining critical data from them via key performance indicators. So, if you’re part of the 26%, you may want to reconsider and examine the possible benefits of offering your own recognition or incentive program.

And the answer to the second question lies largely in the same Best Practices to which I refer above. The best programs:

  • create a value proposition that truly resonates with the participant,
  • award/recognize their participants frequently and consistently,
  • continuously analyze results and make appropriate adjustments, and above all
  • they communicate, communicate, communicate (to borrow from a popular real estate mantra).

If your program does these things well, it will become differentially valuable to your participant – and thus separate itself from those competitor offerings found in your participant’s portfolio of programs.

We invite you contact us if we can help on either of these fronts.

Program Reviews: Key to Employee Recognition Program Success

October 16, 2013 by

It’s that time of year when many of our clients evaluate the employee recognition, or customer incentive programs that they sponsor with an eye toward their continuation and/or expansion in the upcoming year. Curtailment and abandonment are also options, but let’s not dwell on those possibilities! In all seriousness, whether the news is good, or… Read more »

Utilizing Channel Sales Incentive Programs

October 14, 2013 by

A recent posting on the highly useful Marketing Profs newsletter provided some excellent insights into How B2B Commerce is Changing. The article, written by Ayaz Nanji, presents and analyzes the results of a survey of: — how business-to-business (B2B) interactions are changing, — why these changes are occurring, and — the challenges that companies face in… Read more »

Channel Sales Incentives and Free Parking – a Practical Lesson

September 27, 2013 by

Ease-of-use is an oft-cited and arguably overworked term.  But in my experience, ease-of-use can many times facilitate frequent use.  Here’s one example. How often have you set out on a shopping expedition, errand, dining experience, etc., and been frustrated by the inability to find a parking space near your desired destination? Or, if you were… Read more »

When the Music Stops … Closing out Incentive Programs

September 18, 2013 by

Since we make our living at Quality Incentive Company designing and operating ongoing employee recognition and incentive programs, we try not to spend a lot of time thinking about what happens when a program reaches the end of its life cycle. But the fact is that most programs have an endpoint. A recent article by… Read more »