Category: Years of Service Award Programs

Years of Service Award Programs

Taking Incentive Programs Back to School

Taking Incentive Programs Back to SchoolAs I travel around the country these days, I encounter the unmistakable signs of the “back-to-school” season – more traffic, football games, advertisements for school supplies and less crowded airplanes, just to name a few. It’s been a couple of years since our family has experienced this rite of passage first-hand – and I must admit that I miss the excitement a bit.

For us, the return to school meant encountering the possibilities and challenges created by new coursework. In addition, there were the new relationships with teachers and fellow students to be navigated. But perhaps the most important adjustment was the reapplication of the discipline required for success – which inevitably waned during the relatively unstructured pace of summer.

Reflecting on this, I think that our existing and potential clients can learn a few things from the back-to-school season when it comes to incentive programs.

  • First, this is an excellent time to ask whether education could play a role in helping drive business results. For example, if you are running or contemplating a channel incentive program, consider adding a product knowledge quiz to your program platform. Not only do such quizzes advance the expertise of your channel partners, they tend to raise overall awareness and enthusiasm among program participants.
  •  Secondly, those of you who are running sales incentive programs might benefit by considering the addition of classes of customers who are not now participants in your program, but should be. By so doing, you might identify a new participant who becomes your new best friend (so to speak).
  •  Finally, there is the topic of discipline. I can tell you that here at QIC we plan to use this season to systematically review our processes and procedures to make sure that we are operating as efficiently and “smartly” as we should. I encourage all of you who are running incentive programs, be they sales incentives or employee recognition, to do the same.

No matter how old we – or our children – get, we can all learn something in the back-to-school season. Please don’t hesitate to call upon us if we can help you with that process in any way.

An Incentive to Review and Assess

I have been working in the incentive and recognition industry for nearly fifteen years and have grown accustomed to its seasonal stages.  For example, summer’s arrival means the opportunity for mid-year review and assessment.  It is the perfect time for clients to take stock of the state of their businesses, and make plans for the… Read more »

Summer – A Time for Engagement

Engage. Engaged. Engagement. Right now, this word seems to be very popular among many organizations. How to engage employees? How to keep employees engaged? How to manage the engagement of employees? For most businesses engagement is defined as “an emotional connection an employee feels toward his or her employment organization, which tends to influence his… Read more »

Incentive Program Design – Take Aim with these Best Practices

Those of you who have read this blog with any regularity may remember my post entitled Website Demolition and Incentive Program Design. In that post, I reference a great article about web site design and compare it to incentive program development. Well, I’ve now found a companion piece to that article – This is not… Read more »