When it comes to giving people what they want, sales professionals need to know all the intricacies of how clients make decisions. Managers must in turn understand what their personnel want in order to encourage the best sales outcomes. While many may believe that monetary incentive compensation is the top tool for motivating great goal attainment, there are many other options that may create more drive in employees.

Offering new rewards
According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, more than 50 percent of all workers want to be recognized by their bosses for their good work. This means that most people want verbal accolades from their leaders. Instead of a bigger paycheck, just telling employees they're doing a good job could be enough to increase positive outcomes.

These acknowledgements should be as public as possible, the study revealed. More than 90 percent of the best businesses were found to see much better return on investment for implementing public recognition as a mainstay of their incentive compensation management programs than those just handing out monetary bonuses. This kind of open applause for a job well done also helps boost teamwork and individual effort, the source showed.

The benefit of benefits
For companies that have more than one location, sending top performers to secondary locations is also taken as a premier incentive. Paid travel to corporate events and visiting other offices as a trainer or motivator is a popular strategy among three-fourths of leading corporations. Granting personnel the opportunity to get more hands-on training, increase their visibility in the organization and travel for free make this a much more appealing option to many personnel as compared to a monthly or year-end bonus.

Such strategies can also make a company seem more appealing during the hiring process. The HR BLR wrote that firms should try to incorporate a variety of incentive compensation tools to show potential personnel that a business is more interested in the personal accomplishments of its employees. Rather than offering a basic cash bonus, offering public praise and alternative rewards like travel, health and wellness plans show an investment in the ongoing support and betterment of each staff member. This makes an organization seem more like a place to form a career and a lifelong relationship with a sales position, an appealing outcome for associates and corporations alike.