How keeping your employees happy can boost sales

Some businesses are reluctant to spend extra money on their workforce, failing to see the business benefits of maintaining a healthy and happy team. Others make efforts to improve staff morale, but don’t go anywhere near far enough compared to their competitors. After all, it’s always easier to prioritise spending in other areas.

However, if you look at the situation from another angle, spending money on your workforce could actually be a very wise investment. It is widely known that happier employees work harder, are more productive and also stay with your company for longer. All of this can lead to increased output, productivity and efficiency, which also means that your sales figures will be higher at the end of the year.

Rewards and targets

Many companies choose to implement a general corporate rewards scheme to motivate staff, improve morale and offer perks and benefits to make their company more attractive to both new and existing staff. However, you can also launch schemes targeted towards specific goals, such as sales targets.

There are lots of ways to motivate sales staff, but juicy sales incentives for achieving ambitious targets can be far more effective. Rewards can be anything from bonuses to prizes, including time off, weekends away or something as simple as a free meal. You can even be more creative with the rewards you offer, putting together incentives that are a little more fun and interesting.

It’s important though that progress towards goals is trackable and monitored, so that your sales professionals can see at a glance how close they are to achieving their target. This can help to keep them motivated and focused on the target, as well as seeing how well they’re doing in relation to other team members.

You can also implement rewards for teamworking, where the team as a whole benefits from the rewards for the most sales or the most revenue brought in. This can be particularly effective for boosting the quality of work by poorer performers, who won’t want to let their teammates down.

Making savings

As well as increasing sales and reaching other targets for growth, corporate rewards schemes and incentive programs can also save your company money. As most business owners will know, recruitment is a very expensive and time-consuming business.

If your company is within a highly competitive sector where the best talent is regularly head-hunted poaching of employees is common, you could find yourself unable to stop your best sales staff being tempted away by a rival company.

How can you stop this from happening and spend less money on recruitment at the same time? The solution could be a more attractive and competitive package of benefits, plus an appealing sales incentive and corporate rewards scheme. This makes your company a more attractive offer than your rivals, even if they are offering more money. Other aspects such as salary, career progression prospects and company ethos also make a big difference of course, but being able to offer attractive extras can give you the competitive edge over rival employers.