Conference & Meetings World Issue 101 — July / August | Page 43

SITE
Beyond sales incentives
DIDIER SCAILLET, CHIEF EXCELLENCE OFFICER OF GLOBAL INCENTIVES ASSOCIATION SITE, SAYS THE SKY’S THE LIMIT
FOR INCENTIVES GROWTH IF USED AROUND SOFT POWER ISSUES LIKE COMPANY CULTURE
t’s been bubbling under for
quite some time but we’re
now seeing clearer evidence
of it being more than a flash
in the pan. It’s popped up in our research
over the past couple of years and it’s all
over our recently launched Bangkok
Manifesto, SITE’s document that
interrogates the nature, purpose and
direction of incentive travel. I’m talking
about ‘incentives beyond sales’, that is,
the deployment of incentive travel
experiences in a workplace environment
outside of the traditional sales
applications.
Incentive travel originated as the
solution to the most fundamental of sales
problems: how do you sell more stuff?
Playing in the sandbox of human
psychology companies realised that a
motivated sales team would indeed sell
more stuff. They then came to
understand that offering a travel
experience as a reward for selling more
stuff was indeed effective. The last piece
of the jigsaw was the realisation that the
travel reward could be funded from the
additional profits.
It’s a pretty easy sell for the Director
of Sales – if we offer a travel reward, the
team will sell more stuff and it won’t cost
us anything other than a small
percentage of the additional profits that
wouldn’t have been generated without
the programme. Even the tightest, driest,
most risk averse Financial Controller
will buy that one.
But then, of course, savvy users of
incentive travel realised that, apart for an
improved bottom line, a ton of other
things happened as a result of the trip.
These were unintended consequences
but exceedingly good ones.
€
Connecting with Top Brass
For example, sales executives connected
with senior leadership. While golfing or
taking a cooking class or participating
together in a tour of a local attraction,
sales executives got to spend quality
time with leadership and relationships of
openness, confidence and trust were
established during the three days away
that could have taken three years to
build in the workplace.
Suddenly soft, humanised power was
unleashed around the organisation and
company culture was strengthened,
reinforced, made tangible. It stopped
raining and the sky was filled with
warm sunshine.
Virtuous cycles replaced vicious cycles,
tenderness replaced toxicity, dread and
drudgery in the workplace became
sweetness and light. We all sat down
with the free pizza and coke, joined
hands and sang ‘Kumbaya’ as the CEO
in faded jeans and well-worn flip flops
strummed his guitar …
Clearly not. This is not how it works
at all, nor should it be. However, the
wind direction has definitely changed.
Instead of looking ONLY at the bottom
line – still the number one reason for
organising an incentive programme
according to the Incentive Travel
Industry Index 2018 – companies have
definitely started to pay attention to the
“
The last
piece of
the jigsaw
was the
realisation
that the
travel
reward
could be
funded
from the
additional
profits.”
Right: Didier
Scaillet, Chief
Excellence
Officer, SITE
ISSUE 101
unintended consequences, the soft power
impact of the trip, the relationship
quotient. It’s in the Bangkok Manifesto
too. Tina Gaccetta, VP Marketing &
Incentives at LegalShield says: “Great
workplaces create wonderful incentive
travel programmes and great incentive
travel programmes create great
workplaces”. She doesn’t believe that a
company with a poor culture can solve
that with an incentive travel programme:
“When the workplace culture is right to
start with and folks feel appreciated and
valued then there’s a kind of alchemy
that allows the incentive travel reward to
become the golden moment that it can
be.”
If companies continue to use travel
experiences as a means to build
workplace culture then the incentive
travel industry is destined to grow very
strongly.
The use of incentives in a sales context
will, by nature, be limited to certain
verticals – just look how extensive they
are in automotive, insurance, direct sales.
However, if we deploy travel experiences
to address issues
around soft
power like
company culture
then the sky’s the
limit for our
growth.
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