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Top 10 employee recognition and rewards ideas to motivate your team

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Happy employees produce more. But if your team is facing hard times trying to sell, it is crucial that you do something not to let the great spirit go down.

There are classic ways to motivate your sales team, like commission checks and sales contests. But sometimes, a change may welcome and bring better results.

employee recognition

Here are ten best methods for you to motivate your team while in good or bad times. These methods will also help you show recognition and appreciation for your employees.

1. A Leaderboard for Posting Your Team Member’s Performance

Competition motivates. If you make sure to use it positively, this pressure to stay up in the list will make your team always try to improve.

Besides, high performers will keep on the competition to stay between the first positions in the leaderboard, competing for rewards. By using the subjective intent of your sales representatives, everyone’s performance may increase.

2. Acknowledge Team Member’s Achievements

Knowing that we are doing the right thing is not always enough; recognition may be very desirable to boost motivation and keep us inspired to keep working well, even for small achievements.

So praising your sales representatives out loud and in front of other people is a great method to keep this employee in the right track, besides showing other employees that if they continue doing a great job, they are also going to be praised in front of the team.

Remember to say more words instead of just answering “Great job”; it may be worth to draw everybody’s attention and quickly talk about the achievements of the sales representative you are praising and how vital it is for the company.

That attitude will encourage others to keep on the hard work and will definitely be something inspiring for everyone, mainly for the sales representative who was complimented.

3. Recognize Personal Bests

For the ones who are hardly in the top of the lists, sales contests may not work, and may even be demotivating, once they might feel they don’t have chances to compete.

To motivate and recognize these sales representatives work, you can provide specific recognition when they exceed their personal bests. This works even for the high performers.

4. Give No-Cost or Low-Cost Rewards

You don’t always need to spend a lot of money to give somebody a gift or reward, and sometimes, no money at all. Some ideas may be:

  • A better location in the parking lot;
  • Permission to leave one hour early on a Friday;
  • A free day off (to be chosen by the employee);
  • Movie or theater tickets;
  • Some unique or different other food items;
  • Some gourmet coffee and candies;
  • Transportation expenses or fuel paid for a week.

5. Create a Trophy or Another Symbol for High Performers

Symbolism is significant. A trophy only functions to show who the champion is, but it also fills the one receiving it with proud. Make your award become a tradition in your company. It should fully display the pride of its holder.

employee rewards ideas

Another cool way to reward somebody is by giving a unique lapel pin! This enamel pin may represent the top seller of the month; so every month, sales representatives will be competing to have the right to wear the pin that represents the top seller of the month, and the current owner of it will make efforts to stay with it for another month. Simply incredible!

6. Provide Customized Rewards, According to Team Member’s Interests

Those rewards design to please anyone who receives it is not always the most efficient. Since people with different personalities form your team, it is an excellent idea to think of personal gifts. Someone who loves boutique beer will respond to an unusual gift as compared to a basketball fanatic.

Some will just prefer a public acknowledgment, other a special gift. Keep track of what works for each person.

7. Reward the Entire Group When They Meet a Collective Goal

It is imperative. Rewarding everyone for meeting a collective goal will highly increase the team spirit. Besides making everybody feel responsible for the achievement (and they really are), this may also help the sales representatives to get more in touch with each other.

Here are some ideas:

  • An extraordinary lunch
  • Some tasty desserts
  • The right of leaving early
  • A fun activity for one afternoon during the expedient

8. Offer Career Development Opportunities and Mentorship as Motivation

A fantastic idea to motivate your best sales representatives is to give them something they really would like: instead of gifts, how about giving them the opportunity to talk and learn a little from the company’s VP? Or how about giving them a course on MBA or sales with the expenses paid. It is something that for sure the best employees will love, and your company too.

9. Schedule Social Events to Commemorate Collective Achievements

Hanging out with your team is a great idea to increase fellowship and get to know your sales representatives even better. Scheduling social events after those stressful periods is the best way to relax and at the same time do something enjoyable for the team.

10. Pins All Over!

The idea mentioned in item #5 can be enhanced! Not only can the bestseller employee wear an essential lapel pin of the team, but also can the other employees, by the creation of different categories. For example, you can award a lapel pin to someone for making the biggest one single sell of the team, or for being the one who has presented more personal development that year.

awards pins

Besides the seller of the month lapel pin, you could also create a bigger and more special pin for the sales representative with more sells during the whole year! Imagine an employee wearing the lapel pins of the month and the year: this person would be in heaven! And everybody would feel motivated to be the next one wearing those pins!

At Vivipins, you can order a variety of pin models you couldn’t possibly imagine. Go through its testimonials and check their client’s satisfaction. Check here all employee recognition pins available at Vivipins.

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