Incentivized, Sales Increase

<B>Incentivized, Sales Increase</B>

By Chris Davis

A single group incentive travel program is credited with increasing sales at international network communications company Equant by about 20 percent, doubling its target.

The $1 million incentive program, a five-night event in South Africa with Equant's top executives, also helped to improve the level of company loyalty and employee satisfaction, said vice president of marketing Michael Escoe.

The program, dubbed "President's Club" and held earlier this year, provided direct interaction through daily formal meetings and informal events to 100 Equant employees worldwide--mostly salespeople and senior executives, plus their guests.

"This was the only time of the year when the top salespeople could get together, which is part of the incentive," Escoe said. "If you're one of the top, you have an opportunity to get together with senior management and top peers. It's not just the incentive of a nice place but to be part of the inner circle. That was as motivating as the trip."

The company, which is Dutch-owned and has American headquarters in Atlanta, as well as offices in London and Singapore, had held some regional incentive programs but only one previous companywide event.

Equant set the salespeople's qualification criteria for the event as reaching 120 percent of individual sales objectives. "About two-thirds of attendees were quota-bearing salespeople, and the fixed qualifying number was worldwide, although the actual numbers may change based on territory," Escoe said. "We also had exceptional achievement award winners who are staff and sales support people nominated each quarter, and we took the best of the best of those."

Escoe and Equant's senior management hoped the effort would increase sales by 10 percent. During the campaign, awareness was raised through direct mail promotions, videos and intranet updates. Escoe said the President's Club program was responsible for increasing sales by 20 percent--much higher than projections and well exceeding the $1 million cost of the event.

In Escoe's eyes, it shows why incentive travel can be more motivational than cash or merchandise awards, at least for his company.

"We're only a five-year-old company," Escoe said. "But a lot of people brought into the company grew up in companies like AT&T, MCI and Sprint, and they're accustomed to things like this. We think it's more effective than cash or merchandise because we have a handsome compensation program, so getting together was a key motivating factor. Recognition is as important as compensation. That said, we are worldwide with well-traveled employees, so we had to come up with something quite creative."

To that end, Equant turned to Atlanta-based incentive house US Motivation, which helped to select the site and negotiated with all air, hotel and other vendors.

"They differentiated themselves through deployment," Escoe said. "Creating a memorable experience was probably more difficult than normal due to this audience. Paris, for example, wouldn't have done it, because some of our people live there."

Escoe also credits the incentive program with achieving less quantifiable objectives, such as increased commitment and company loyalty. To measure that, he surveyed all attendees after the trip.

"I didn't know another way to do it, because a lot of it is subjective," Escoe said. "We surveyed all the attendees and 100 percent of them rated the program as outstanding, motivating and valuable. Obviously, we were very pleased with the outcome."

The incentive program was agreed upon by senior management after executives heard comments from employees and attendees about how important they perceive this to be. In fact, another companywide incentive trip, this one to Hawaii, already is in the works.