Sales incentives can recognize useful performance, but their targets and reward choices can also create unintended behaviour. NeoCurrency's October 31, 2024 guide weighs those benefits and drawbacks, including the use of gift cards alongside commissions and bonuses.

According to the article, sales incentive programs aim to boost sales, improve market share, raise product awareness, enhance customer satisfaction, and build team spirit, with targets such as revenue goals and new customer acquisitions, offering financial incentives like bonuses or gift cards, and non-financial incentives like recognition or travel.

The article notes that sales incentives go beyond commissions and closing deals, with businesses rewarding employees for excellent customer interactions, company anniversaries, or a positive work attitude, and that gift cards are a popular and effective incentive option due to their flexibility and broad appeal.

The objective of a sales incentive program is to motivate and reward salespeople for achieving specific performance goals, with the article citing a 2023 statistic that only 23 percent of employees strongly agreed that they received adequate recognition for their work.

NeoCurrency argues that recognition can support engagement and company culture. It cites research on employees' views of recognition, while emphasizing that a programme needs objectives aligned with the behaviour a business wants to encourage.

However, the article also highlights potential disadvantages of sales incentive programs, such as inadvertently encouraging unethical behavior, favoring specific departments or locations, and incentives not being universally appealing, with cash incentives potentially being viewed as part of regular income over time.

The provider presents gift cards as one option for recognizing smaller achievements while offering employees a choice. At the time of the article, NeoCurrency said its catalogue covered more than 2,000 brands across 60 countries.