Money is a great motivator, but it by no means is — or should be — the only.
Some motivation is intrinsic, the internal drive to find purpose, learn and achieve personal goals, while other motivators are extrinsic, such as monetary incentives and bonuses, promotions, and positive feedback.
According to Hypercontext’s report called The State of High Performing Sales Teams 2022, competitive salary and benefits remain the top motivator for salespeople, with 64 percent of respondents agreeing. But in a close second, with 56 percent of the votes, is having fulfilling and challenging work.
For sales leaders, balancing the extrinsic motivators like spiffs, incentives, and healthy competition, with intrinsic motivators like opportunities for growth and learning, distilling the value in everyday tasks is key to providing a rewarding and fun work experience.
At Grubhub and Keeper Security, leaders are fostering sales cultures where professional growth and development coexist with creative and unique incentives to further energize team members.
Why have one form of motivation when you can have both?
Grubhub is a global food delivery marketplace used by over 33 million people.
Describe Grubhub’s sales culture. What makes it unique?
At Grubhub, nearly 20 years since our founding, we like to joke that we’re the world’s oldest start-up. That denomination is especially reflected throughout our sales organization. There’s still this palpable buzz and enthusiasm that most organizations tend to lose over time. Our salespeople are entrepreneurs, owners and innovators. They have the freedom to take risks, and failures are celebrated as valuable learning opportunities. By placing our trust in our people, we foster imagination, teamwork and fun. That’s not to say we don’t have measures of success, but our culture thrives on the notion that when people love what they do, they perform at their best. That makes it very easy to set our sights high. Goals aren’t a metric to just be reached, but an idea to be exceeded and defeated. Our internal competition is never zero-sum because we all adhere to this same idea — a mission where another’s win moves the collective needle forward.
Highlight the non-monetary spiffs, incentives and rituals your team uses to stay motivated.
With dozens of Grubhub sales teams spread across time zones and remote and office workspaces, we’ve definitely seen some really creative incentives. Half-days and Fridays off are a regular incentive, contingent on maintaining pacing goals throughout the month. Celebratory gifs and recognition shoutouts on Slack are a daily high point. We’ve had games of remote team Battleship where with every sale you bring in, you get an opportunity to knock a fellow player off the board. Every month, MVPs get Grubhub gift cards so they can literally taste the fruits of their labor. There’s even a trophy adorned with a hot dog and hamburger traveling between top teams.
Half-days and Fridays off are a regular incentive, contingent on maintaining pacing goals throughout the month.”
What do you or your team enjoy most about these spiffs, incentives or rituals?
Who isn’t happy to break up the monotony? Almost every tenured sales professional can tell you that they’ve worked somewhere that felt like all the energy was sucked right out of the building. The objective is to drive revenue, and sure, we can tell them to keep their eyes down, hit the phones and not get distracted, but unhappy and isolated people don’t perform well. By adding an element of surprise, a feeling of belonging and excitement about competition, we are injecting life back into our organization. This is a constant effort but one that yields higher retention, morale, team spirit and, of course, quantifiable success. You don’t need a hefty budget to incentivize and engage your employees; you just need a little imagination and humor.
Keeper Security is a cybersecurity platform with a focus on protecting passwords, credentials and secrets.
Describe your company’s sales culture. What makes it unique?
The culture at Keeper Security is unique because we win together and we lose together. We don’t lose often, but when we do, we dissect the loss and figure out what we can learn from it. With so many moving parts in any deal, it’s important to team sell. Reps, channel managers, leaders and support are all a part of a successful deal. It’s pretty amazing to be able to add our CEO or CTO to a customer call. It shows how we operate — that no one is too busy to help protect the relationships with our customers and prospects.
Highlight the non-monetary spiffs, incentives and rituals your team uses to stay motivated.
I am lucky to lead both the managed service provider team and the Americas channel management team here at Keeper. The two teams are so different in the best ways. The MSP team is like a little family — most of the team have been here for one, two and three-plus years. The channel team is about a year old now, and they are some of the most driven and competitive people I’ve ever worked with. I try to make sure each team gets some love once a quarter, whether it’s a dinner in Chicago where everyone flies in for a day or two, or travelling to see my team members who are distributed all over the country. While the option to work remotely is amazing, nothing is better than getting a team together in person to collaborate and spend time together.
While the option to work remotely is amazing, nothing is better than getting a team together in person to collaborate.”
What do you or your team enjoy most about these spiffs, incentives or rituals?
Both of my teams like being able to get together and blow off some steam. Doing so is good for the soul. The teams are built of amazing people, and we can all learn from each other.
