Some ISOs are providing qualified leads to sales agents as incentives so they will work harder. The tactic tends to motivate the agents while enabling the ISO to spend less on incentives than they would through monetary bonuses, according to some observers.
More ISOs are providing “qualified leads or appointments” to their agents, says Todd Ablowitz, president of Double Diamond Group, a Centennial, Colo.-based consulting firm. Qualified leads are the names of potential customers that have demonstrated an interest in the product or service the agent is selling. With qualified leads, an agent may “have a [sales] close ratio north of 50%,” but with “a traditional [cold] call you would have a lower rate,” Ablowitz says.
Indeed, agents typically make many cold calls when searching for new clients, and that makes qualified leads from ISOs valuable to them, says Cliff Gray, an associate and merchant processing and a product-services expert at The Strawhecker Group, an Omaha, Neb.-based consulting firm. One ISO Gray consulted with discussed a program that gave the best leads to sales agents that ranked highest in sales among their coworkers. These agents were “ranked higher priority as a sales agent and potentially would get better referrals,” he says.
Agents “always are asking” to receive more leads, says Denny Kammer, vice president of sales at Reliant Pay Inc., a St. Louis-based ISO. The company recently booked exhibit space at two upcoming trade shows that will attract area business owners, he says.
“We’re letting agents work those for free leads,” Kammer says, noting the agents like the idea of being able to meet so many business owners in one location.
Tailored Incentives
Not every sales promotion or incentive will excite the entire sales staff, notes Ablowitz. “Every promotion targets different people, and every office is different,” he says. “You have to tailor incentives to meet the employee segment you want to motivate.”
Additionally, many good salespeople do not require motivation or incentives to excel, says Scott Bahneman, senior vice president of agent sales at Newark, Calif.-based merchant-service provider Payment Processing Direct Inc. Conversely, it is unlikely incentives will change poor salespeople’s behavior dramatically.
“I don’t know that you can motivate someone so much as give them opportunities and measure the results,” says Bahneman. “Competitive people like to win. If we have someone who is not competitive, there is nothing I can do to make [that person] want to do better,” he says.
Indeed, “you can’t do much to improve the weak employees and the super-good ones, but that average ones can get motivated,” says Ablowitz.
Many times effective managers are not good at motivating staff, but they are good at helping them “realize just how much money they can make” by working harder, says Bahneman. “The really good salespeople out there don’t need anyone to motivate them. They just need someone to put them on the track and give them tennis shoes.”
