Ideas for Sales Incentives

In a recent blog post at BrandRepublic, Simon Kershaw identifies some interesting examples of sales and marketing incentives.

His suggestions of incentives are well worth repeating here:

• A reward for doing something.
• The potential to lose out if you don’t act.
• A pleasant surprise for responding.

He describes these incentives as “Carrots, sticks and chocolates” respectively.

In our view the incentives are also ranked in order of the most commonly used, and so raise interesting ideas for using some of the less common forms of incentives.

For example how often do marketing campaigns remember to include an incentive for responding now, and how often do businesses go so far as providing a surprise incentive just for responding or ordering?