Your mission and values say you respect the customer and would never lie to them to make a buck.

But your incentive program provides huge rewards for increasing sales to clients based solely on total dollars sold and no other criteria.

You are signaling something completely different than what your values say.

Which do you think your salespeople believe is your #truth?

Incentives are signaling mechanisms in your company. What you reward is what you really think is valuable. After all, you’re giving rewards for that behavior.

When your reward program is markedly different than your values and your stated goals you create tension in the organization. This will freeze some people who won’t do anything for fear of doing something wrong. Or i will give others permission to do the wrong thing because you’re rewarding them for doing it.

Your reward strategies ARE your values.

And you thought it was just a little “program.”

As we say here in the south, “Bless your heart.”