In this panel discussion, the speakers explore how the design of reward systems directly shapes sales representatives' actions. Speaker A emphasizes that what leaders choose to reward—whether pipeline volume, social selling, multi‑threading, speed of deal closure, or smaller discounts—will dictate the behaviors reps prioritize, noting the tension between a healthy pipeline and actual sales results. Sam adds that rewards are not solely monetary; humans are prediction and recognition machines, so status, public acknowledgment, and validation in meetings are powerful motivators. Speaker C introduces the classic “money, mission, recognition” framework, asserting that each rep’s motivation is a unique blend of these three elements and that leaders must assess and coach each individual based on their personal balance. The conversation underscores the need for a nuanced, multi‑dimensional reward strategy that combines financial incentives with mission alignment and consistent recognition to sustain high performance.
Chapters
It's really dependent on what you reward. So if you are a leader who rewards pipeline and like having a healthy pipeline, something I always yelled at when I was a rep was the lack of pipeline that I had compared to everybody else on my team. And I was like, well I'm also like a top performer, always number one at the top of the leaderboard and yes my pipeline is lower but it's also real. And so just think about the things that you do reward. Are you also rewarding for the little things that we want to keep reps doing, right? Are we rewarding for social selling? Are we rewarding for multi threading? Rewarding for speed of deal and things like that? Rewarding for smaller discounts? Whatever you measure and whatever your reward is exactly what your reps will do.
Can I add something there? So when we think about rewards though for everybody, the idea that you know, hey, my sales team, they're coin operated. If you believe that you're probably right and it also means you're doing it wrong, right? So like when we think about rewards it's not monetary, right? Like we as human beings we're prediction machines. So help them predict. We're also recognition machines. Like we love to be recognized, right? To give status, to be validated for our efforts. Like some of those rewards coming just in the form of on a weekly meeting just going Jen, look what Jen did this week, right? And just like so when you think about those rewards it's not just monetary, it's the status and the recognition that you're giving everybody.
So yeah, just really quickly then we'll let demand gen talk. A leader said to me and I internalized this as first said to me I think like maybe 10, 12 years ago and it's always stuck with me. People are motivated by and large by three things, money, mission and recognition, right? And it's not again zero sum. It's not like an either or thing, it's usually a combination thereof, right? And a big part of your responsibility as a leader is to really find out like okay, what is that sort of pie chart balance within an individual and sort of coach them and motivate them and lead them, you know, in a general sense just based on that balance that you kind of discovered. But Jen, over to you.
I think my perspective is a little bit different, right? I've never led a sales organization the way that these three amazing people have, but I've been on the receiving end of it, right? And the point Sam you just raised I don't think is considered enough I worked for a manager who celebrated forecast accuracy, and that was something you can do every single month. So we had those people that would put million dollar deals in the pipeline and they'd push and they'd push and they'd push. That was worse and considered and widely accepted as worse than the people who had smaller pipelines who are at 90, 95% accuracy every month. So I couldn't agree more. Especially as a salesperson, there's nothing more frustrating than sitting on a pipeline call and seeing someone who is just over over forecasting get celebrated while you're actually bringing a real opportunity to the table. So from a seller's perspective, I cannot tell you how much celebrating accuracy matters. But the second thing is just consistency, right? As someone who's worked remotely from 2014 on, I think this was not a major shift for me, but I watched others where it was. And I think one of the best things I had a sales leader do was just consistently ask the same sets of questions every single time we were looking at a deal. If I walked into a deal review with him and I didn't know what that company sold, who they sold it to and how they sold it, I knew I wasn't allowed to even discuss that deal. And so by virtue of not asking me 700 different things, which is even harder, I think in a remote environment, we're all scrambling and information is coming at us from all angles. Just knowing exactly what my manager expects from me made it so that I could show up better for them, which meant they could show up better for their leader.
