Relevant rewards motivate specific behaviour

When I speak to clients and prospective clients about the kinds of things they're looking to improve with an incentive, often times, the key performance indicators are revenue, and not necessarily behaviour towards gathering profitable customers. Using a points based incentive program to improve incremental change can be profitable, but not unless the communications and the rewards are relevant. Imagine the lower end of the scale: A Walmart or McDonalds employee, possibly part-time, very low engagement in company culture, and looking forward to their pay cheque. This kind of person can be motivated to make small changes in behaviour for small rewards. 'I get points when I do this, I get points when I do that-- I get bonus points when I do both'. The engagement happens when these points actually mean something. When the first employee redeems for an iPod or a Movie Pass, and talks to the others, the behaviours are reinforced, and the cycle continues. What about higher up the food chain: A channel employee selling a high margin product to a niche buyer group with high dollar transactions. This employee likely makes more than minimum wage, but they are now dealing with great sums of money and impacting the profitability of the business with every sale. If the desired behaviour is 'Customer Value Optimization' (selling to those customers that are most profitable and thus most valuable to keep for the long term) then the sales channel can now focus on a specific behaviour. If the rewards are relevant (i.e. big enough and targeted) the behaviour will happen as planned, profitable revenues rise, and the incremental cost of the rewards program is offset by the incremental gain in net profit. It all comes back to relevant rewards, communicated in a relevant way, to motivate a change in behaviour that's relevant to the business objectives. Pick your most profitable customers, and motivate your channel to sell/acquire/attract/convert them - by using the right tools.