About the Client
This story is about us, Creative Group. We’re a global performance solution company that designs programs and experiences that help people thrive. Our goal is to inspire clients, employees, and partners to reach their full potential – and this story is about one of the ways we did this.
The Challenge
Understanding an audience is crucial for any performance program’s success. To address this, we’ve introduced an audience assessment tool that explores the personal motivations driving individuals in sales and channel incentive programs. This powerful tool helps us develop tailored strategies to improve business outcomes by enhancing engagement, alignment, and performance. Before rolling out this new solution to customers, we gave it a test run to understand its full potential. This initiative served multiple strategic purposes. Our main goals were: 1) to get our sellers familiar with this performance solution, 2) to provide more detailed insights to those leading our sales teams, and 3) to create the most compelling content for our upcoming sales meeting.
The Solution
We distributed a six-minute online assessment to all those attending the sales meeting to identify their intrinsic motivators. Here’s how it played out.
The results gave us a motivation gap analysis showing the areas where participants were misaligned with current corporate incentive strategies and gave potential reasons why they felt this way.
In addition to informing participants’ wants and needs within an incentive program, we found this tool to be helpful when proposing design elements within our client’s meetings and events (just as we did for ours) or even for performance goals created and set by managers. This assessment tool closed the gap between what leadership thought motivated individuals and teams and what actually motivated them.
Outcome
We were surprised to discover several areas requiring attention, with the two most significant motivational gaps being in Rationality and Influence.
Rationality-oriented employees seek to understand the “why” behind organizational decisions. These individuals are motivated by work environments that emphasize logical thinking and they prefer data and facts to emotions in decision-making.
Influence-oriented employees are driven by a desire to have a voice in daily workplace decisions. They are motivated by participation in organizational decision-making as well as input into larger missions and strategic goals.
Based on the output we received from the audience assessment, we made changes to our sales meeting structure that were ultimately very meaningful.
Sales Meeting
We re-structured the content of our 2-day meeting to align directly with the constructs of Rationality and Influence. Day One was all about Rationality – providing the “why” behind our 2024 focus. We delivered a client panel, along with data and facts about our go-to-market changes, and ample information about enhancements to our products and services. Day Two was centered around Influence – we structured multiple, rotating small group discussions that were designed to capture the voice of our sellers and our clients.
The collective feedback about our meeting was very positive, with some saying it was the best content and structure in the last five years.
“The audience assessment we took in advance really helped us zero in on what truly motivates us, and this not only improved the meeting content, it also enhanced my connection with other colleagues and clients that were there. Collaborating with peers and leadership around these insights was a great experience for me and it has already changed how I interact with my team and my manager. I’m now very excited to bring this offering to my clients.” -Account Executive
Sales Leadership
Each of our sales leaders was given an Executive Overview of the assessment results, along with a detailed gap analysis for their teams. This empowered them to review individual motivators and gaps during 1:1 meetings with their direct reports and in weekly team meetings to enhance their connection with and coaching of their teams.
“I found the assessment to be an impactful offering for our clients running both new and legacy incentive programs. Personally, it helped me understand what motivates my team and provided insights into my own motivations and areas for improvement. I found it a win-win-win!”
-Sales Leader
The leadership team felt that we met all the main goals:
- Empower Account Executives: Our aim is always to lead, guide and consult our clients. Participating in the study provided exposure to the offering, equipping our sellers with firsthand experience, and arming them with deep insights to articulate its advantages to prospective clients.
- Equip Sales Leaders: The study results were provided to our sales leaders giving them concrete motivational data about their teams, allowing them to understand individual motivations, existing motivation gaps, and tailor strategies to help boost both individual and team performance.
- Enhance Sales Meeting Impact: Lastly, we used these insights to enrich our upcoming sales meeting. The findings were shared with our internal planning teams to enhance the structure, content, and impact of our sessions, inspiring a more meaningful sales meeting.
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Discovering What Motivates your Audience
