Smarter Sales Rewards with Chris Dornfeld

Summary

The Advanced Selling Podcast Episode: Smarter Sales Rewards with Chris Dornfeld Release Date: November 27, 2024

---

Introduction

In this enlightening episode of The Advanced Selling Podcast, host Brian Neale engages in a compelling conversation with Chris Dornfeld of Whistle Live. As B2B sales trainers and strategists, Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale have built a reputation for delivering actionable insights to sales professionals worldwide. Today, Bryan takes the solo host mantle to delve deep into the intricate world of sales rewards and compensation with Chris Dornfeld, a seasoned expert in incentive programs.

---

Guest Introduction: Chris Dornfeld

Chris Dornfeld brings a wealth of experience from his tenure running one of the largest incentive companies in the United States. His journey led him to co-found Whistle Live, a company dedicated to revolutionizing sales incentive systems by leveraging neuroscience and data analytics. Chris emphasizes the inefficiencies prevalent in traditional incentive programs, aiming to create more value and drive meaningful sales behaviors.

---

Overpaying in Incentive Compensation

Key Insight: Traditional incentive compensation often leads to overspending without corresponding results.

Chris begins by addressing a critical issue in sales incentives: the tendency to overpay without effective results. “We estimate probably three quarters of the budgets that we spend aren't really driving the outcomes. They make us feel good. They give a lot of presentation, a lot of theater pomp and circumstance but ultimately not producing the result” (03:52).

---

The Importance of Timely Rewards

Key Insight: Delayed rewards significantly diminish their motivational impact.

A standout point in the discussion is the timing of rewards. Chris explains, “Every day you delay a reward or recognition, when I'm trying to motivate someone to motivate a behavior, you lose about 5% of that behavioral impact” (06:10). He draws parallels with training pets, highlighting the necessity of immediate reinforcement to build strong behavioral associations. This immediacy is crucial in sustaining motivation and fostering intrinsic drive among salespeople.

---

Types of Incentives: Cash vs. Gift Cards vs. Swag

Key Insight: Cash incentives outperform gift cards and non-cash rewards in effectiveness and efficiency.

Chris critiques the prevalent use of gift cards, revealing that “about 50% of that money was expiring or wasted or not being used” in one client’s program (07:05). He advocates for cash as the preferred form of incentive, supported by survey data where “about nine out of 10” salespeople preferred cash rewards (13:32). Cash not only provides flexibility and immediate utility but also avoids the inefficiencies and hidden costs associated with gift cards.

---

Behavior vs. Outcome-Based Incentives

Key Insight: Focusing on rewarding specific behaviors leads to better sales outcomes than merely targeting end results.

Chris emphasizes the importance of anchoring incentives to desired behaviors rather than solely on outcomes. “We often reward based on simply outcome, which is important to do, but we also want to incentivize people to do the right things that produce those outcomes” (04:55). By rewarding behaviors in real-time, organizations can foster consistent performance and sustainable success.

---

Team vs. Individual Incentives

Key Insight: A hybrid approach combining individual and team incentives can enhance motivation while fostering collaboration.

When discussing team incentives, Chris notes the nuanced effectiveness depending on the organizational structure and dependencies. “They’re good. I think the science bears that out” (14:28). He suggests integrating individual behavior rewards with team-based goals to balance personal motivation with collective achievement, ensuring all members remain engaged and driven.

---

Technology and Automation in Incentive Programs

Key Insight: Automated, real-time incentive systems enhance motivation through immediate recognition and rewards.

Chris introduces Whistle Live’s technology-driven approach, which integrates with CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot to automate reward triggers. “As soon as you hit that, you know, I can even send you a coffee... that’s real time” (16:13). This automation not only streamlines the reward process but also ensures that recognitions are timely, maintaining a continuous motivational flow akin to social media’s instant feedback mechanisms.

---

Experiential vs. Non-Cash Compensation

Key Insight: While experiential rewards contribute to team camaraderie and retention, they are less effective for day-to-day motivation.

Addressing non-cash incentives, Chris acknowledges their role in building community and enhancing retention. “They strike a chord more with camaraderie and experience and building relationship” (19:35). However, he points out that for motivating daily sales behaviors, cash remains superior. Experiential rewards like trips or PTO days lack the immediacy and personal applicability that cash incentives offer for driving consistent performance.

---

Notable Quotes

• Chris Dornfeld on Overpaying: “We estimate probably three quarters of the budgets that we spend aren't really driving the outcomes” (03:52).

• On Timeliness of Rewards: “Every day you delay a reward or recognition... you lose about 5% of that behavioral impact” (06:10).

• Preference for Cash Incentives: “About nine out of 10 say, you know, we prefer cash” (13:32).

• Behavior-Based Incentives: “We often reward based on simply outcome... but we also want to incentivize people to do the right things that produce those outcomes” (04:55).

---

Actionable Takeaways

1. Revamp Incentive Structures: Shift from outcome-based rewards to behavior-based incentives to drive consistent sales actions.

2. Ensure Timely Recognition: Implement real-time reward systems to maintain high motivational impacts, avoiding delays that dilute effectiveness.

3. Prefer Cash Incentives: Opt for cash rewards over gift cards or swag to maximize the utility and efficiency of incentive budgets.

4. Leverage Technology: Utilize automated systems like Whistle Live to seamlessly integrate rewards with sales activities, ensuring timely and targeted incentives.

5. Balance Team and Individual Goals: Adopt a hybrid incentive model that rewards individual behaviors while also fostering team collaboration and collective achievement.

---

Conclusion

This episode underscores the critical importance of optimizing sales incentive programs to focus on timely, behavior-based rewards, with cash emerging as the most effective incentive form. Chris Dornfeld’s insights provide a roadmap for sales leaders to enhance motivation, drive meaningful behaviors, and ultimately achieve superior sales outcomes. By rethinking traditional compensation strategies and leveraging modern technology, organizations can cultivate a more motivated and productive sales force.

For listeners interested in transforming their incentive programs, Chris Dornfeld invites them to visit whistle.com or reach out via email for demos and further assistance.

---

Connect with Chris Dornfeld:

• Website: whistle.com
• Email: [e-mail]

---

Thank you for tuning into The Advanced Selling Podcast. Don’t forget to share this episode with your sales leaders and explore how smarter rewards can drive your sales success in 2025 and beyond.

Transcript

[Brian Neal]

Welcome everybody, to the Advanced selling podcast. The longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcast solo episode times is Brian Neal without my good friend Bill Caskey today. And it is solo episode time. And you know, my solo episodes are powered by the Blind Zebra sales operating system. Recording this in November of 2024. Just sold out. We're sold out for our December certification class. We're now filling January. So if you get this, I know a lot of you get this feed. We're filling it up. And if you get it late, you're listening to it after the fact, then by all means hit blind-zebra.com and find out the path to become certified in Blind Zebra sales operating system. We're going to be creeping up on about a hundred certified coaches serving about a thousand salespeople in 2025. And we'd love to have you be a part of that. We and you. It's also fun because you'll have some of your fellow listeners will be in your class. We've already had some Advanced Selling podcast listeners come on board. So you may or may not know this as a listener, but Bill and I get hit up all the time to have guests, like a lot. And it's only because we've been podcasting for a long time and then people hit us up and they get pitched by things and we mostly say no. Bill and I, when we have guests, we tend to pick them. And so today is one of those days. So I'm really, really happy. I got to see this gentleman speak at a conference where I spoke also in St. Louis, Missouri, back in the spring, and was super, super impressed with what he had to say. So I said, hey, man, come on the. On the podcast. So I'm glad to welcome Chris Dornfeld from whistle live from St. Louis today. Hey, Chris, how you doing, man?

[Chris Dornfeld]

I'm good. Good morning, Brian. Thanks for having me. And I'm. I'm humbled by that introduction. I didn't realize it was, you know, so special to be here. I mean, I love, I love listening to you guys, but I think I'm just a sad stand in for Bill, so thank you.

[Brian Neal]

You're not. No, no, there's no such thing. Yeah. And we, and we do. And I try to be careful with that. That sounds like kind of a big time move. It's not a big time move. We're just, you know, we, we're protective of our listeners and they know that and they like that. So.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Sure.

[Brian Neal]

Great. And I, and I fact check. Thank God. You know, Chrissy said this in my notes that my group gave me. It's Dorn. It's, it was an F, I E L D and I, I just double checked how to pronounce it. It's Dornfield. Like no, it's Dornfeld. Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

As you said, first time ever that's been mispronounced. Exactly. Same happened before in the history of my last name.

[Brian Neal]

Never get called Brian Neely. Well, start off we're going to talk and by the way listeners listening to this. So this, this is going to edge on both sales leadership and the sales people before but we're going to talk about one of the buzziest topics in all of selling that is that is reward and compensation. Salespeople are notorious and sales teams are notorious for incentive comp plans. Spiffs think a sales contest it is. It is just in the DNA of most sales teams and so start off Chris, just tell us a little bit of your background and how you came to get interested and make this sort of incentive topic and compensation topic your life's work.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Sure. Well, most recently my business partner and I prior to starting Whistle were running one of the largest incentive companies in the country. Spent a lot of time really digging into that business, the practice of it and starting to look at more at the neuroscience and the data on how do we really motivate people. And the conclusion, long story short we came to is we're not really using the tools very well that are in our toolkit and began to build a technology and company really focused on how do we just create more value and unlock more value because more or less we weigh overpay to motivate people. I mean long story short, we estimate probably three quarters of the budgets that we spend aren't really driving the outcomes. They make us feel good. They give a lot of presentation, a lot of theater pomp and circumstance but ultimately not producing the result. We really wanted to know what, what actually drives the numbers.

[Brian Neal]

It's awesome and I love and if you, if you look at their at Chris's website say the website for us.

[Chris Dornfeld]

For the listeners, we whistle.com we whistle.com.

[Brian Neal]

Want to make sure I better we whistle.com which is fantastic. What you'll you'll just see some, some fascinating statistics. More importantly to me their staff is all PhDs and it's not like a bunch of business people at the core it looks like. Is that fair?

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah. We co founded the business with a woman with a doctor in behavioral science. My business partner's background is really building Advanced technology, big data, AI. So some really smart people around the table to look at it through a couple of different lenses and as I said, try to really figure out what moves the needle versus what's just theater and what's. We're sort of being sold as valuable.

[Brian Neal]

That's fantastic. So let's talk about that a little bit, let's say. So I heard a couple things. One, I heard we overpay. We overpay. So just talk about what the data says about that. What's the, what's the sweet spot? What's that perfect point for?

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah, well, I mean, it's. It's highly situational. Right. There is sort of no one size fits all. But I'll share a couple things with your listeners that I think are pretty interesting to think about, especially if you're dealing with, you know, incentive comp. 1, really understand the behaviors that you're trying to motivate. So we often reward based on simply outcome, which is important to do, but we also want to, you know, we want to incentivize people to do the right things that produce those outcomes. And more often than not, we'll see a lot of programs where they don't really. They don't reconsider time as this critical factor that it is when it comes to motivating people. So every day you delay a reward or recognition. When I'm trying to motivate someone to motivate a behavior, you lose about 5% of that behavioral impact. So when we do things like at the end of the month, you know, have a safety reward program or employee of the month or, you know, salesperson of the month, and we recognize them and say, great job. We feel good by doing that. You know, we feel the adrenaline, the dopamine from giving things to people, and they like being recognized. It all feels great, but it's too distant from the behaviors I'm trying to get people to pattern. So you lose a lot of the effect. So you can take that 5%, multiply by 30 days and realize you're really almost having no impact with those dollars. And the science all bears this out. It's pretty interesting. The alternative is as soon as someone's doing something you want them to do, you immediately are like, hey, great job. And we can see this across biology. Anyone who's trained to pet, I know it's a little simplistic, but there's some truth to it. You can't bring your pet back in a week later and say, hey, hey, don't do that. You know, you made a mess on the floor. It's completely uncorrelated. You've got about two seconds to build that association with that action in the brain because you're actually going after that positive reinforcement that dopamine hit the moment it happens. And I'm going to associate that concept of doing that thing. Makes me feel good to build up the intrinsic motivation. So that's mostly where we get it wrong. And then a lot of the incentive tools out there are built. I don't know, they're really built to extract value from the process. You know, we worked with a client. They were doing incentives using gift cards.

[Brian Neal]

Yes.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Went and did some analysis with them. Audited. You know, they. They distributed about $2 million a year in gift cards. Pretty large national population of people. And what they found out was about 50% of that money was expiring or wasted or not being used. So incredibly inefficient tool. And we were able to, you know, come in, lower their total cost pretty dramatically and improve the. Yeah. The outcome for the business.

[Brian Neal]

So, yeah, double whammy. So if I'm a salesperson listening to this, salespeople are the worst. We're the worst. I'm one of them. You know what I mean? We're always. We're never satisfied or everyone's trying to screw me with my comp plan.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Kind of makes the world go round though, doesn't it?

[Brian Neal]

But it's the engine. Right. We kind of like them a little snarky sometimes. A little, yeah. So they're hearing, wait a second. You telling me that we. You need to pay us less incentive comp. I don't like this guy. You know, but I. But so clear that up because that's not necessarily what you're saying, I don't think. Right. You're not saying to limit necessarily.

[Chris Dornfeld]

No. In most cases, what we try to, you know, we're trying to go in and operate and sell in and be budget neutral. So we're not, we're not typically saying pay more. We're not actually advocating pay less. We're just saying, you know what you want to do. Instead of paying you $1,000 at the end of the month, I want to give you ten hundred dollars spiffs throughout the month.

[Brian Neal]

There you go.

[Chris Dornfeld]

It's a it. You'll have about three times the effect if I'm being constantly rewarded and reinforced. And that was really why we built our technology was to focus on what we saw as the, you know, the behavioral driving tools that, that lead to better outcomes. But yeah, it's not. It's not. We need to pay people less. We just need to pay more effectively. And you see this in a lot of incentive design. I don't know if you've been in competitions or, you know, large groups and you have leaderboards.

[Brian Neal]

Yes.

[Chris Dornfeld]

You see, these things were, like, great. If you study that, you actually want to break that into cohorts. You need to really break that down to help motivate people. Because if you're in a. I don't know. I've been part of sales organizations where I've seen, you know, AES who have big, you know, big accounts. They're going to do absolutely nothing, and they're still going to hit the goal for the year and go on the big trip.

[Brian Neal]

Right.

[Chris Dornfeld]

And you see a guy at the bottom who. Who's grinding away. He's got a half dozen new accounts creating new business, and he's so far away from that milestone, it becomes demotivating at some point. So you actually have to really look at the population and look at the outcomes you're trying to drive. We always anchor back to the behaviors, reward the behaviors. The outcomes are created from that. So don't just anchor on the outcomes. I mean, the outcomes are important. You need to hit goals, revenue targets, that sort of thing. You really need to help people stay motivated to drive the behaviors that ultimately will produce a result. Because we've all. You know, you can take a lot of sports analogies from this. I'm sure there's a lot of effort, a lot of great gameplay that goes on that doesn't result in the right outcome. You know, you don't say, hey, well, you had a crap game because we didn't win. You know, you might have done everything right. You know, played a fantastic game. That still is worth recognizing as well.

[Brian Neal]

Yes. And I'm gonna go sports, but then go backwards that several. And I don't know about major league baseball or NBA or NHL, but in NFL, players have incentive contracts, individual incentive contracts for behaviors that they produce on the field that, like you said, lead to win. So number of sacks. So a certain. You'll see a player or a team will do a certain thing or get really, you know, at a game. Like, why do they care about that? Well, the guy's got a hundred thousand bucks if he gets another sack, you know.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah.

[Brian Neal]

So. So this is great. So I want the sales leaders. I'm going to stamp something you said for the sales leaders listening. And if you're a salesperson, please forward this episode to Your sales leader and tell them to do what Chris said. You're better off rewarding $100 bills through a month than paying someone a thousand bucks at the monthly sales meeting. Is that an accurate statement?

[Chris Dornfeld]

Absolutely. Right. Yeah.

[Brian Neal]

And sales, I'm telling you because I work with them all the time. Sales leaders do not do that. They do not pay as we go. They do the monthly thing. They do exactly what you said, which is funny. They do the scoreboard. And I'm guilty. I even like recommend things like this because I'm not a. An expert in comp. So now I'm learning. I'm like, I kind of changed my tune on this.

[Chris Dornfeld]

So it's funny because it's just what it use the analogy you just described from football.

[Brian Neal]

Totally.

[Chris Dornfeld]

If the whole team was only motivated on the score, how little action that would cause so many other people on the team. Right. Because you're saying the behavior. Every time you're doing that, I'm chalking up that stat at the end of the game saying, great job.

[Brian Neal]

Yes.

[Chris Dornfeld]

I can't wait till the end of the season and say, well, you were only halfway through your stats.

[Brian Neal]

So, you know, yes, it's fantastic. And that's what I picture. If I'm, I'm a salesperson, I want to forward this to my sales leader. If I'm a sales leader. I'm listening to this episode and what I'm, what I'm evaluating going to 2025 from this episode is I'm thinking, okay, what have I been doing? And can I listen to what Chris is saying and modify what I've been doing to a reward behavior versus outcome and two, to do it more frequently now talk about. Because I pretty sure when I met you in St. Louis, you talked about this, but I just want to fact check. You talked about the gift cards. Then there's cash, you know, and then there's millennials and Gen Z's now, like, can you venmy which is sort of cash. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between a cash incentive, a check, and a gift card?

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah. So you know, a check is just a slower vehicle for cash. Right. It's just a more cumbersome process that everyone has to go through. I have to now. I mean, I can take a photo from my phone and deal with it, you know, that way. But some people still have to take into banks. You know, it takes longer to issue. So that that time factor we talked about is really important. Checks just work against all of that. Gift cards are just fraught with sort of waste. And, I mean, it's a whole industry that's designed, you know, to extract money between the giver and the receiver. You know, if you look at Starbucks last year, I think, posted on their quarterly earnings or their annual earnings, there was so much money being made from gift card breakage or points or expiring or whatever. It was like $211 million they claimed last year just off of the program. So it's just a hidden tax. We all pay if we use gift cards.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

You know, and cash is. Is really. Not only is it shown to be more motivating, it's much more flexible, and it's frankly what people want. We did a survey of people in the field, and we're asking, you know, what. What. What factor would you like to receive your reward in? And about 90%, about nine out of 10 say, you know, we prefer cash. You know, I don't. You know, company swag's fine, you know, or little, you know, little mementos. But, you know, in this day and age, when I need to, you know, go buy some groceries or I want to take my family to dinner or, you know, put gas in my car.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

You know, the 100 bucks is just a little easier for me to use, and it creates more value for me in my life than, you know, accumulating points. To buy an overpriced toaster at some point, I mean, that's just a waste.

[Brian Neal]

We see this too. So we see tickets. I get clients, so they do tickets to the swag store. And like you said, it's, like, nice. But is it really modifying or changing the behavior?

[Chris Dornfeld]

Now, company swag's important from, like, a tribalism standpoint. You know, it might move the needle on retention, which is an important factor for a lot of companies. I mean, to feel like you're part of the team.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

But when it comes to a motivating form for behavior, it's pretty low.

[Brian Neal]

It's pretty low.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Only about one and a half percent of people said that's their preferred form of. I mean, think about that. 99% of people don't want swag when it comes to, you know, something to help them be motivated.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah. Interesting talk about group incentive. Sales leaders ask me this a lot, like, should I do a team goal? Like, if the whole team hits, we win, or should it stay individual or combo? What's the data say about that?

[Chris Dornfeld]

You know, I. I think the data, at least I've read in. In, it's pretty mixed. I mean, it's a Little situational. Again, how dependent are you on the team? What's the role? I mean, I think in general, you see a lot of hybrids where you'll have both the behaviors of the individual, you know, being rewarded in the moment. And then you might also have team goals, which is really more tied to an incentive structure saying, you know, we hit our number for the month or the quarter, everyone benefits. I think it's especially important. There's a lot of dependencies on other people that. That everyone feels like they're, you know, part of that team, and that's. That's happening together. So it's a little bit of sort of the use case. But I think they're good. I think they're pretty impactful, and I think the science bears that out.

[Brian Neal]

Interesting. It'd be interesting to measure that, to test that, and then to the people listening here, you know, try rewarding as you go to the team versus, like, okay, let's do a quarterly.

[Chris Dornfeld]

That's right.

[Brian Neal]

Deal. Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Time is the big factor. Most people don't do. Right.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Right. And typically, what you see in an advanced incentive program, a little bit of layering, meaning some team, maybe it's some company even, but that's a bigger, you know, wheel to measure and sort of figure out. But the gap most people have is that really timely in the moment. You know, you had a great meeting or I just saw you present. That was incredible. You know, let me. Let me send you lunch. Here's 20 bucks. Those moments of saying, great, I'm going to be motivated to get better and better at that. Yeah, that action, that behavior, that's what ultimately drives success of the team and the organization.

[Brian Neal]

Interesting, because I could even look at, if I'm managing a sales team, obviously, outbound behavior drive. So it could be outbound touches, reaches, calls, visits, whatever meetings held. But I could reward that next morning for the day before or something like that and say, hey, I just want to call out Chris. Chris had eight demos yesterday. So, Chris, I'm venmoing 100 bucks right now.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah, yeah. And you can even. You can even take that a step further. I mean, we've started to do this in other industries where we built integrations into their system. So as soon as you log that information somewhere, because almost all this gets tracked in Salesforce HubSpot. I mean, whatever your flavor of CRM is, our sales tracking tool. And you can actually automate triggers. So as soon as you hit that, you know, I can even send you a coffee. Just saying, well, I know you Entered in. You know, you hit a goal of three new calls a day and your phone can immediately just go, you know, ding. Great job. Here's the number. So that's real time, right? That's in. I mean that's ultimately what we're after is because now I feel like, oh, that's cool. The next three. Next three or whatever your goal is, you know, you want to set. It's one of the nice things is, as I said, we not to be too self promoting, but as we built the technology, we want to be able to tie it into other things because that, that to happen in real time and you can get, you know, little dollars, those little gestures go a real long way to motivating people. Just saying, hey, appreciate that. Here's eight bucks. You finished this task. So your phone in theory could be going off throughout the day.

[Brian Neal]

Right.

[Chris Dornfeld]

And this is just a game plan taken from social media. Right? Yeah, you're looking at that, that constant dopamine hit of saying, well, I want to reinforce that behavior. It's why social media has become so addictive. We're just trying to provide some similar tools right. In the, in the sales organization that allowed everyone to be more successful.

[Brian Neal]

Yes.

[Chris Dornfeld]

It's, it's all timing.

[Brian Neal]

That's fantastic. And I love the, I love the automation that your, your, your tool allows. That allows. Like you said, if I hit. Yeah. On my 21st call of the day, then boom, I get, I get lunch the next day and it's. Right. It's automated.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah. And you can design some pretty cool stuff even with small dollars where you can say great. You know, your first five calls, maybe that's one goal. And then you get to 10 or 15 and you can level up and so you can actually be really creative with how you automate that again. So it's easy to administer at scale, but it can become highly motivating to people because man, it's, it's tough sometimes. You, I mean, we've all been through it where you've got to sit there and you know, knock out sales actions and you're just, you're not getting the result you want. Right. We still have to go through the motion. It's like the training, you know, in practice it's tough.

[Brian Neal]

It can be a grind. And I love that because that's what if we hear and we have mixed bag of like industries. We have some, you know, a few like software where they're like banging, you don't want to do a ton of that work. But even people that are on the road or outbound, it's a grind. And people ask all the time, how do I stay? I need motivated, man. It's another. And another quarter, another week and here we go. So it's really cool.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah, that's right. And keep hitting on those behaviors. Keep, keep doing it. The high degree of frequency, recognize people. I mean not everything even has to be a reward, but it does help. Right. So I mean just staying really actively engaged for the sales leaders out there is really important to keep people motivated because you also just don't know what they're going through and you know, so helping, helping stay on top of them. I've found to be very successful.

[Brian Neal]

That's great. Last question that I want to let the group know a little bit about how to get a hold of you. So last question is what. Where does, where does experiential or non cash compensation play a role here? I'm a big life experience guy. Like instead of giving my kids kids, you know, stuff for Christmas, we do that. But they always get an experience, a life experience. People give away trips like you said to Cabo for the presents club. Where do expert just go? Generally non cash compensation PTO days. Things like fit in the, in the.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Scheme, you know, they're, they're valuable. I mean they're less valuable in terms of those day to day motivating factors and behaviors. You know, they're, they're a nice thing to do. I think they strike a chord more with camaraderie and experience and building relationship. Which again to me that, that speaks to the factor of retention. You know, the number one reason people start looking for a new job is they don't feel value or appreciated by their boss.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah.

[Chris Dornfeld]

The other factor is do I have a sense of community and connection, you know, into the people I work with. So those experiences are important from that standpoint. Right. They make us feel really good. There's not a lot of evidence about how effective they are at motivating those daily behaviors. Right. Again, the factor of time erodes their impact. And so we see a lot of president's trips and other things and I mean I could do a whole show on just, you know, the inefficiency of those. And as I said, it seems like always the same group of people get them. You know, they're, they're usually because they're tied to big accounts, the system feels a little gamed. So they're great. Right. To go on. But from a motivating a population of salespeople, I don't know There's a lot of risk there too, if they're not really done. Done effectively. But you know, the dirty secret of the industry is that's also where the industry makes its most margin. The incentive industry talks a lot about, you know, these are fantastic. It's. It's their highest margin sales item.

[Brian Neal]

They can sell you interesting cats out of the bag. Now we know deep, dark secrets of the incentive comp.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Yeah.

[Brian Neal]

Industry.

[Chris Dornfeld]

That's great.

[Brian Neal]

Well, this is awesome. So if you're listening to this, actions to take, sales leaders get the incentive down to behaviors. Time is the trigger. Time is the trigger. Cash is king is what I'm hearing from Chris today. And reevaluate how you've been doing these kind of like Spiffs monthly things that sort of. And get it in real time. And then if you need help, Chris's group can help you with this. Chris, tell. Tell the group and the listeners if they're interested in contacting you and seeing a demo of your. Your program, how they do that.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Sure. You can, you can shoot me an email, chris.whistle.com. right. It's probably the easiest way. Go to our website, wewhistle.com check it out. A lot of good resources. There's a whole lot of blogs and information, you know that that's universally valuable. Yeah. And reach out. We're happy to help. And you know, keep an eye out. We're often speaking at different seminars or workshops and. Yeah, great way to connect.

[Brian Neal]

Yeah, absolutely. And I highly, highly recommend send this to your sales leader this episode. Sales leaders get in touch with Chris. They've got some really, really cool mechanisms and data that can help you get 25 roll in the right direction. So. Okay.

[Chris Dornfeld]

Love it.

[Brian Neal]

Thanks for being here, man. So that's it for this edition of the event Selling podcast Reminder. We're powered by Blind Zebra Sales Oper. We are constantly now filling our certification classes with listeners like you. So go to blind-zebra.com and you can start a conversation, learn how you can get certified and sit with some of your fellow podcast listeners and get certified by the head coach, which happens to be me. I'd love to meet you live. That's it. See you next time on the advanced selling podcast.