By Shahid Bashir, researcher at Thematic Research Group of Responsible Production, Marketing and Consumption of Business School of Tecnológico de Monterrey.
The role of Brandelligence, an emerging concept reflecting the use of AI-driven intelligence to develop and control brand power, is gaining widespread importance in the successful sales modulization for both powerful brands and weaker brands. One of the arising aspects, toward the feat of a Brandelligence-based sales network, is to figure out an appropriate incentive paradigm that could work finer for the sales team and generate better sales.
Distinctive Strategization
A developing modern school of thought, explored through several blogs and academic articles, supports powerful brands following the individual-sales-based incentive paradigm (e.g., AI-driven tiered incentive arrangements or action-based additional benefits associated with personalized sales targets) since they have more customers and can buy more easily. On the other hand, weaker brands can benefit more from following a group-sales-based incentive paradigm (e.g., Team-based income-sharing benefits or group-based milestone achievement awards associated with collective sales targets), since their sales team requires more hard work to convince their customers. Additionally, promoting a group-sales-based incentive culture supports teamwork and helps to improve such hard work even in remote settings of the weaker brands.
Selecting the Sales Incentive Paradigm
To review the brand power, e.g., through a well-channeled brand survey, the firms must look at what their customers think about the brand, how their emotions relate to a brand, and how much they know about the brand. If the new customers of a brand are perceived as having difficulty buying (e.g., because of exhaustive product selections or complex individualistic alternatives triggering decision stress), it is more appropriate to embrace the group-sales-based incentive paradigm. These incentives promote those specific components of teamwork, where more effort is required. In contrast, the group-sales-based incentive is more effective for the powerful brand, as the customers tend to be more spontaneously persuaded towards the sales generated through Brandelligence.
Practical Launches
Nonetheless, brands must frequently conduct experiments to further explore the outcomes of their incentive paradigm upon sales generated through Brandelligence. Group sales-based incentives might increase cooperation among the team, yet it is equally important to see whether (or not) some people are fully engaged in putting in their efforts. Similarly, individual sales-based incentives might encourage hard-working sellers, but this could gravely damage teamwork networking.
Synthesis
To increase sales through Brandelligence, it is critical to set up a sales incentive paradigm based on brand power. Modern-day reflections suggest that individual sales-based incentives are better for a powerful brand. In contrast, a weak brand might advance more through group sales-based incentives. If a firm prepares for their sales incentive paradigm, while better understanding their brand power, it will not only increase their sales but help to gain their customer trust. With the help of a comprehensive plan of action, it is possible to lead a successful pathway for the sales team and brand.
Originally published by The Markethink (Spanish version only).