You offer potential employees a set wage or salary when you engage in the hiring process. You assess what the current market rate is for the type of position you offer and align it with your business budget. The person interested in the position agrees or disagrees to accept this offer, and the rest is history as they say. Along the way, you try to give regular raises based on seniority and even cost of living increases. That’s fine and the way businesses conduct…well, business…in a free-market economy.

However, when you offer your employees incentives for increasing Candles of Eden or any other product sales you reward them based on performance. That’s a completely different ball of soy wax compared to rewarding someone based on seniority. With seniority-based rewards, even poor performing employees reap benefits. The key to success in any retail or spa business is to have your employees continually performing, and continually improving on previous performances.

Offering tangible incentives that reward productive behavior can keep your business growing and your personnel engaged in the selling process. As we talked about in earlier postings, you are in business to sell. If you think you are in business for any other reason then you should not be in business.

You can offer individual incentives, department incentives, and organization incentives. With individual incentives, you focus on each employee’s own personal performance. You may set a goal for an employee to sell a certain number of SoyLuscious® Soy Candles in a month. If they meet your sales target for this one product line, you will pay them with a dinner voucher to a restaurant of their choice. That’s just an example but it’s a way to personalize an incentive and target it to a specific person. Another employee may prefer a voucher to his or her favorite CD shop. The thing is the incentive is unique to the person responsible for the selling.

With a department incentive, if you are larger operation, you may set a goal for the giftware department to sell a certain amount of Candles of Eden wickless alternatives in a quarter. You let the whole department know what reward they will receive for meeting your goal. At the end of the specific quarter, you tally up the results and pay out or not pay out. With a proper incentive, more often than not you will pay out because the department will respond as a team for mutual benefit.

With organization incentives, you set store or spa goals that you want the whole team to focus on. You let them know at the beginning of a year, quarter, or month what you expect – and what they can expect if they meet your expectations. They can then perform the necessary functions to achieve these goals.

Incentives cause three things to happen when you implement them as performance motivators. First, they get your employees focusing on their job duties; they realize going through the motions will not earn them any additional rewards. They also know that if they perform poorly their results will not stack up well against others who take the initiative to raise their performance level.

Secondly, incentives let employees know you value and will reward hard work…and creative work that produces new sales. Thirdly, incentives help employees stay excited and engaged in your business, and help them develop their selling skills. As they watch sales targets for Candles of Eden and other lines being met, they buy into your company objectives because they know there’s a pay-off for them as well.

Use incentives to motivate your employees. Reward them with extra commissions, bonus holiday days, company outings, vouchers, even some form of profit sharing. When you let your personnel know you value their increasing levels of achievement, they will perform appropriately to meet the levels of achievement you set for them. In the end, you, your business, and your employees win.