Baggage Claim – Which Bag is yours?

Recently I have been following up on several requests for information from my AwardEmployees or AwardSafety blog sites, or from our new product site, Award of Choice. For this I am most thankful. It keeps an old man active and occupied and allows me to stay in touch with clients and what’s happening in the world of incentives and recognition.

Unfortunately it also reminds me of the disingenuousness and blatant dishonesty that persists in this industry. Maybe it’s the times or the economic struggles that everyone seems to be going through, or maybe it’s an industry that is replete with sales types that just don’t know what they are doing. I’ve seen some of this over the years, but for the most part the industry has many great professionals who attempt to sell their products and make their pitch based on the facts that support their recommendations.

Every day I speak with potential clients who are constantly being misled by a vendor in order to sell their product. Frankly that puts me at a decided disadvantage…that of having to be in a position to say that the competitor is duplicitous or at worst out and out lying. All I can do is present my products to the best of my ability and be as transparent as I can be. In fact I too often give them more information then they require in order that they completely understand my deliverables and what they will and won’t do. I was taught that was the best way to sell, to put the truth on the line and let the chips fall where they may. Sometimes I win, sometimes not, but I have clients who have been with my for years and I believe it’s because every step along the way I was as transparent as I could bet. All vendors claim to be award neutral, but that is just not true. They all have an axe to grind and will do all they can to sell you their own product, even if it’s just not the one you really need.

Smoke and mirrors pricing could have been invented in the incentive industry, we certainly have enough of it. But when a client is given the task to compare vendors for recognition or incentive awards and is not given all the facts, these deceptive smoke and mirrors pricing schemes can be very difficult to unveil. If you’re in the position to purchase or compare awards programs, I encourage you to do all you can to gain as many facts about the competitive products as possible. Every phase of the business has multiple vendors and it’s often very difficult to determine the one that should be yours. It’s kind of like standing around baggage claim after long and tedious flights looking for which bag is really yours…they all look alike but only one has the stuff inside it that you want.

If you’re just not getting all the answers that you want from your vendors, and can’t make the comparisons necessary for you to make a sound decision, you may want to look into an outside incentive consultant. There are some good ones out there, one I’ve heard great things about is I2I Incentive Intelligence. It could be worth $1000’s in savings to your company to get a better program and a better award to suit your needs.

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone!

There Is No Best Award!

Our friend Paul Hebert makes some excellent points in this post on his blog Incentive Intelligence. It’s too bad that more clients don’t listen to this kind of advice when they plan their incentive programs, if they did their participants would be more productive and earn awards that they wanted and they would have better programs that produced better result.
We have often railed on gift cards being the “best” reward in the incentive industry because we are tired of traditional award companies foisting traditional merchandise awards on companies at pricing that is, well frankly ridiculous! That doesn’t mean that we don’t think that merchandise awards are not great awards, they are! A gift card is nothing but a conveyance to get merchandise of every variety, shape, size, color, etc., at prices that are fair market retail so participants can receive real value for the company’s budget.

A great majority of incentive programs these days are points based electronic programs where the participants earn some form of “currency” or “points” that are banked for redemption on an ongoing basis or in the future. These bank programs include an “awards mall” that, in our perspective, should include as many different types of awards as possible to give the participant the choice of something that fits their lifestyle need of the moment. The categories can be many and varied. they can start with a catalog of traditional merchandise, have travel options, airline ticketing, special lifestyle awards such as days at the spa, or hot air ballooning and of course a very large array of gift card merchants such as found at Award of Choice.

When the traditional merchandise companies control the electronic platform they are very reluctant to add other categories for the simple reason that when they do, the vast majority of redemption will go to these other choices, especially gift cards. In these cases the companies will lose substantial profit.

But isn’t letting the participant choose the award that they really want the objective in the first place? All the major consumer loyalty programs do that, why don’t more companies do that for employee programs?

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone!

Are Years of Service Award Programs Passé?

The differences that various employee award vendors have in the way they view employee recognition programs and in particular employee years of service awards, can be startling. And the unsuspecting client is caught in the middle.

On one hand you have the major traditional years of service award companies who frankly have done very little to change their award selections in over 50 years. On the other hand we have the avant-garde new players in the incentive industry who have and will provide a wide range of diverse awards to satisfy the needs of a totally different type of diverse work force than we’ve ever seen.

In a recent review of the Ask the Experts section in Incentive Magazine I was bemused to see the answer to the question “Several recent articles say that service awards are from Henry Ford’s era and are no longer relevant. Are service awards passé?” As it should have been, it was answered by an expert in the industry, but one who runs a traditional years of service award company. The answer was purely from that perspective, and those traditional companies rarely offer awards that differ from what they’ve offered for decades Had it been a two part answer, one from the traditional companies and one from a new player in the industry, you would have been given a much broader perspective of the issues and be better armed to make a decision on the type of program you want to implement.

In reality are service awards passé? The easy answer is yes, and no. The ones that haven’t changed since our fathers and grandfathers time are, the ones that have tried to grow with the times are not as much, and the ones that have incorporated the wide variety of award options definitely are.

Be Happy, Be Well, Hug Someone!

Do Gift Card Employee Awards Have Trophy Value?

The nice folks who sell traditional merchandise awards would have you believe that gift cards when used as employee incentive or recognition awards have no trophy value. They purport that gift cards do not provide the intrinsic value or the tangible evidence of success provided by the traditional high priced merchandise awards given to our parents and grandparents. To this we simply say......HOGWASH, PROVE IT! There is no empirical evidence to support this claim, and never has been. It is another smoke screen to demonize gift cards and turn unsuspecting buyers toward their own award products. You see, they can’t stand the idea of selling gift cards as options to their merchandise simple because they haven’t figured out how to make any money doing it.

In our ongoing attempt to defend gift cards against the onslaught of those who would have you believe such tripe let us offer the following and let you decide if gift cards have trophy value and are a symbol of success.

You see, gift cards are not gift cards. When your participants get to choose the gift card that they want, they are to the holder the same kind of dreams and desires that used to be generated by the coffee table award books of the 1960’s. Except they have far more appeal to the workers of today than any other award. Gift cards are the stylish new outfit seen in the window at Macy’s; they are the new wide screen plasma HDTV at Best Buy, they are the deluxe Barbecue shown on sale at Home Depot, they are a child’s bike at Wal-Mart; they are the beautiful diamond necklace offered at Costco. They are all these things and millions and millions more. The only real difference between them and merchandise used in traditional award programs is that with a gift card, for the budget you have, your participant will be able to get a larger TV plus a DVD probably two bikes, the new outfit plus a glamorous sweater, a grandfather clock and a watch, and they may still have money left over. The decision is yours. Do you think they provide trophy value?

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone.

Transparencies in the Incentive Business? Rarely!

Please read this blog post from Paul Hebert at I2I, the incentive consultancy that always tells it like it is, and we always seem to agree with (well on most things anyway).

In this post, Paul shares his top ten times when you should fire your incentive or rewards companies. And, from our perspective he’s right on, especially if you are looking for the company that will provide you with a program that has the best chance of producing results. Most reward companies today spend the vast majority of their time selling you on the merits of incentives and rewards and how their particular award specialty is the one that will do the best job, yada, yada, yada. They rarely spend any time with in depth research and discussion of what you want to accomplish and the best way to do that. They prefer to spend a lot of time promoting and justifying what award you should use. The best reward to use will be dependent on what it is you want to accomplish. Frankly, we’ve seen just about every reward in this industry used in just about every combination. And, the unpleasant fact is that many programs don’t produce results at all, and even when they do, most companies don’t do a very good job of measuring what happened, when, why and how.

And, for those of you out there who purchase reward programs, the onus is also on you if your programs don’t succeed. How often do you enter a reward or incentive challenge with a predetermined idea of what award you want to use? And then you select the type of award companies you want that can provide that award. Doing this will rarely get you the transparency and experienced recommendations you need to make the right decision. Often it’s just the opposite. You’ll get a structure that plays into the hands of the award companies trying to sell you their core products. We know, we were trained to do just that! When you find yourself in that situation you might want to read this post Do Incentive or Recognition Reward Programs Really Work? This post is the genesis of Your Baby’s Ugly! Keep this in mind the next time you plan your award program. You might find yourself using an award you never thought of that will give you much better results...yes even cash if that’s what it takes.

Travel Awards, Let the Buyer Beware

This post by Paul Hebert of Incentive Intelligence is right on the money. If you want to know about buying any type of group business meeting or incentive travel, this is a perfect place to start. If you’ve been buying group business meeting or incentive travel, this is a great refresher.
You don’t see much written in this blog about group travel, but in all the years we were active in the incentive industry about half of the awards we sold did in fact have to do with moving a lot of people all over the world to a lot of great (and on a rare occasion not so great) destinations. Travel was and still is in my opinion the most motivational of all awards. Unfortunately it typically only applies to certain objectives in the business world, usually sales and marketing, and then only to a small percentage of your participant base that you are trying to motivate.

Paul concludes with a section on value and trust. As so often happens in this relationship selling business, the value received for what you pay is often based on the relationship you have with the person providing the value. Frankly, anyone can sell you a hotel, some plane tickets, and buses to move your people back and forth. But not everyone can design a program that produces results, and that I believe is why you are investing so heavily in travel in the first place?

While travel is the most complex of all awards to purchase in this business, it is also one of the least profitable awards to the companies that sell it. It is quite often three or even four times less profitable than traditional catalog merchandise awards. The pricing and value of other incentive and recognition awards can be just as elusive as travel and is often hidden in decades old pricing schemes designed to keep the real value of the award hidden. It will behoove you to dig deep into all pricing to ensure that your participants get the true value of your award budget.

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone

We Know What’s Right, but Don’t Often Do It

Check out this great and recent post at Incentive Intelligence. To say that this article tells it like it is is an understatement. Frankly, it is rare for anyone in the incentive industry to really say these things. You won’t hear these words from the salespeople selling you the trips, (well some good ones maybe) but that would be tantamount to forcing the client to face the truth and question whether they should even buy travel (or any award program for that matter),

Our post from last year on a similar subject may be in order here. It comments on findings from the Incentive Research Foundation Study about how customers seem to view award companies.

If all you are going to do is use your travel award supplier to manage the trip, there are many fine ones who can do just that. But if you don’t need or want to use the supplier for their incentive design and management expertise (you know, to see to it that the program works well, is communicated properly, measured and administered accordingly and sees to it that the money you spend actually provides you with a solid return) then you might as well get the cheapest price you can and hire a consultancy like Incentive Intelligence.

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone

Should you be Able to Add Cash to an Incentive Award?

Saw another post recently (by our man who loves to hate gift cards) that 60% of people who spend a gift card end up spending in excess of the gift card value. He goes on to say that these folks don’t get something from the gift that you gave them; they get a discount on something from the card you gave them. “There is a difference.” Huh? He seems to infer that this is a bad thing?? Not from our perspective...looks like a great thing to us.

Let’s say that an employee in a rewards program earned a $100 gift card to her favorite shoe store, and store then had a fabulous sale where everything was marked down by 50%. This happens all the time, right? Especially in these economic times! So, she heads off to the store, finds three pairs of shoes that used to cost $100 each, with 50% discount they are now only $50 each. She loves all three pairs so she adds $50 of her own money and happily (probably more like ecstatic) walks out of the store with three terrific pairs of new shoes. Is this a bad thing? Not if you ask my wife or any of my three daughters it isn’t!

To understand this myopic opinion of adding cash (or a credit card) to an award earned is something the traditional merchandise companies fought against for years. There were two reasons for this, one ostensibly because if you allow a participant to add cash to an award they wouldn’t produce the effort necessary to win the award outright. They could under perform and still just add cash to make up the difference. While there may be some minor validity to this line of thought, the industry never produced any empirical evidence to support it. Just the opposite, when you allow some cash to be added to the award it can add to the stretch motivation needed to get to a higher award. I’ll be happy to show you how that can work, just let me know in the comments below.

The second reason is one that no one ever mentioned to a client. The reality was that the incentive companies didn’t want to allow cash added to an award because the value of the award was typically clouded in the smoke and mirrors pricing of award points. You see incentive companies didn’t want to provide the formula necessary to add cash because they would have to divulge the value of the award....and letting someone know they (or their company) were paying exorbitant amounts for awards could cause some real angst to say the least. Incentive companies really didn’t want advertise to the clients that the blender priced in points was double the cost of the same blender you could find down at their favorite store! I know this to be true because it seems I was spending half of my 25 years in the traditional merchandise award industry trying to defend these prices.

So, should you be able to add cash to an incentive award....why not?

For the latest in a gift card award system that provides ease, flexibility, terrific choice and value to your award needs, log on to the Award of Choice.

Brilliantly Presented Employee Recognition Research

Ok, I’m a nut on research and analysis. It’s what floats my boat and as often as not becomes the backbone of most of the recommendations I make to clients about reward and recognition programs. As my first thirty years in this business were mainly in the true performance improvement world where we used research, analysis, measurement, feedback communications and rewards to change performance I saw first-hand how these pieces to the incentive puzzle, implemented in unison, could drive spectacular results. However in the last ten years or so I have been more in the employee recognition side of the business where there has always been a dearth of any real analysis that you could show a client to prove the effectiveness of employee recognition. Analytical research to show that recognition award programs produce results is kind of a non sequitor.

Analysis in the recognition field has always been kind of soft dollar proof. Something like this: when employees are recognized they are more satisfied and more satisfied employees produce more satisfied customers who tend to be longer term and repeating customers who then buy more and contribute more to the bottom line, etc. The most compelling collection of evidence on the value of employee recognition is compiled in the book The Carrot Principle by Gostic and Elton. Loved the book, it’s definitely worth the read. Unfortunately the authors are employed by my largest competitor, one that I am in complete disagreement regarding award recommendations…they typically recommend a collection of traditional service merchandise awards that are highly overpriced with limited choice. The kind of awards that were used to reward and recognize our parents and grandparents…a tad out of touch with today’s business world. As shown in this blog in many places, these types of awards can be as much as 50% to 150% higher than retail and that certainly doesn’t help the cause of recognizing or motivating an employee. In my opinion, there are so many more award options that provide better choice and value to the employee. Except for the awards piece, they do a terrific job or training, communicating and implementing an employee recognition system…non better.

The book does a terrific job of convincing us that recognition when taken collectively with many other business strategies can drive substantial bottom line results. But it’s kind of a chicken and egg thing. What came first, the great company or the employee recognition? My guess is that one had a lot to do with the other. In any event, this book does provide some compelling evidence.

So take a look into employee recognition as a strategy to improve your company’s performance. If you’re not running a program for your employees you’re losing a valuable tool to produce results. The best time to do it is now, when the economy is in this terrible state and where employees are concerned for their future. Take the time to thank and recognize them for their performance, you might be surprised to see how much your business can improve.

And while you’re at it, take a look at our new product the Award of Choice…a high value low cost award system that provides tremendous choice and value to your employee. Compare it to other systems, we think you like what you see.

Be Well, Be Happy, Hug Someone

Amazon. Gone: The Incentive Industry Regroups Following The Retail Giant’s Abrupt Withdrawal From The Incentive Merchandise Fulfillment Market

This is the title of the cover story of the recently released May issue of Incentive Magazine. When I first saw it, it made me laugh, then after reading the article and some further reflection, I laughed again, but this time with a little derision.

The author does a fine job of pointing out the fact that Amazon, in a very abrupt fashion, decided to stop fulfilling merchandise awards to the incentive industry and what that means for the happy traditional merchandise fulfillers who remain to pick up the pieces. Amazon has not revealed the reasons for leaving the business “we do comment on internal business decisions.” In only a couple short years, they were able to gain several millions of dollars of incremental business (some have it as high as more than $50 million, I guess it wasn’t enough to motivate them to keep and attempt to grow that share of the incentive industry.

The questioned not raised in the article and one that needs to be addressed is why did so many companies in such a short time switch to fulfilling there awards program through Amazon.com in the first place? As I was involved in several sales of the Amazon.com product I can tell you first hand those clients were frankly sick and tired of the pathetic choice offered in traditional award catalogs and the ridiculous prices the traditional merchandise award companies were charging for the awards...often 100% more than retail! Amazon solved both those problems, millions of items to choose from at the best prices anywhere!

So what happens now? Well with glee in their eyes, the traditional merchandise boys will gladly fulfill your points based programs; shake your right hand for the business while they’re picking your pocket with their left. There’ll be a lot of hoo hoo about how they are going to add terrific new things to the tired traditional merchandise catalog, more this, more that etc. But in the end it will still be that same old pig that we’ve seen in the industry since the beginning of time.

Unless of course, you realize that the Amazon.com gift card, as shown on this merchant list at Award of Choice is still very much alive and well. You can still have the fabulous choice and terrific pricing, actually lower than before because the incentive houses won’t be adding their markup to Amazon’s cost.