Welcome to "Your Baby's Ugly"

At the risk of offending every mother, father, grandmother, grandfather and probably any family member of any newborn anywhere in the universe, I’ve chosen the name “Your Baby’s Ugly” as the title of this Blog.

While it has nothing at all to do with babies; I think it is an extremely appropriate title for a conversation about an industry that I know and love and have been involved with going on 40 years...Incentive, Motivation and Recognition awards. The employee performance improvement and sales incentive industry can be fascinating in its complexity and scope and confusing for those who haven’t really lived in the middle of it. At this point in my career I want to share my experiences and thoughts on all the facets of this intriguing business. I want to dispel some myths, reveal the truth about the “smoke and mirrors” pricing that has been used for years, and generally set the record straight on a number of issues.

Like many industries, ours uses many names and is broken up into many pieces;

· The incentive and recognition awards business
· The motivation award business
· Sales incentive programs
· Employee performance improvement business
· Sales promotion business
· Online incentive program business
· The incentive travel business
· Advertising specialty business
· Etc, Etc.

Whatever you want to call it, this industry is made up of people of all persuasions and abilities. Some are tremendously talented, others, well you can determine that for yourself. I put them into three broad categories:

1. Those that really know what they’re doing and can help clients produce some terrific results

2. Those who think they offer good advice but the advice rarely produces results.

3. And unfortunately, those who really don’t know much about creating programs that produce results, let the client tell them what they want, and simply fulfill the award need. And, too often they are swayed by the % of commission on the award they sell vs. what’s best for the client.

Sadly, in over thirty-five years in the business I have seen far too many programs that didn’t produce much in results, and even worse, some that actually decreased performance. Over the years, in discussing unsuccessful programs with respected peers, we often referred to them as “Your Baby’s Ugly.” When we had the fortitude, we even told potential customers that. It wasn’t necessarily the way to endear ourselves to them, but better to do that than have your name on a program that you knew had limited chance for success.

Thanks for reading, stay tuned, my next post will talk about the billions of dollars that are wasted each year on incentive and recognition awards. You might be surprised to find out just how much!

Be well, be happy, and hug someone!