Spur for the Front Lines

MARKETING & SELLING

San Francisco's venerable Levi Strauss & Co. (Levi pants) has long held out against sales contests, gimmicks and giveaways, convinced that the only way to boost sales is to get the salesman to work harder. Last week Strauss & Co. broke tradition and decided to give its salesmen one big reason to work harder: a sales-incentive program for its staff that pays them a cash bonus for new accounts or sales over quotas. In so doing, it joined the growing number of U.S. firms that are putting new stress on sales-incentive programs to combat the recession.

To most U.S. salesmen, the greatest incentive of all is still cash on the paycheck in the form of extra bonuses and commissions. But cash incentives are gradually being supplemented--or replaced--by rewards that have a greater "remembrance value," such as trips for both the salesman and his wife and family. One reason for the switch: cash bonuses often never get home, are blown in a poker game or spree on the town.

Hawaiian Holiday. Philco Distributors of Los Angeles recently offered a Hawaiian holiday to its top dealers, retailers and sales personnel, got 100 winners. The program cost $60,000, but it increased sales 30% during the contest period. Bell & Howell this year will give three trips to Las Vegas, Nev. for top salesmen, with the added incentive that head office VIPs will take over their territories, push the least-promising prospects. Some companies offer fully paid trips to Europe.

Many companies shy away from big rewards alone because they can be given to only a few, are won again and again by the same crack salesmen. Instead, they hand out smaller prizes that give everyone a chance. National Cash Register has a series of trips based on points in sales quotas. Last year 1,200 of its 3,500-man force got a free trip (with their wives), plus $25 for each point over the quota. Rich's department store in Atlanta offers monthly bonuses to all its salespeople for topping their set quotas, once or twice a year holds a King-and-Queen contest in which the leading male and female salespeople are crowned with great hoopla by Rich's President Richard H. Rich.

President to Janitor. Sparking the move toward smaller but more numerous prizes is a handful of incentive firms that have made big business out of shooting adrenalin into salesmen. The biggest is Dayton's E. F. MacDonald Co., which last year had a hand in triggering the sale of $1 billion worth of merchandise. MacDonald urges firms to award varied prizes, usually merchandise on a point scale, thus give every salesman some incentive to better his work. Incentive firms are also responsible for the newest gimmick in incentive selling: getting the entire company, from the president to the janitor, to take part in sales promotions. Denver's Ringsby Truck Lines brought all of its employees in on a campaign to win new customers, got 3,121 new accounts by offering cash prizes and a trip to Las Vegas. Total cost: $4,300.

A Noisy Incentive. Many firms have gone a step farther, enlisted salesmen's families in ulcer-building campaigns to spur the breadwinner on. MacDonald regularly sends cards to the home showing the salesman's standing in a current company contest, gives wives tags to hang on furniture around the house to remind their husbands of the furnishings they can earn. Some firms have even sent buzzers and shrill whistles to a salesman's children; when dad asks what the noise is all about, the kids are instructed to tell him it's only a reminder to straighten up and sell harder. More constructively, Carrier Corp. recently launched a three-month sales drive. First prize: a $10,000 scholarship for a salesman's son or daughter.

Such constant pressure from home and office is bound to take its toll on even the strongest salesman. Many firms have learned that for best results incentive programs cannot be pushed constantly. Says Emmett H. Heitler, general manager of Denver's Shwayder Bros., Inc., makers of Samsonite luggage: "We don't have incentive programs more than twice a year because we don't want our men under the gun too often." "You can carry this business of pounding away at a salesman too far," says Republic Steel's General Sales Manager L. S. Hamaker. "It can become demoralizing."

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