Incentives: 5 Cardinal Rules, 10 Great Ideas

When the economy gets tight, customers can take forever to make a buying decision. So, managers start spending conference room time trying to think up incentives that will encourage the customer to buy.

Any incentive will cost the company something, so make sure that whatever incentive you use actually causes prospective customers to take the next step in their buying process.

I interviewed Mac McIntosh (sales-lead-experts.com) for this article, because I knew he'd have some great ideas on this subject. As we talked, it was obvious that we agreed on the "cardinal rules," and he also had some great incentive ideas.

Note also that very few of these ideas incorporate an actual discount—a slippery slope you'll want to leave for your less-imaginative competitors.

The 5 Cardinal Rules of Incentives

1. Offer incentives that relate to your product or service

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Kristin Zhivago is president of Zhivago Marketing Partners (www.zhivago.com) and author of the book Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy (www.roadmaptorevenue.com) and the Revenue Journal blog (www.revenuejournal.com).