Ongoing research confirms that incentives and rewards play a very important role in increasing productivity, retaining your best employees, and beating out your competition. The following highlights and industry facts are based on two surveys conducted by The Incentive Federation, an alliance of incentive product manufacturers, industry suppliers and associations. The second survey "A Study of the Incentive Merchandise and Travel Marketplace" was conducted by the Center for Concept Development, Princeton, NJ, and published December 2000. There were 835 respondents that were tabulated.

82% of the respondents used incentive programs to generate incremental sales. If you are launching your first gift incentive program, we caution you to keep your expectations realistic. Remember it's possible to have more business and still not increase your profit. The design of the program can make a big difference, and so can your kick off and the ongoing promotion of your program. Don't hesitate to give you local Authorized i-gifts™ representative a call ... their expertise will ensure the best possible return on investment.

66% of the respondents used incentives for consumer promotions. How can you find the right product that will appeal to your entire customer base? You can't. That's where our i-gifts™ Program comes in. Your customers will be able to select from a variety of gourmet indulgences (much more motivating than merchandise which is easily forgotten!). And have those gifts delivered on a custom tailored schedule.

61% rewarded and acknowledged non-sales performance and achievements with merchandise and/or travel. We think this is a huge area where most all companies miss GREAT opportunities. Employees are full of wonderful ideas to create a more effective and cost saving working environment, but usually their boss is so busy trying to meet established goals that there is no forum for those ideas.

Elite Corporate Gifts and Rewards™ recommends that you establish a voluntary board, lead by the president to give its recommendations credibility, and to give the president an opportunity to get to know his employees better. The focus might be on improving the enterprise. Give those attending information about your company so they clearly know its assets and liabilities, and ask them to break out into teams to come up with innovative ways to invigorate your approach to customers, to make the best use of assets between branches or subsidiaries, to train employees to offer superlative customer services, etc.

You can reward teams and associates for effective ideas that you implement, and track the performance of those ideas, so you can tell your workforce about all of the benefits you accrue, and perhaps further reward the employees who brought the idea to your attention.

48% of the companies that responded to the survey created incentive programs for their dealers. It's amazing how a group of distributors or a sales team will get behind your products for a year's worth of gourmet cheeses!
Elite Corporate Gifts and Rewards™ helped to create a program for a company that was introducing several new models of fireplaces and decorative stoves to their distributors. Several of the distributors earned enough sales credits to provide a monthly celebration for their entire office. They created an i-gifts™ program that shipped microbrews, wines, cheeses and chocolates each month. It was an effective way for the entire sales organization to thank their support staff, and build better relationships.

69% strongly agree, or agree, with the statement, "Travel and merchandise awards are remembered longer than cash payments". We don't need a survey to know that! Think of how many times you have given cash as a present and the recipient can't tell you what they bought a month later... it most likely paid off their credit card debt that month!

Remembering what they got is only part of the outcome you want. Changing behavior to promote going the extra mile and finding innovative solutions... encouraging your workers to think as well as work, earning loyalty, and bolstering confidence which leads to more productivity are the main goals that companies strive to reach. And i-gifts™ programs that deliver distinctive gifts repetitively that may be shared with loved ones, go a very long way in helping you to achieve those goals.