Perspectives

How Do You Set Up an Incentive Program?
It's time to do something extra for your sales force or for support teams. You need to focus their attention on a new product launch, on a difficult sales goal, or on new positioning that will enhance your strategic value to clients. An incentive program is a great...

Design: Better Business Results, More Meaningful Experiences
Design is not just an esoteric concept but a necessary step to ensure an effective incentive program. It’s more than just a program logo or brand, the graphic design elements that contribute to the program “look and feel.” Design is a way of making sure that business...

The Importance of Design as a Service
Last week I was privileged to participate in a webinar hosted by the Incentive and Engagement Solution Providers (IESP) and Brant Dolan of Quality Incentive Company. In this conversation, we talked about the importance of design in incentive programs and its role in...

Putting the Gold back into the Gold Watch
Once upon a time, the gold watch was given by companies as a retirement gift. It was a sincere sign of appreciation for one’s years of service. Over time, the gold watch has evolved into another “do this, get that” reward for performance. It’s not just a gold watch or...

New Year’s Sales Goals: from “Set it and Forget it” to “Use it or Lose it”
New Years Sales Goals Happy New Year! We are just a couple of weeks into January … so, how are you doing with your resolutions? Still in the honeymoon phase, where just after your resolution was announced you are 100% engaged? Or, have you put it on autopilot and you...

Motivation Design-as-a-Service for One and for All
Sometimes all you need is a little advice, access to expertise, or a new way to think about things. In B2B incentives and loyalty, that's hard to do when you own or manage a program: For a company who wants to manage their incentive program on their own...

3 Huge Reasons Incentive Buyers Should Focus on Design
Design may seem like an irrelevant or unnecessary concept when executing a performance improvement program. All you need is some exciting rewards and a technology to track and administer the back end, right? A trip of a lifetime to the Olympics, to Hawaii, to the...

How to Execute ‘The Shift’ in Motivation: Five Fundamental Design Changes That Lead to Long-Term Results
Motivation Animate Growth Partners was honored to be recently introduced in the pages of Incentive magazine earlier this month: http://www.incentivemag.com/News/Industry/Incentive-Strategy-Firm-Launched/ Why does the market need a design-only firm? There is a need for...
Celebrating the Dignity of Labor
Over Labor Day weekend, I had some time to reflect on the contributions of the American labor movement, and on the value of work itself. Many of us do not have to look far to see the benefits we have earned. I think about my grandmother’s parents, who came to the...

No emotions in business? Think again.
emotions in business Remember Tom Hanks' famous soliloquy from the movie "A League of their Own": "There's no crying in baseball?" Like baseball, business is not comfortable with emotions. Marketing and sales traditionally cite all the rational reasons to buy a...
Motivating People doesn’t work? Now what?
Does motivation still work? Susan Fowler’s new book, Why Motivating People Doesn’t Work and What Does: The New Science of Leading, Energizing, and Engaging challenges how organizations have traditionally “driven” people to perform. If motivation is purely carrots, she...

Why Animate? Why now?
Animate is the new motivate. “Giving up on our long-term goals for immediate gratification, my friends, is procrastination.” This is a quote from one of my favorite authors, Dan Ariely (“Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions”; a succinct...