Case Study in Travel Incentive Success

There are plenty of ways to foul up a perfectly good travel-based sales incentive. They include:

• Not allowing spouses or significant others to come along
• Choosing destinations that potential winners don’t find all that enticing
• Turning what was supposed to be a “getaway vacation” into an extended off-site work meeting
• Always offering the same exact trip from year to year

The list goes on. In fact, there’s little doubt that as you read this, a VP of sales or program manager somewhere is coming up with a new and innovative way to take some of the joy and excitement out of a travel incentive.

But why dwell on the negatives when there are plenty of positive examples of well-run travel incentives to talk about? Recently Incentive Magazine highlighted one such example, a program called “Circle of Excellence” run by F5 Networks, a Seattle-based high-tech firm.

Begun in 2001, Circle of Excellence is F5’s primary incentive program, and targets four employee groups: field sales reps; inside sales reps; field systems engineers; and vice presidents, directors, and sales managers. According to Mary Chenaur, the company’s global events manager, participants achieve qualifier status by making an overall sales quota and hitting 100 percent of a separate quota for a strategic product.

Part of F5’s challenge with this program is that 65 percent of the participants live outside North America, with some requiring an extra travel day for any potential destination. Typically the company’s senior VP of sales announces the trip destination, along with the goals for the new year, at the annual sales meeting in late October. For the 2005 Circle of Excellence program, participants competed to go to Aruba.

Following the announcement, F5 maintains interest in the program with a regular email campaign, says Chenaur. “After the first quarter’s numbers come in, the sales staff gets an email blast that highlights the program and provides links to where they are in the rankings,” she says. “We publicize those who are at 85 percent and above. It’s important for them to see where they are in relation to others. Salespeople are very competitive.”

The trip itself usually begins on a Wednesday and runs through the weekend, starting with an opening night reception. Spouses are welcome (as are children, but only at the qualifiers’ expense). During the Aruba trip, guests enjoyed a range of activities to choose from on Thursday and Friday, including a snorkeling cruise, a Jeep road rally, a reef visit aboard the Atlantis VI submarine, an ATV rally, deep-sea fishing, windsurfing, golf, or spa treatments. Each day concluded with a cocktail reception, after which participants received a cash allowance to have dinner on their own.

The trip culminated in a big shebang on Saturday night. On the Aruba beachfront, participants enjoyed a carnival-themed dinner dance dressed in feather masks and colored boas that had been delivered to the hotel rooms. After some introductory comments from the executive vice president of sales and the CEO, participants got down to the main business of the evening – enjoying a night of top-notch dining and entertainment at a beautiful seaside locale.

“The food, the band, the weather were all fantastic,” Chenaur says. “This was one of the best trips in company history. People are still talking about it.”

No doubt the company is happy that so many folks had such a terrific time in Aruba, but what about the contest’s actual results? Chenaur conveys that F5 reported revenue of $281.4 million in 2005, a full 64 percent higher than the 2004 figures. But additionally, she notes, the number of qualifiers can also gauge the success of an open-ended program like this oneby.

“We thought we’d have 65 this year,” she says. “We ended up with more than 100.”