The incentive is a mechanism. The behaviour is the objective.

It is easy to begin an incentive programme with the incentive.

• What is the reward?
• How much should it be worth?
• Who qualifies?
• How long should the campaign run?

Those are important questions. They are simply not the first ones.

The better starting point is:

What behaviour could influence the commercial outcome we want to achieve?

Once that is clear, the role of the incentive becomes much easier to define.

Start with the outcome

Take a new model launch.

The ultimate objective may be sales, but there are many actions between introducing a vehicle and delivering that number.

• Product knowledge.
• Accreditation.
• Lead follow-up.
• Test-drive activity.
• Customer conversations.
• Finance presentations.
• First orders.

Different people influence different parts of that journey.

If the programme simply rewards the final sale, it recognises an important outcome. But it may overlook many of the behaviours that help create it.

Now consider aftersales.

The headline measure could be retention, service-plan penetration, parts sales or accessories.

Again, the number is the result of individual actions.

• A service adviser raises a relevant product at the right moment.
• A technician identifies an opportunity.
• A team follows up a customer.
• A manager gives a particular measure greater prominence.

The commercial result matters.

Understanding the behaviours that contribute to it gives you more ways to influence it.

Work backwards from the number

This creates a useful way to design activity.

Start with the commercial objective and work backwards.

• If we want this number to move, what needs to happen?
• Who can make that happen?
• What would we like those people to do?
• What might encourage them to do more of it?

Only then do we reach the question of mechanism.

That mechanism could be reward.

It could also be recognition, competition, progress, learning, communication or some combination of them.

The sequence matters:

OBJECTIVE → BEHAVIOUR → AUDIENCE → MECHANISM

rather than:

REWARD → CAMPAIGN → EVERYBODY

The first starts with the business.

Objective → Behaviour → People → Mechanism → Result

Replay

Start here

1. Commercial objectiveWhat are we trying to move?
2. BehaviourWhat needs to happen differently?
3. PeopleWho can influence it?
4. MechanismWhat will give them a reason to act?
   • Reward
   • Recognition
   • Progress
   • Competition
   • Learning
   • Communication
5. ResultWhat changed?

Choose the behaviour first. Then choose what will move it.

A sequence read downwards. Commercial objective: what are we trying to move? Behaviour: what needs to happen differently? People: who can influence it? Mechanism: what will give them a reason to act? At that point six options are shown at equal weight, in this order: reward, recognition, progress, competition, learning, communication. Then result: what changed? Reward is one of the six, not the starting point.

Different behaviours need different mechanics

There is no reason every commercial priority should produce the same programme design.

Imagine two objectives.

The first is building product knowledge ahead of a launch.

Progress, completion, accreditation and recognition may be particularly relevant.

The second is accelerating incremental sales during a defined period.

Targets, competition and reward may play a much larger role.

Neither approach is inherently better.

They are serving different behaviours.

The same applies across the wider automotive business.

A customer-experience initiative may benefit from recognising consistent performance over time.

An accessories campaign might work around a clearly defined commercial result.

A service initiative may involve a combination of learning and verified activity.

A launch may move through several mechanics as it progresses from readiness to market activity and then sales.

Reward works best when the connection is clear

Where reward is appropriate, the relationship between action and reward should be easy to understand.

• Do this.
• Make progress here.
• Achieve this.
• Earn that.

Complexity can weaken the connection.

If somebody has to decode a programme before understanding what matters, the commercial priority itself risks disappearing behind the mechanics.

That doesn’t mean every programme must be simplistic.

Networks, targets and commercial structures can be sophisticated.

But from the participant’s perspective, the desired action should feel clear.

People should know what matters and what progress looks like.

Recognition changes what becomes visible

Reward is powerful partly because it creates a tangible reason to act.

Recognition works differently.

It makes achievement visible.

That can be particularly valuable in a distributed network where excellent performance might otherwise remain local.

An individual can be recognised.

A team can be recognised.

A retailer can be recognised.

Strong progress can be surfaced as well as final achievement.

That visibility helps signal what the organisation values.

It can also create examples for the wider network.

This matters because behaviour is influenced not only by what people receive, but by what they see happening around them.

Competition can create momentum

Automotive is full of comparative performance.

• Markets compare.
• Regions compare.
• Retailers compare.
• Teams compare.
• Individuals compare.

Used thoughtfully, that existing performance culture can create momentum.

A leaderboard can make progress tangible.

A team target can create a shared objective.

A challenge can bring a particular priority to the front of people’s minds.

But competition is most useful when it supports the desired behaviour rather than becoming the objective itself.

The purpose is not to produce a leaderboard.

The purpose is to give the commercial priority greater energy.

The same objective may need more than one behaviour

Commercial outcomes are rarely created by one action alone.

A model launch is a good example.

Before launch, the desired behaviour may be learning and preparation.

Around launch, it may shift towards customer contact, test drives and lead follow-up.

As vehicles reach the network, attention may move towards conversion and orders.

Later, the focus could become sustained momentum or a particular derivative.

One commercial objective.

Several behaviours.

Several audiences.

Potentially several mechanisms.

This is why an enduring programme can be more useful than thinking only in terms of individual incentive campaigns.

The programme can follow the commercial priority as the behaviour required to deliver it changes.

Data can connect behaviour with outcome

There is another advantage to defining the behaviour clearly.

You can start to measure the response.

• Did people participate?
• Did the intended action increase?
• Where did it increase?
• Which audiences responded?
• Did the commercial measure move alongside it?

Not every relationship will be perfectly causal. Automotive performance is influenced by product, price, availability, marketing, customer demand and many other factors.

But connecting programme activity with relevant performance data creates a much richer picture than either source provides alone.

It allows the programme team to understand not simply whether people engaged, but how the network responded.

And that learning can improve the next activity.

A reward should never have to carry the whole programme

A compelling reward can attract attention.

But attention without relevance fades quickly.

If the activity matters to someone’s role, the objective is clear, progress is visible and the mechanism feels appropriate, the reward becomes part of a stronger whole.

This is particularly important for programmes that run over time.

You cannot make every priority feel more important simply by increasing the prize.

Nor should you need to.

A programme has more tools available than that.

• Recognition.
• Progress.
• Competition.
• Communication.
• Learning.
• Visibility.
• And, when appropriate, reward.

The skill is choosing the right combination for the behaviour you want to encourage.

Behaviour is where strategy becomes action

Manufacturers set objectives at market, brand and network level.

But delivery ultimately happens through thousands of individual decisions and actions.

• Which customer gets called back.
• Which product gets discussed.
• Which model gets demonstrated.
• Which opportunity gets followed up.
• Which commercial priority gets another five minutes of attention today.

An incentive programme can help influence those decisions.

But the incentive itself is not the destination.

• Start with the outcome.
• Define the behaviour.
• Find the people who can influence it.
• Then choose the mechanism that gives them a reason to act.

Because ultimately: