Incentive Planning Takes “Two Brains”

This article was provided by Dittman Incentive Marketing, a quality leader in the field of people performance improvement. Since 1976, Dittman has helped companies achieve critical corporate goals via original, one-of-a-kind corporate incentive award programs that inspire sales team motivation, customers to buy more, and others to do more.
Scientists agree that in most people one side of the brain dominates. The right half of the brain controls the creative, artistic characteristics and the left side controls the practical, reasoning functions. Bankers, mathematicians and physicians are directed by a dominant left side. Artists, writers and actors live by the right side of their brain.
Those who successfully create incentive travel programs must be able to call on unusual competencies from both sides, seemingly simultaneously — to call on their ability to be an artist, a poet, a dreamer at one moment and almost immediately transform themselves into a plotter, a planner, a schemer.
One half says, “How do I get people from point A to point B in the most organized, logical and efficient fashion?” The other half says, “How can I make it fun?”
What are the skills needed, the training to be drawn upon, to prepare the two sides of the mind for this “combat”? From the right side come abilities in English, history, foreign language, art and music. From the left come the necessary accounting, math, science, geography and business skills.
English and History
A good incentive travel proposal provides a romantic, moving description of the travel experience as the guests will live it. The promotional materials also transform a piece of geography (the trip destination) into a living, breathing entity. The materials that prepare the winners for the travel experience fuel their fantasy. So you need the poetic skills of a great romantic.
Yet our writer must also have the discipline of a journalist. The proposal must deal, in almost checklist fashion, with the elements that are included in the cost. The rules of the program must be written in clear, precise, direct English. And the trip preparation materials must be quickly and easily understood.
The clearly superior incentive travel program uses the customs, the culture, the history of the travel destination to bring its uniqueness to life.
To be in a position to make that destination the foundation of a lifelong memory for the guest requires, at the very least, a good sense of history; to do it well calls for a genuine, heartfelt interest and knowledge of history.
The best travel programs inform and educate as well as host and entertain. And the incentive travel professional educates while he or she entertains.
Foreign Language
Do not mistake the intention here. An incentive travel creator need not be fluent in multiple languages to be successful. But a person who takes on the role of operating travel programs abroad can be of maximum effectiveness if he or she has a strong working knowledge of at least one foreign language.
And, most importantly, the key to fluency in any foreign language is a sound structural knowledge of English. An understanding of the nuances within a language, and the relationships of different languages to one another, yields a deeper understanding of the differences among people.
Art and Music
Music is not all rock and roll. And Leroy Neiman is not the most acclaimed painter who ever lived. The majority of guests on an incentive program are at the point in their lives where they are searching for truth and beauty. Close your eyes and picture listening to Mozart or Strauss being played in Vienna. Now, keep them closed and picture yourself soaking up all the beauty of a Renoir or a Monet in the Louvre.
The artists and composers … the poets and sculptors and writers of the world have made a more lasting impression on our lives than all the generals and politicians and statesmen. And it is up to the incentive creator to use them … to bring them to life.
I’ve referred to only five subjects that call upon the right side of the mind; by extension, philosophy, sociology, psychology and anthropology are included, as well. In short, the liberally educated man or woman “for all seasons” is best equipped to create heart-moving, mind-filling, exceptional incentive programs.
Now, to the left side of the brain.
Accounting
Could there be two people as opposite in essential nature as the poet and the accountant? Yet they must co-exist in the mind of the incentive creator. Line item costs must be budgeted, reconciliations made, the cash flow needs of suppliers, corporate sponsor and incentive creator prioritized. Foreign currency fluctuations must be dealt with. International monetary transactions are a daily task. And most important, the program must be done within budget, with a fair profit for all.
Math
We speak here not of trigo-nometry or differential calculus, but rather, of the basic arithmetic and algebraic manipulations that put one in command of numbers and, in turn, in command of problem solving.
If you’ve constructed a per-person price on a program, part of which is arrived at by amortizing $25,000 in fixed costs over 375 projected guests, what is the new price if you only have 320 guests? What formula can you fix in your mind to tell what time and what day it is in Bangkok when it’s 2 p.m. on Tuesday in Indianapolis?
These are the kinds of questions you must be able to handle without too much time, effort and anguish.
Science
Here again, not advanced chemistry or nuclear physics is required, but rather, a working knowledge of basic physical science and the human machine.
What are the effects on the human body of a 15-hour plane ride across eight time zones? What do you do with your guests the first 48 hours in Hong Kong to help them adjust to their new daily schedule? What season is it in Buenos Aires when it’s summer in New York?
If you’re not curious about the answers, then incentive travel planning is not for you. If you plan a major party the first night in Hong Kong, or if you think you’ll find the warming sun of Argentina baking you to a golden brown in July (where it has reached as low as 28 degrees F.), you’re doomed to fail.
Geography
The need for this body of know-ledge is self-evident. The consummate incentive travel expert knows the world as well as most people know their living room and knows not only the topography, the major points of visual interest and the capital, but where the water is and whether it’s drinkable or swimmable. Enough said.
Business
I’ve left the most important element for last in the hope that it will linger the longest in the reader’s mind. The most common misconception about incentive travel — and the one that does the most damage — is that we are in the business of running “trips.” We are not.
We are in the business of helping corporate marketers reach their business objectives. And to do that, the incentive creator must first understand enough about his or his client’s business — its style, product, goals — to create a program that is a sound business proposition. To survive, the incentive creator must be a pragmatic business pro.
The Challenge
Incentive travel, as the Society of Incentive Travel Executives defines it, is “a modern manage-ment tool used to achieve extra-ordinary goals by awarding participants a travel award upon their attainment of their share of the uncommon goals.” It is a basic tenet of the free enterprise system that the greater the effort, the greater the reward. The key words in the SITE definition are “extraordinary” and “uncommon.” One doesn’t earn the extraordinary for doing the common.
Quality control people are expected to control product quality. Accountants are expected to keep the books properly. And salespeople are supposed to sell, to meet set quotas.
People get paid to perform these tasks to measured standards. How, then, do we help people to overachieve, to extend themselves well beyond usual standards? The answer lies in the human psyche. We work for money, of course, but there live in each of us two human drives that, combined, explain why incentive travel works.
The first is the need for applause, the need to feel appreciated by our employers and admired by our peers.The second motivator is the desire to travel, to see strange, new places. When you take your overachievers away to a distant place for the purpose of applauding them, you have married the dual needs for self-esteem and self-actualization … and have created the most powerful, inspirational force of all.
Your company can set goals for its people well above the norm of expected performance by saying to them, “Achieve your goal and we will take you away for the travel experience of a lifetime.” This motivator is usually directed at sales personnel, but is increasingly being applied to non-sales employees to motivate them to achieve quantifiable goals such as improved productivity, quality and cost control.
You’ll note that I didn’t say that the overachievers “win” a trip. They don’t “win” anything; they earn it, through their efforts. And it’s not a “trip” they earn, but a travel experience. After all, if you ask a salesperson to work smarter or harder, or both, you can’t reward the effort with a week in the Caribbean that they see advertised in the New York Times for $499. When I say, “an extraordinary travel experience,” I mean a program so extraordinary that participants couldn’t duplicate it, no matter how much money they had to spend.
This may be a tall order, but it is the reason why incentive travel has worked to move billions of dollars of products for thousands of corporations across the country. It’s the very reason that incentive travel challenges the mind as no other profession does.