Sales · Two field experiments at Fortune 500 companies, plus two online experiments testing mechanisms.
Self-Selected Sales Incentives: Evidence of their Effectiveness, Persistence, Durability, and Underlying Mechanisms
Journal of Marketing · 2018
Summary
Compared with equivalent quota systems, allowing employees to select a goal–reward combination increased sales performance substantially. Effects were larger for employees with highly variable past performance and lower past performance; effects persisted when the scheme was discontinued and were durable when offered again. For a SaaS founder: A founder could cautiously pilot employee-selected quota/reward menus in a randomized or phased rollout, tracking revenue quality and retention as well as bookings. Do not assume the observed effects transfer across roles or that self-selection is always superior to a well-designed fixed plan.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
A founder could cautiously pilot employee-selected quota/reward menus in a randomized or phased rollout, tracking revenue quality and retention as well as bookings. Do not assume the observed effects transfer across roles or that self-selection is always superior to a well-designed fixed plan.
Reported result
What the study found
Compared with equivalent quota systems, allowing employees to select a goal–reward combination increased sales performance substantially. Effects were larger for employees with highly variable past performance and lower past performance; effects persisted when the scheme was discontinued and were durable when offered again.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What happens when sales employees choose their own goal–reward incentive combination?
Design
Two field experiments at Fortune 500 companies, plus two online experiments testing mechanisms.
Sample and setting
Sales employees at two Fortune 500 companies; the publisher page does not state the field-experiment sample sizes in the fetched abstract.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The abstract does not report sample sizes; the field evidence comes from two companies and a specific incentive menu, so generalization to small SaaS sales teams, different compensation systems, or non-sales roles is uncertain.
Research sources
Direct publisher scrape verified title/record and available text; Firecrawl source ID 01a1228d-cc56-7274-a66e-712b4091bb1e. Correction notices were not separately checked.