The Sales and Marketing Management Podcast

We fed the latest Incentive Research Foundation study on measuring ROI of incentive travel programs and our article on that report into Google's AI-driven NotebookLM tool to create this podcast summary. The focus is on the challenges companies have proving business performance or long-term behavioral change resulting from corporate incentive travel programs, which leaves them vulnerable to scrutiny from finance and procurement stakeholders.

In this episode, we talk with Ken Lloyd, author of "Performance Appraisals & Phrases for Dummies." The book has been revised for a workforce that is vastly different than when it was first published in 2009. In most workplaces through the decades, annual performance reviews have been something that evokes more groans than grins. However, today's younger workers actually embrace performance reviews when they are structured well and serve a purpose - that purpose being to provide a framewor...

For decades, corporate group travel for recognition purposes was almost exclusively for top-selling sales reps. The President's Club model had straightforward qualifying metrics and an easily measured ROI: "Did we bring in more revenue?" C-suite executives who make the decisions about incentive travel programs these days are broadening their campaigns' scope, with an understanding that everyone contributes to revenue growth. The qualifying goals include softer metrics, and the programs themse...

Corporate gifts are a critical component of companies' employee engagement strategy and customer loyalty efforts. Some use corporate gifts to build stronger relationships with channel partners. It's a $300 billion industry in the U.S. alone. But Tom Romine, founder of Cultivate, a corporate gifting services provider, said many companies continue to make mistakes in gifting that have been made for decades. For starters, enough with the branded swag. That may have a place in your marketing stra...

Art Fromm started as an engineer and implementer of software applications before he became a sales professional and sales manager. Building on that experience, for the past 25 years he been in sales enablement roles, including starting his own company, Team Sales Development, in 2009, helping clients increase win rate, margins, revenues and client satisfaction. He helps presales and sales teams establish value and sell complex solutions from software to IT to telecoms to supply chain. In this...