More Ideas & Best Practices for Agency Owners for Incentivizing Their ICs

Over the past several years, the number of independent contractors within the travel agency community has more than doubled. While the IC model holds many benefits for agency owners, it also comes with inherent frustrations – namely, the inability to dictate behavior.

In “What Travel Agency Owners Need to Know about Incentivizing Their ICs,” the first in a two-part series, two travel agency owners and two Host agency leaders offered advice on how to incentivize ICs, while staying within the law, including providing examples of reward and incentive programs that work for them.

In this, the second article in the series, we discuss non-monetary incentives, dive into which ICs are the most open to incentives, and offer up some best practices for agency owners looking to start their own incentive programs.

Non-monetary incentives

“Different people are motivated by different things,” Jen Cochrane, CEO of the Gifted Travel Network told TMR. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be a financial incentive.”

Many people are motivated by recognition and by shout-outs. It’s why all Hosts and consortia have leader-boards and top-seller recognition programs.

“All sales people are motivated by recognition,” said Jackie Friedman, president of Nexion. “I’ve never met a salesperson that doesn’t like to be recognized for their success.”

“If you’re trying to increase your cruise sales, shout out those advisors who had a great booking or did a group trip or hit a certain threshold or showed a percentage of growth… People are definitely motivated by that,” Cochrane said.

“It can come in so many different ways, say, here are our top three for July or here are our new advisors that made their first booking,” added Friedman.

Christine Hardenberger, owner of Modern Travel Professionals, agreed.

“People want to be noticed doing something. Did they step out of their comfort zone and trying something that I’ve been suggesting? Maybe a marketing technique I’ve been suggesting and they’ve been resistant but finally did it? I’m absolutely going to recognize that because people want to be caught doing something good,” she said.

Leader boards

Nexion keeps a leader board of where advisors are on selling preferred suppliers only. At any given time, an advisor can see where they are on the leader board.

“They don’t know who is above them or who is below them, but they can see what their rank is. That is very motivating,” Friedman said.

“Anytime you see behavior that shines and aligns with what you want them to do, find a way to publicly recognize that,” Cochrane said.

Which ICs are most receptive to incentives?

When it comes to incentivizing ICs, not everyone will want to participate.

Like most agencies, Hardenberger said she has a small group of advisors who “don’t do very much at all ever about anything.”

Cochrane told TMR there will always be some ICs like that. They might be doing it as a side hustle or just for friends and family.

“They’re just not committed. And when that’s the case, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to incentivize a change in behavior.”

Lauren Doyle, president of The Travel Mechanic, said she has a group of Baby Boomer-aged advisors who mainly do business with existing and referral clients and don’t feel the need to grow their business any other way.

Most other advisors are open to incentives. The more relevant the incentive, the more receptive they are.

“As an agency owner you want engagement. You want people buying into the whole thing. If you’re not engaging that’s a sign for me… That will also help my end-of-year meeting,” she said.

“I would say about half to two-thirds of my agents are very receptive,” Hardenberger added. “Good sales people are competitive… in general, people just like to win stuff. I like to win stuff.”

“A good sales person is motivated by achieving goals,” Friedman said.

Adding recognition or a reward to the end of achieving that goals makes it all the more sweeter.

Best practices agency owners can benefit from

Set your team up for success

A lot of the time, what’s stops ICs from doing as agency owners would like is fear or ignorance of how to do things. The best way to get the most out of incentivizing ICs is to also set them up for success, because the more successful they are, the more successful your agency is.

If success comes from selling preferred suppliers, make sure they know who those suppliers are. If it’s running a social media campaign, make sure they’re given the tools and ideas they need to get started.

For instance, when Doyle launched her July sales incentive, she didn’t just tell them, whoever has the highest sales wins, now off you go.

“I gave them about five things they can do to grow their sales. I gave them concrete ideas: here are our specials this month, here are our perks, here’s what you can sell in cruise, here’s what you can sell in hotels. I really did break it down and then I gave them some sales tactics, like call your top 15 clients. Nothing fancy, just things to do.”

Cochrane offered similar conversation suggestions: Have you tried a wine club? Are you doing a follow-up campaign with your clients? Do you have a keep-in-touch strategy? What are you doing in terms of encouraging referrals?

Doyle did the same thing with her June social media contest.

“I did have someone help us create some motivation and some ideas,” she said.

“A lot of times people will sell what they know,” said Gifted Travel Network’s Cochrane. “Encourage them to get exposed to the [preferred] partner, inviting that partner to meet with… they’re much more likely to give that product a try. Then, of course, you can financially incentivize them by giving them a bonus if they sell a certain amount of it.”

Cochrane and Friedman also said setting ICs up with training and resources is important.

“You can’t tell people necessarily to do a training… but you can definitely bring them together and talk about strategies that are working. You can encourage peer sharing… You can make resources available to them that are going to help them sell… They don’t have to follow it, but you can absolutely give them the advice and tools to be successful.”

Friedman agreed, saying owners need to tell their ICs, “At the end of the day, you can choose whether you use it or not, but make a decision from a position of strength. Don’t just not use it because you didn’t take the time to learn about it.”

Be strategic

Incentives need to be a win/win for agency owners and ICs. It doesn’t help the owner to run an overall sales contest, if most of their ICs aren’t selling preferred suppliers. Or to run a marketing contest for a product the agency is already at goal for, when there are other products that are behind.

Owners should look first at what the agency needs and what goals are yet to be met, and then build an incentive around it. (And remember, it doesn’t always have to be a sales goal.)

Similarly, owners should be looking at who past winners were and who future winners might be. If they’re always the same people, try being creative about other incentives that give more people a chance to win.

“When you allow that [the same people always winning] to happen, people stop caring,” Hardenberger said.

Incentives for most improved sales in a specified time period (overall or for a specific product or supplier) make it possible for new people to win.

That’s also why she often randomly sends out small prizes to everyone on the team. That way everyone feels included. 

More best practices:

1. Relevancy matters. “I try to make it so that it’s appealing to my specialists in that area… I have people who have no interest in selling Disney, so that’s [Disney-related prizes] a great incentive for them.” – Hardenberger

2. Variety helps. “Having a variety of incentives has been really efficient, because everybody reacts to different things.” – Hardenberger

3. Do as you say. “Anything I ask them to do, I’m actually doing too.” – Doyle

4. Continual reminders and motivation. “I keep them updated because you can’t set something in January and expect them to still be excited about it by July if you’re not talking about it.” – Hardenberger