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Yes you should!
If you have a goal of selling more digital PALs, you should definitely spiff your team if they meet and exceed the goal you come up with. What's the harm? Your practice will make more of a profit selling luxury products and your team could earn: gift cards, a bonus, profit sharing, extra time off, etc. The staff is extra motivated to earn a spiff important to them. You are excited if they meet the goal because you make more money. No brainer.
No Way!
Why incentivize something that should be a requirement? Your optical team should be selling luxury…that's what they have been hired to do. If you pay them a fair wage with good benefits, there is no reason to spiff. Besides, if you ever have to remove the incentive, what's their motivation then? They will be upset that you eliminated the program and they will go back to selling low cost products. It is unnecessary and will "backfire."
My Experiences and Lessons
When I was teaching elementary kids, I chose not to give incentives to my students. I didn't believe in rewarding them for walking quietly in the hallway or completing all of their assigned work. Those were expectations I had for them. It didn't make sense for me to give out a sticker for every time they followed directions or made a good choice. That's what's expected of them. My philosophy is that if they had ownership in their learning and their actions that they will choose to make good decisions because it's the right thing to do. I wanted it to be intrinsic. Once and a while I would hear a student say they wanted a sticker because of their behavior. I would tell them to grab one of the (pretend) floating stickers above them in the air and stick it on their heart…they loved it, especially when Mr. S grabbed a Dora the Explorer or Cinderella sticker to put on his heart!
In the optical realm I have the same philosophy, but it gets tricky sometimes. It is especially difficult when reps and vendors enter the picture. You've all been there. A lens rep comes in to the office and tells you that they have an exciting new lens and for every pair you sell, a $10 gift card will be given to the optician. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
It didn't feel right to me. What happens if an optician puts a patient in the lens that they shouldn't be in just so they can receive the reward? What happens once the lens company pulls their gift card spiff away? Are we "trained" to keep selling that lens once the motivation is gone? What happens if our noncommissioned opticians start stealing patients away from one another so they can get the sale? If I stop giving students a popcorn party for walking down the hall like they should will they start sprinting the halls once I take it away? Chaos. This was sounding familiar to me.
I caved. Against my moral fiber, I told them that I didn't want to hold any opportunities from them and we would participate in a lens sale reward for six months. They were pumped. I was wary. I swallowed my pride and philosophical views and allowed them to go for it. I am writing this exactly two years later.
Pros
There was a buzz in the air! Our opticians kicked it in gear and had that look in their eyes. Our patients were going to be wearing this new luxury lens. It started slowly but our numbers started creeping up. What started as 8-15 lenses per month, soon grew to over 30 per month! Yikes. We were selling premium lenses. Along with that, we were putting patients in high-end frames to compliment their investment. Damn. Why didn't we do this earlier?
Our opticians started loving the incentives but they wanted more. They felt that our doctors could start doing a better handoff for them so they called a meeting with the doctors and they came up with a better flow from doctor to optician including "the golden recommendation" from the docs. We soon discovered that if the doctors hand-delivered the patient to the optician while telling the patient how they would benefit from the lens we increased the number even more. The doctor's word was golden and our whole team knew these lenses like the back of their hand. We were lens experts and now selling more than 70 luxury lenses per month. Why didn't I do this before? Our bottom line was very healthy and we were the experts of selling luxury products. This is what experts would've considered a "no-brainer." Everyone wins. Maybe I should have given out more stickers to my poor kindergarteners. Maybe they would be doing double-digit multiplication by the end of the year?
Based on our sales growth and ability to now sell luxury products, you might ask, how could there be any kind of negative to this incentive program? Going from 8 to 75 premium lenses is insane. Any optical would drool over that improvement. Well. There's always more to the bottom line, right? Maybe? Let's dig deeper.
Cons
The six month test was completed and I was relieved. I hated it. I liked our results, but I was honestly ready to skip the country at the end. As a manager, this was a nightmare. Here are the things that drove me bonkers:
Our opticians became the most competitive people and not in a good way. They were stealing patients from one another and when I "pooled" the money for them they resented me when one optician would sell 30 and another would sell 7. However, I would find that an optician with huge sales was taking patients away from the others and it would irk the rest of the team.
The opticians were putting patients into these luxury lenses that should not have been in them. They put their incentive in front of what was right for the patient. This affected our perceived brand as a trusted optical. Most of the patients benefitted from these luxury lenses, but some were quite peeved with us for selling them optical snake oil. They paid a premium price for a lemon in their eyes. To this day, I still get negative feedback from a handful of patients that made a huge investment and literally saw no benefit. They were pressured by their trusted optician to get these lenses. Good luck selling them anything ever again. The trust is gone for these patients.
After a while, the doctors (and even the paras) were wanting in on the action. If the doctor's word was golden, that means they were basically selling the lenses. Why wouldn't they get a big cut of the action? And if the patient care coordinators were making the appointment for these patients to come and the techs were talking these lenses up, why wouldn't they receive a spiff? After all, if there is no patient there how would you sell them a lens? Experts on this side of the argument would tell me that this would be considered a backfire.
Aftermath
After six months, I pulled the program. I resented the lens company. Look at what you did to my life! I had a toxic environment of employees that would be whispering about who got what, who stole a patient, and who was getting nothing. I was the one that had to deal with patients that were pressured into buying a failed product in their eyes. We made more money but it contributed to an unhealthy culture in our clinic.
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