The excitement, the energy, the photographs…Tom Gimbel is confident his employees are reenergized by the annual companywide incentive trips he rewards with. But what about a firmer return on his investment, particularly for the non-sales team members?
“It’s hard to measure. In every company, especially one with a fast-growing pace, you’re going to have turnover. What you don’t want to have is people quit because they feel they weren’t appreciated,” Gimbel says.
“The biggest source of friction that you get is people feeling, ‘Why are salespeople more important than everyone else? [More important than] the people who deliver your product or service, the people who crunch the numbers and pay the bills, or the human resources or marketing people?’ The answer is they’re not, so we take everybody. It’s just harder to find good salespeople. It’s harder to find people who want to risk the lion’s share of their compensation on themselves versus a large base salary.”
