Revenue psychology: The behavioral science of incentives

Researchers explore the application of behavoiral science to better your sales incentive plans

Sales incentives bridge GTM strategy and execution. But not all sales incentives are created equal. The most effective incentives are rooted in the psychological principles of motivation. For example: loss aversion is often more motivating to reps than the opportunity to make more money (e.g. If you miss X, you'll lose Y).

In this panel, learn about the psychology underpinning incentives, and how theories from behavioral and decision sciences research can be applied to your incentive plan.

This is part of the NUDGE 2024 series.

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With your hosts:

Phillip Wiseman

Assistant Professor of Marketing, Texas Tech University

Frank V. Cespedes

Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School

Frank Cespedes teaches at Harvard Business School and for 12 years was Managing Partner at a professional services firm. He has worked with many companies around the world on go-to-market and strategy issues, and has been a Board member at consumer goods, industrial products, services, PE and VC firms. He has written for numerous publications, including Harvard Business Review, European Business Review, Organization Science, California Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. He is also the author of six books including Aligning Strategy and Sales which was cited as “the best sales book of the year” (Strategy & Business), “a must read” (Gartner), and “perhaps the best sales book ever” (Forbes). His newest book is Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing (Harvard Business Review Press).

Nabeil Alazzam

CEO & Founder, Forma.ai

Nabeil Alazzam is the founder and CEO of Forma.ai, the only Sales Performance Management (SPM) platform that leverages AI and data science to optimize and individualize sales compensation for large enterprises. With over $1 trillion spent each year on sales compensation in North America, he founded the company in 2016 with a vision that AI could disrupt the wasteful legacy approach to incentivizing and motivating sellers. Forma.ai’s SPM platform now processes billions in commissions annually for customers worldwide. Prior to starting Forma.ai, Nabeil was a sales force effectiveness consultant for Fortune 100 companies and developed a deep understanding of the inefficiencies in enterprise sales organizations and the way they manage sales compensation.