Reference no: EM133042709

Kiera, a young, enthusiastic sales rep, was recently promoted to be a manager of a sales team of five. After she reviewed each salesperson's results, performance reviews, and the accompanying development plans done by her predecessor, Kiera started one-on-one meetings with each salesperson, asking them how they viewed the progress they had made on their development plans. Each person said that so much had changed since those plans had been written, they now seem outdated. After she completed her meetings with everyone in the sales team, Kiera felt that all of her subordinates had become stagnant. Their performance was flat. She decided the solution was to give them proper incentives to increase their performance. Given that her team felt their past development plans were irrelevant, she decided to assign stretch goals based on their previous sales. She didn't expect all of them to reach those goals, but she wanted them to think bigger-much bigger-when working with clients. Next, she created a bonus schedule with percentages that increased as sales approached the stretch goal. Finally, she had a scoreboard created that displayed each team member's sales for the day, week, and month. She hoped some friendly competition would help raise their sales.

Three months have passed, and Kiera reviewed her team's sales for the past quarter. Her team had in fact increased sales, but only by 7%, not the 15% she had anticipated after rolling out her new sales plan.

Evaluate the current incentive scheme, and make suggestions for Kiera as to how to revise the incentive plan, using at least two motivation theories learned in the course.