Feature Podcast: Using Incentive Industry Research Effectively
September 23, 2008
By Leo Jakobson
If you are interested in the various research that incentive industry organizations are constantly producing, and want to figure out how to incorporate it into your own programs, the Incentive Research Federation is sponsoring a pair of educational sessions at The Motivation Show that are worth attending.
Both will be presented by Robert Dawson, chairman of the IRF's research committee and vice president of Custom Design Marketing, who has been using industry research as a sales tool, and to help design the best programs for his clients, for nearly three decades.
On Thursday, Sept. 25., at 10 a.m., Dawson is leading a session titled "Practical Applications: How to Make the Latest Industry Research Work for You." It is a session he has wanted to present for a long time, Dawson says.
"For a long time I have used the research that comes out of the Forum [for People Performance Management and Measurement], that comes out of the Incentive Research Federation, and used it as a tool to actually obtain business," he says, noting that research lets him go into client meetings "with a business case for why this is going to work in a particular situation for a [particular] company."
"It's not a sales presentation, it's not 'Buy incentives from me,'" he says. "It is, 'I think I can change the culture of your business and I can prove that independent study has shown that what I'm telling you works.'"
Noting that the IRF provides free reports condensing the academic research it carries out into layman's terms, he adds, "There are tools in there [clients] can actually use. It's not just what [the company being studied] did. It's 'Here's the way we calculated this, here's the way we measured that.'"
Dawson's session will consist largely of actual case studies of specific research he applied to specific clients, and what the results were. One case he plans to go over is a presentation of research he made to the board of a major hotel company. "One of the board of directors said, 'I believe what you're talking about is going to change the culture of our entire business.' The wonderful thing was, they never asked about awards, they never talked about all that kind of stuff, although obviously that was part of the program."
What the board wanted to talk about, Dawson says, was how they could achieve the cultural changes the research showed other businesses had achieved. "It's not a question of will this work for you, it's only a question of how well it will work," Dawson says.
The other session, on Weds., Sept. 24, at 3:15 p.m., is "Understanding and Applying The Incentive Research Foundation Pulse Surveys."
A new survey tool from the Incentive Research Federation, Pulse Surveys are very short, Dawson says. "Because the industry changes so fast, every few months we want to encourage people to take part in them. It's very short, just a few questions that pertain to a very particular topic."
The most recent Pulse Survey, completed in mid-September, is on the economic downturn. Dawson will release these results, which look at issues like how the economy is impacting incentive travel and merchandise programs, and what components of those two types of programs are changing as a result. Other topics Dawson will cover include: What has the involvement of purchasing and procurement been for the incentive industry? What kind of feedback are we seeing and how does that impact your program? What are people out there saying, from both the buyer side and the provider side.
Visit www.incentivemag.com/motivationshow to hear an excerpt of this writer's conversation with Dawson.
Back to: The Motivation Show Day One
Back to Incentive Live: The Motivation Show
|
RSS
