Commercial Animation | How the Budget Breaks Down | Benchmark of Best Practices

Commercial animation is essential to the success of your commercial challenges. From the Latin “anima”, its primary definition is “the vital breath, the soul.” In a more modern way, commercial animation represents all the activities carried out on a daily basis to train, motivate and retain commercial teams. A business challenge that is not lively will be lifeless, will not motivate as you would have hoped and its overall effectiveness will suffer. In this series of 3 articles, we will provide you with essential keys to the construction and implementation of your Commercial Animation. Budget and hidden costs, benchmark of best practices and finally returns on investment.

Budget Break Down of the Commercial Animation

The budget of a commercial animation is a set of costs that are centered on the 3 action verbs that define it: training, motivation, loyalty. In this budget, you can count on your training initiatives such as e-learning, quizzes but also your efforts to motivate as endowments. The variable is not a component part of the budget because it is a contractual action that you have set up with your sales people.

1. Composition of the budget of the commercial animation
2. In practice, the budget breaks down into four main parts.
3. The endowments, which are essential for challenges. Travel, gift certificates, innovative incentives, you have the choice!
4. The tools, which allow to visualize the performances of each one or to choose its rewards. Excel, an online store, a website or a platform specializing in challenges like Incentive is examples of systems.
5. Project management, which brings together all the human and technical resources you, put in place to create the challenge, to animate and to manage it on a daily basis.
6. The last cost is often neglected, forgotten or misunderstood. These are taxes. The URSSAF is increasingly rigorous vis-à-vis the budgets of commercial animation and you will not escape it. These taxes are 90% related to your budget endowments and 10% to the resources you use for your project management.

Knowing how to break down your budget of commercial animation allows you to predict to the penny loan in which position you will allocate such amount of resources. Many organizations have neglected taxes or project management in their estimated budget and the consequences are cumbersome. Organizing your budget is therefore the first key to the success of setting up your commercial animation.

Commercial Animation: Benchmark of Best Practices

We studied the composition of a budget of commercial animation. Today we will study its decomposition and its distribution according to your objectives and stakes. The 4 parts of the budget should not be divided without a clear strategy and vision. A reflective and optimal distribution of your budget will allow you to obtain a real ROI on your commercial animation.

• A Historical Vision

Many companies make it a habit to create their budget animation around endowments. This makes it possible to organize the launch of a challenge with a timetable of endowments which allows following their distribution over the duration of the commercial animation. So the endowments become the biggest part of the budget. Project management and the tools used to drive the challenge and rewards are based on these grants and benefit from only a small part of the budget. We conducted a study with our prospects to understand their budget allocation strategy. Here is what emerges from the study: 58% of the budget is used for endowments, 22% for pilotage tools, 13% for project management, and 7% for taxes. In addition, Study shows the importance of allocations in this allocation of the budget. We know that for a commercial animation to be effective, it must be strong and regular. The limited budget allocated to the challenge management tools shows that attention is not focused on the animation itself. However, a little commercial animation, a reward system not intuitive and a management of minimalist project will hinder the efficiency of your mechanics and your challenge in general.

• Modern Commercial Animation

Today, the distribution of the budget changes because companies are increasingly focusing on their ROI. In a dynamic ROI, the budget allocated to tools becomes the most important. Indeed, they are the ones who will allow to animate continuously, to develop new behaviors and to motivate durably. For maximum efficiency and a ROI approach, your business incentive budget must therefore be distributed more equitably. A regular animation, set up with engaging digital tools, will be a motivator and a commitment on the part of your teams.

In this second pie, the budget allocation decreases (32%), the tool budget is more significant (47%) and project management is slightly more sustained (16%). This distribution of the budget is a strong ROI. Decreasing the budget endowments forces us to think about motivating mechanics and rewards more engaging and less material and allows to reduce taxes. Digital rewards (digital badges, leveling …), partnerships or non-material incentives (one day extra leave, a karting activity, a bonsai to decorate …) are examples of rewards less expensive and yet very engaging which will delight your teams. Endowment is only an end. Your ROI will flow from how to achieve that end.

• Commercial Animation: What Not to do

For an effective challenge, your animation must be continuous. We must avoid the electrocardiogram syndrome. It is reflected in the peaks of classical activities that are revealed at the announcement of the challenge and at the end of it to obtain the rewards. The vacuum period between these two moments is a real brake on the efficiency of the dynamics initially foreseen.

• General Cost Benchmark

There is no ideal rule or figure for the total budget that you must allocate to your commercial animation. It must nevertheless be large enough to feed your expenses. In addition, depending on your organization, the budget to be used varies. We can distinguish 5 main families of internal sales forces: B to B, B to C, B to C retail, B to C and B to B distribution networks. Here are the figures collected from our customers, in 4 of the 5 families, and the conclusions that we have drawn as to an average budget of commercial animation.

B to C requires less animation resources because salespeople are more sensitive to their variable salary, which often represents a large portion of their remuneration. It is therefore easier to engage and motivate your teams to achieve their results. The B to B calls for more motivational levers and more sophisticated mechanics. Some companies with large distribution networks will be able to invest several thousand Euros per trader per year.

You now have all the keys to spread your business animation budget optimally. Use endowments as motivational levers, animate continuously with engaging digital tools like Incentive and let your teams surprise you! We will see in the next article what is the ROI approach and impact of a commercial animation.