Practicing What We Preach: Terryberry Employees' Recently Recognized

As a leading provider of solutions that help our clients create “great places to work” we are often asked about our own internal recognition programs and their effectiveness. At Terryberry we take our belief in a balanced approach to recognition to heart and have a number of formal, informal and day-to-day initiatives that drive real value for us.

As the National Sales Manager for Terryberry, I’ll focus on the impact our initiatives have on our nationwide sales force. Keep in mind these folks work in any number of environments from single team member home based offices to larger regional offices with 6-8 team members.

Throughout the year we utilize Give-a-WOW, so a large and geographically diverse sales force maintains a ‘family’ feel. Daily, our sales force interacts with each other as well as local and national support staff to recognize their successes. When it comes to achievement, no woman or man is an island, and peer-to-peer and team recognition is critical in fostering higher levels of engagement and winning effort.

We also recognize with a significant travel incentive that drives a ton of excitement all year. It is a huge honor to earn our annual spring trip and the spirit of that event drives a great deal of internal competition that directly impacts our corporate success.

Our recent National Sales Meeting provided ample opportunities for both informal and formal recognition. We work to maximize a culture of recognition throughout this annual event. For example, we ask for high levels of sales team participation. It is a big deal for our team members to be invited to present in front of their peers and the pats-on-the-back they receive after leading an impactful session are gratifying. These sessions also directly impact our corporate success, so it is a true win-win. The creation of the Terryberry Flight Team this year allowed us the opportunity to recognize the achievements of our top performers. Flight Team members were flown in private planes for a life changing aerial tour of the Grand Canyon. For many of our folks this was their first time to see the Canyon! Finally, we split our sales team service awards and our sales team performance awards into two distinctly different events. This strategy allows us the time to fully recognize and personalize the process and maximize the impact.

Maybe the best thing we do is work to keep things fresh. The structure of our year is similar from one year to the next, so the more creative we can be, the higher levels of performance we can earn from our tremendous people.

- Bill Bergstrom, National Sales Manager