Media:  2008 The Incentive Travel Buyer’s Handbook

Community Connection While a key part of any sales-based travel incentive is the reward for performance, it’s also an opportunity for powerful bonding experiences and even the chance to give back to the community in the incentive destination. 

All of those elements came together when Rick Anderson created a company’s first travel incentive in his former position as executive vice president of human resources at Countrywide Bank.  Designed to spur sales, the program awarded approximately 100 people - with a trip to the Kona Coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.  But Anderson also wanted to provide an experience that would remind the winners of their responsibility to their customers and to the world at large. 

To that end, he worked with Chico, California based Odyssey Teams to offer the company’s Life Cycles teambuilding program.  Although the premise is simple – the group is broken into smaller groups of three to six to each build a bicycle – the profound.

As facilitated by Odyssey Teams, the exercise has several distinct elements, including competition as each team works to compete the bike, collaboration as the teams share tools and strategies, brainstorming marketing approaches – and then the decisive moment when the doors are opened and in walk real children to receive the bicycles. 

“It’s an unbelievably powerful moment when the kids walk in and the group realizes this wasn’t just an exercise, but a real child is going to be using this bike,” says Anderson.  “You can see their thoughts – Did I build this safely enough?  Is it good enough for a real child?  Suddenly it’s not just about a bike and teambuilding, but about responsibility to the customer, in this case a child in need.” 

After the fun of giving the bikes to the children, the exercise circles back to process the experience and connect it to the company’s “real” customer.  “I’ve see adult men stand up and cry as they recounted the first time they helped a family get a mortgage for their first home,” says Anderson.  “It really brings home the idea that your customers are real people.  We all have a responsibility in this world and what we do matters.”