15 Minutes With...Todd Hanson, CEO of Catalyst Performance Group
By Marc Boisclair
Todd Hanson has a mantra, and he’s not shy about sharing it: “Technology – it’s a whole new world,” says Hanson, CEO of Catalyst Performance Group (CPG), the Appleton, WI-based research management company he founded four years ago. Hanson defines technology to include software, hardware, online and platforms of every size and shape. “Technology is opening up so many opportunities for smaller and mid-sized companies these days,” he says, “many of them companies that didn’t think they had the scale.”
And while the world of technology isn’t entirely “whole new” to most folks, Hanson’s spin on how to weave it into creative incentive strategies might surprise some people nonetheless. His goal at CPG is to essentially show companies how they can raise their incentive bar via more effective performance strategies.
Hanson began his career as a sales professional and advanced into an executive leadership role with a $100-million-dollar company, where he managed sales, marketing and a multi-million-dollar account base for nearly 20 years. In 2004, he founded CPG.
The essence of the business is this: “The tech platform we’re using allows us to build out a website and multiply the marketing impact by adding forums, blogs, social networking and other web-based applications that you couldn’t do a couple of years ago,” he says. “Now you can do it fast and inexpensively, and that opens a whole new world of targeted and integrated marketing.”
With that in mind, Hanson goes on to discuss trends in incentive strategies and, not surprisingly, technology comes into play, starting with a key element of any sales program: building personal relationships. “If social networking sites can work for meeting people online,” he says, “it can work in a business sense. The new wave of these sites will be for groups with common business interests.”
As a prime example, Hanson points to his own company’s virtual meeting spot, VenturePORT.org. “We ask people about their dreams and business ideas, and then their profile is totally customized accordingly,” he says. Indeed, visiting VenturePORT’s home page, with its warm colors and inviting tables for networking, blogging, events and a marketplace, is akin to meeting clients for a latte at an online version of a Starbucks. Hanson has even added an on-page incentive for a $5 Starbucks gift card to the first 500 visitors who leave behind a completed profile. “People go there to meet and network with other entrepreneurs, so there’s a lot of relationship-building going on, similar to Facebook or MySpace,” he explains.
Hanson also demonstrates his own philosophy of building loyalty and attendance by showcasing hot young entrepreneurs, such as sales trainer and speaker Louis Lautman, summarizing the New Jersey native’s success pitch in a special photo caption box boosted by – you guessed it – a $100 gift certificate to others who, if selected, would be willing to relate their success stories online. What the web site demonstrates is creativity and versatility. “You’re able to use a lot more tools and build a long-term, meaningful relationship with the target audience,” says Hanson, “and I see that as a profoundly important trend in the incentive world.”
He also sees a continued trend in integrating award programs with other marketing efforts, such as targeting a corporate sales team’s effort alongside their customers’. “It only makes sense to tie a salesperson’s award opportunities directly with the performance of their customers,” Hanson says. “You literally create a pull at the customer level and a push at the salesperson’s level. The award opportunities are the same. They’re all involved in the same program, working towards the same goal.” And for the client? “It makes all the sense in the world economically and motivationally, because there’s just one platform all the way,” he adds.
Returning to his original theme – economies of scale, most notably for small and mid-size companies – Hanson proffers a bit of advice: “Make sure all the content of your marketing is information-based and of high value,” he says, “always keeping in mind the question, ‘How can I help my customers achieve great success?’”
Designing an incentive reward campaign along the same lines is also critical, he notes, as is accurately measuring the customer’s success, “because their success will assure mine.”
