Company: London Pacific Life & Annuity

Programs: Travel

Program Types: Sales

Program Details: The opulent Hotel Carlton served as the qualifiers' home in Cannes, a city renowned for its international film festival. The itinerary featured customized activities, including the London Pacific Video Challenge. Teams were assigned a classic film title and told to create a video around it. Finished films edited by professionals premiered at the final night's gala. The group also toured Monaco, Eze, and the medieval village of Mougins, which served as the setting for a village festival, complete with musicians, mimes, magicians, and fortune tellers. On the final evening, qualifiers arrived at the Debussy Theater at the Palais du Festivale, the setting for the annual Cannes Film Festival, where they were greeted by paparazzi and screaming "fans." Each team's films were shown and awards were presented. A dinner in the Hotel Carlton's Grand Salon kept to the film festival theme.

Objective: To build sales and loyalty among an independent sales force of pension and annuity products, London Pacific Life & Annuity turned to USMotivation, an Atlanta-based performance improvement company. The resulting travel promotion, titled "Festival du Cannes," was designed to boost pension and annuity sales by 15% as well as recruit and retain outstanding sales agents. Past history had shown that 75% of first-time qualifiers would repeat as qualifiers for future incentive programs and thus become the nucleus of London Pacific's sales force

Supplier: USMotivation (Atlanta, GA)

Results: The incentive trip to Cannes, on the French Riviera, enticed agents to generate $270 million in sales, a 23% jump over the previous year. In addition, a record number of producers qualified, including more than 60 agents who had never won before.