Reimagining Your President's Club Award for Top Sales Performance

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in November 2022. It was last updated on July 16, 2026, to reflect the current data and industry trends.

For decades, the President’s Club has been the prize every sales rep chases. Hit your number, and you earn a spot: an all-expenses-paid trip somewhere impressive, your name on the list, bragging rights until next year. It works because it’s public, it’s aspirational, and it says you were one of the best.

Lately, though, that classic group trip has lost a little shine. People think about work differently now. They guard their time, they want experiences that are fully theirs, and a week of scheduled dinners with the boss isn’t the reward it once was.

Here’s the thing, though. People haven’t stopped wanting recognition. They’ve stopped wanting it in one rigid shape. Your best reps still want to be celebrated for a great year. They just want it to fit their life, not a fixed itinerary someone else picked for them.

And it matters more now, not less. Gallup found that U.S. employee engagement hit a ten-year low in 2024, with only 31% of workers engaged. When people are checking out, how you recognize the ones carrying the team is one of the few levers that still works.

What is a President’s Club award?

A President’s Club in sales is an annual performance award that recognizes top salespeople (you’ll also hear it called the “Winner’s Circle” or “Achiever’s Club”). Usually the reward is an all-expenses-paid vacation to an exotic destination for hitting sales goals or quotas.

The idea isn’t new. It goes back to NCR, where president John Patterson invented a lot of what we now think of as normal sales practice in the early 1900s: quotas, defined territories, real training, and rewards for the people who outperformed. Companies have been building on that ever since. For a rep, making the list still means something, part prize, part public proof that you were one of the best.

Big stakes bring out big effort. A reward worth chasing pushes people past what they’d normally do.

But how you design it matters as much as the fact that you offer it. We find recognition lands best when it feels genuine, personal, and fair. A generic reward checks a box. A personal one gets remembered.

Today’s talent wants a custom rewards experience that reflects how they live, work, and communicate, not a one size fits all approach. Sales organizations need to rethink their President’s Award if they want it to remain a valuable incentive.

Why reinvent your President’s Club award program?

By rewarding outstanding performances with various tangible items and experiences your employees want, you help them keep their “eyes on the prize” and drive them to achieve their highest potential. Most programs encourage employees to set and hit their daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual targets.

Recognition through a President’s Club award helps your company to:

• Attract and retain top talent
• Boost employee engagement
• Increase individual and team performance
• Develop a positive workplace environment
• Encourage friendly competition

It is impossible to achieve employee satisfaction without showing employees how much you appreciate them and their work. When you recognize their wins, you communicate that they matter to the company, and as a result, employees feel valued, seen, heard, motivated, and inspired.

Where Your President’s Club Award May Fall Short

Unfortunately, many companies approach the President’s Club award in a manner that’s not aligned with modern workers. As Millennials and Gen Z become the majority of the workforce, attitudes toward work have shifted.

Today’s employees want jobs that recognize their individuality, offer growth opportunities, and allow them the freedom to be themselves. The traditional approach to a President’s Club reward has less appeal, a lower “inspiration factor,” for today’s sales professionals, particularly those under 40.

The Trip Is Not Personalized

Most President’s Club rewards are the same every year. High-performing employees receive the same group trip to Maui, Grand Cayman, etc. with the same one-size-fits-all itinerary. Don’t get us wrong, these are luxurious, well-planned trips and always a good time.

But given the choice, some winners would rather use their reward to pursue a bucket-list item such as a Super Bowl weekend, skiing vacation in Whistler, British Columbia, or perhaps a hiking trip through the Scottish Highlands. And they would take the trip on the most convenient dates for their schedule.

Employees Can Feel Like They’re Still at Work

People take vacations primarily to relax, unwind, and find space and time to unplug from work. However, with traditional President’s Club trips, the awardees and their +1s have to hang out with bosses, coworkers, and the company’s senior leadership, hardly the break that they deserve or need from a vacation.

The Award Can Demotivate Those Who Miss Out

Because President’s Club trips are costly and involve group arrangements, they are often planned a year out, with a cap on how many can go. As the qualification cutoff date passes, other sales professionals realize they won’t qualify. So for months before the trip, you’ve got good employees who feel demotivated.

Designing an Inspirational President’s Club Award

The disadvantages of traditional President’s Club awards outlined above mean that you need new ways to inspire, engage, and motivate your top performers.

Get creative by selecting a catalog of qualifying products, services, and experiences from which your award recipients can choose. You’ll get far more value from your recognition investment by providing the ability to choose an award that has the most meaning for them.

Here are 6 steps you should take to design a President’s Club program that will inspire your team:

1. Award Qualification

Nothing is more demotivating than having the same criteria every year. The same group of people gets awarded, with perks that set up nearly impossible quotas for the remaining reps to achieve.

To provide meaningful recognition, set fluid criteria for rewards and recognition. Base the President’s Club award on performance thresholds that are attainable by the entire team but remain exclusive enough to be meaningful.

2. Award Budget

Most companies prepare a budget for President’s Club award based on the expected number of participants, but other options exist.

The most motivating and inspirational way is a fluid system where each salesperson starts the year with a clear idea of the performance metrics they must hit to qualify for the President’s Club.

Other options include:

• Stack ranking, where an exact number of spots are reserved for the award.
• Performance bar, where anyone that surpasses qualifies, regardless.
• The “funding” approach, which flexes the number of attendees based on the sales team’s performance. For instance, if the team hits their goal, 5% of the reps attend the trip, and for each 1% above target, an additional 1% of the team gets to participate.

3. Measuring Employee Performance

What does your organization consider high performance on the job? It could be a unique achievement, extraordinary sales performance, or submitting an innovative idea.

Other typical criteria include minimum revenue, sales for a specific product, or regional sales totals.

Criteria must be clear and transparent. Since the award is competitive, any subjective measure of performance and success will demoralize the rest of the team.

4. Eligibility

One of the main eligibility criteria is tenure. Most companies exclude sales reps who’ve been on quota for nine months or less during the year. It is difficult to determine accurate ramp quotas for new sales reps, mainly if they inherited occupied territories.

An evolving aspect of the President’s Club award is that, in some companies, it now rewards employees beyond quota-carrying reps, including:

• Head of Sales/CRO: If your organization has leaders overseeing an entire region (e.g., Latin America or EMEA), they may be part of the Winners’ Circle.
• Sales Leads: You may include sales leaders based on their groups achieving set team targets. Sometimes the award includes an individual performance component in addition to their teams’ achievements.
• Sales Engineers/Sales Ops/SDRs/BDRs: Many companies exclude these sales support functions, but recognizing them impacts motivation, since these roles often do not vary in pay regardless of performance.
• Non-Sales Functions: Most President’s Club programs award sales representatives only. However, some companies now allow a small number of people from non-sales functions to win. Including employees from marketing, services, product development, or customer success is a powerful motivational tool.

5. Award Deadline

There are various ways that companies set their President’s Club deadlines. For instance, you could evaluate sales rep performance monthly and anyone hitting their sales quota for three consecutive months qualifies.

6. Choosing Rewards

When building a rewards catalog for President’s Club winners, choose options that run the gamut. From personalized luxury travel and unforgettable experiences to high-end merchandise and services, an experienced reward and recognition partner can help you design a comprehensive, flexible President’s Club program that fits your company’s culture.

The best providers offer a web-based platform that engages employees at every level, inviting them into a recognition-based culture that becomes part of their everyday work. From any connected device, reps can view the available rewards and requirements, track their progress, and select what matters most to them.