spiff

A spiff or spiv is an immediate bonus for a sale. Typically, "spiffs" are paid, either by a manufacturer or employer, directly to a salesperson for selling a specific product.

Origin

An early reference to a spiff can be found in a slang dictionary of 1859; "The percentage allowed by drapers to their young men when they effect sale of old fashioned or undesirable stock." ^[1] An article in the Pall Mall Gazette of 1890 on the practices in London shops uses the term:

... a "spiff" system is usually adopted, spiffs being premiums placed on certain articles, not of the last fashion, indicated by a marvellous heiroglyphic put on the price ticket. These marks are well known by the assistant, and the almost invisible mystic sign explains why an article, wholly unsuitable, is foisted on the jaded customer as "just the thing."^[2]

It seems to be connected with the use of the word in that period to mean a dandy or somebody smartly dressed (hence spiffy, and to spiff up - to improve the appearance of a place or a person), but nobody seems to have been able to disentangle the threads of which came first, or what influenced what, or where the word originally came from.

Several acronyms have been proposed as possible origins of the term, but they are all certainly backronyms, as these phrases would have had no meaning in 1859, when the usage was first documented.

• Sales Persons Incentive For Fun
• Sales Performance Incentive Fund
• Special Performance Incentive Fund
• Specific Price Incentive For Final Sale
• Special Pay Incentives For Fast Sales
• Special People Incentives For Failure

Ethical nature

The use of the spiff, while widely accepted in some industries, is of questionable ethical nature. A spiff can sometimes encourage salespeople to push a less satisfactory product upon a customer, or allow manufacturers to circumvent the instructions or intentions of managers and owners by paying the salespeople directly. While commission-centric sales tactics are often transparent, based on the price of the product being pushed by a salesperson, spiff-centric sales tactics are less noticeable, and may be perceived as dishonest salesmanship by consumers who are pushed towards a product when there is no evidence that the salesperson might be biased or influenced by monetary gain. It should be noted, however, that not all commissions are transparent based on ticket price. Many retailers pay employees different percentages on different products, based on the gross profit margin of the item.

References