Sales Performance Management Best Practices Blog

Loss Aversion and Sales Compensation Plan design

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Fri, May 20, 2016 @ 13:05 PM

Are you someone who thinks that humans are rational? What about Sales reps? The fact is that not everything we do is either smart or rational. In fact, understanding the patterns behind why we often make irrational decisions sets the stage for deeper understanding of human decisions and can yield some very surprising results. 

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Topics: plan design, CEO, Human Resources, Sales Operations

The State of Sales Force Turnover and 3 Moves to Make Right Now

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Tue, Oct 27, 2015 @ 12:10 PM

We are happy to share with you the following 'guest post' contributed by Clinton Gott & Ted Briggs of Better Sales Comp Consultants focused on recent research they conducted focused on sales force turnover. In addition to some solid findings related to turnover, there are some tremendous best practices the pass along in the form of 'turnover counter moves' that may sound simple, but can be very hard to do well.  Enjoy ... 

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Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, plan design, CFO/Finance Leader, CEO, Accuracy

Get more out of your Sales Performance Management dashboards

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Tue, Oct 13, 2015 @ 11:10 AM

World@Work recently posted an interesting interview that touched on an often overlooked aspect of the ‘Sales Performance Management’ analytics discussion which focuses on sales force feedback.

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Topics: Sales Performance Reporting, CEO, Human Resources, Sales Operations

Jaw dropping payoff's from Sales Performance Management investments

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Thu, Oct 1, 2015 @ 14:10 PM

We came across a Sales Analytics presentation by the sales consulting firm AGI a while back which highlights many reasons why it is so important to consider any investmnts in improving sales performance. Simply stated, for investments in productivity tools such as Sales Commissions Software - The payback is astronomical. Below are six data points that jumped out at us from this presentation which highlight the importance of continuous focus on improving sales performance and the payoff for those who get it right.

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Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, CEO, ROI

Cherry picking sales compensation nuggets from recent Insurance Industry study

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Thu, Sep 17, 2015 @ 17:09 PM

Celent recently conducted a survey involving 11 major insurance carries managing thousands of sales reps/agents/producers seeking to understand the state of automation for processes such as distribution management and sales commissions & incentive compensation. This type of research is valuable to sales business leaders in all industries as the dynamics and insights we can glean for the experiences of those who compete tooth & nail for every dollar in this mature industry provide lessons for all.

After reviewing the results of this survey I tried to distill everything down to a few insightful ‘nuggets’ tovshare.

  • One very surprising nugget pulled from the survey is the fact that executives at these companies though that it is more important that their sales compensation be accurate than to be effective. Said another way, it is more important to calculate commissions and incentive compensation in a timely and accurate manner than to have plan designs which are completely optimized to driving desired behaviors.
    • Take away lesson; focus on putting in place the infrastructure you need to scale your process and ensure the timeliness and accuracy of your process then once this is established, turn your focus to fine-tuning your sales compensation incentive plans.
  • In a mature industry like insurance, approximately 70% of the carriers surveyed still rely on spreadsheets & custom build ‘homegrown’ (read: inflexible) software as the backbone of the commissions system. The author speculates that this technology situation is driving the views on the importance of calculations accuracy. As discussed her many times before, spreadsheets have an inherent 3-7% error rate simply due to human error that manual systems often exacerbate.
    • Take away lesson; delays in migrating from spreadsheets and homegrown solutions to sales compensation solution (like NetCommissions ) will only prolong the pain of a slow and inaccurate process.
  • A significant hurdle for 40% of the survey respondents is fragmented data and disparate technologies used to administer and assimilate this data. This results in inefficiencies as administrators have to put in place imperfect manual work arounds to patch these systems together as best they can.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, not to worry, you’re not alone and others in a significant industry like financial services are struggling with many of the same challenges we’ve heard across industries.

How to meet these challenges?

  • The use of sales compensation software (such as NetCommissions) seems to be correlated with fewer problems in managing the sales compensation process.

 Top 10 signs CTA c

Reference: Source: Celent, Strategic Issues in Distribution Management Survey April 2015

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Topics: plan design, Sales Compensation Professional, CEO, Sales Operations, Accuracy, Timeliness

Sales Force Retention - Survey Participation Requested

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Tue, Jun 16, 2015 @ 15:06 PM

Sales Performance is a two way street between the business and the sales force and often is as much about trust as it is performance. When a sales team generally trusts the process by which they are measured and rewarded, lower turnover has generally been understood to be a result. This point often supports ROI analysis on investments in Sales Performance technologies such as Sales Incentive Compensation Management.

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Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Professional

How do you properly 'incentivize' sales reps with sales commissions?

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Wed, Nov 5, 2014 @ 13:11 PM
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Topics: plan design, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Operations

Rewarding Sales Excellence, more than just Sales Commissions ?

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Wed, Sep 17, 2014 @ 11:09 AM
The use of rewards to reinforce behavior and actions aligned with your company goals makes sense on many levels, but it is not where the discussion of sales excellence begins, nor ends. A culture of success and achievement within your organization is critical to building a sustainable world class sales team. In addition to sales compensation, there are many factors that come into play when looking to create this winning culture.
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Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources

Managing sales compensation through the complete services contract lifecycle

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Thu, Sep 4, 2014 @ 15:09 PM

Those of us who sell, or are involved with administering the sales commission plans of, service based products such as SaaS software and/or Professional Services know them to be, well, unique (to say the least). Sales compensation plans for these product types always seem to vary from company to company and never seem to be as easy to manage as they should be.

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Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, plan design, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Operations

Sales performance management tips from record breaking Girl Scout

Posted by Jerry Hegarty on Wed, Mar 26, 2014 @ 10:03 AM

To anyone who thinks that Sales Performance Management is only for the corporate world, think again. An article this week that caught our attention describes how Oklahoma City Girl Scout Katie Francis recently broke the world record in cookie sales by selling 18,107 boxes of cookies this past year.

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Topics: Human Resources, Sales Professional