A collague recently forwarded over an informative video from Frank Cespedes of Harvard Business School focused on Sales Compensation and his views on its place in a best in class sales process. I've summarizing the highlights related specifically to Sales Compensation below and provided a link in case you have the time to view it.
Sales Performance Management Best Practices Blog
Rethinking Sales Compensation in a world of increasing sales complexity
Topics: SaaS Sales Compensation, Sales Comp Plan Fundamentals, Sales Performance Reporting, Sales Compensation Professional, Sales Performance Metrics & KPI's
Highlights from recent 2018 Sales Compensation Trends survey
The Alexander group recently conducted a survey of sales compensation trends with 135 sales organizations. The survey was conducted at the end of 2017 with expectations for 2018 an integral part of the exercise. Now at the mid-way point in 2018, an interesting question is not only how your sales organization matched up with the survey groups results & expectations, but now with six months in the books, what, if anything, has changed and why ? We take a look at several takeaways highlighted by the survey as ask a few questions to consider as you take stock of 2018 at the half way mark.
Topics: SaaS Sales Compensation, Sales Comp Plan Fundamentals, plan design, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Quota
Cherry picking sales compensation nuggets from recent Insurance Industry study
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.
- Take away lesson: an important aspect of scalable infrastructure mentioned in the first bullet is not only improving calculation accuracy, but also collapsing the cycle time and improving the quality of the data management process involved with sales commissions.
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.
Reference: Source: Celent, Strategic Issues in Distribution Management Survey April 2015
Topics: plan design, Sales Compensation Professional, CEO, Sales Operations, Accuracy, Timeliness
Sales Force Retention - Survey Participation Requested
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.
Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Professional
How do you properly 'incentivize' sales reps with sales commissions?
Topics: plan design, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Operations
Rewarding Sales Excellence, more than just Sales Commissions ?
Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources
Should your sales operations team be on a sales compensation plan?
The debate about whether Sales Ops should be on a sales comp plan can be quite lively. On one hand, sales operations can mean different things to different organizations and be the root of some deeply rooted opinions. Some Sales Ops roles may greatly influence sales results and outputs (i.e. setting quota’s or deal level opportunity identification) while others may have more of a focus on activities such as training or sales compensation administration. In short, it can get a bit confusing about what is the best way to approach this question. Simplifying this complex issue and adding some context and definition to the issue is the first step in making the right decision.
Topics: Sales Comp Plan Fundamentals, EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Operations
Sales Compensation & recent Harvard Business Review conclusions
An interesting article was published recently by Adamson, Dickson & Tomas of CEB in the Harvard Business Review 'Why Individuals No Longer Rule on Sales Teams' which certainly got my attention.
Topics: Sales Comp Plan Fundamentals, EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Sales Performance Metrics & KPI's, Human Resources
Territory Management - an important link in the Sales Performance Management chain
Sales Performance Management is a term that has evolved over the past few years to describe the process of measuring and rewarding sales performance. In the past, similar industry terminology such as Sales Incentive Compensation Management (ICM), Enterprise Incentive Management (EIM), and many other acronyms were popularized by consultants and practitioners to describe the same fundamental process of measuring and rewarding sales achievement. Practitioners using the term Sales Performance Management typically refer to three keystone elements to the process;
Topics: Sales Comp Plan Fundamentals, EVP/Sales Leader, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, Human Resources, Sales Operations, Sales Professional, Territory Management
Ensure a successful roll out of your 2014 sales compensation plans
Topics: EVP/Sales Leader, CTO, CFO/Finance Leader, Sales Compensation Professional, CEO, Human Resources, Sales Operations, Sales Professional