Sales Compensation Blog

Companies often spend a lot of time and money trying to design the optimal, most effective sales compensation plan. They may hire consultants, review detailed earnings history or run various analytics to ensure their team plans are good for the business. In doing so, they sometimes overlook the fact that the comp plan must be motivating for the sales team as well. It must reward the team close to the point of influence and provide them the right incentives throughout the year. What is one of the easiest and quickest ways to know if you are properly motivating your sales team  ASK THEM! Ask your sales team directly. A true team of professionals will tell you whether or not their sales compensation plans are motivating. I found by surveying the entire team, and then discussing the results and suggestions with a subset or core team yielded much better plans, and hence much better performance. When you include sales team input into your plan design, the team actually takes more ownership of their earnings potential and there tends to be less conflict or confusion around payouts. By asking them, you are also showing that you value their input and recognize them as part of the equation. You can ask them in person or with an online or printed survey. Using an online survey tool, live survey monkey - (free at www.surveymonkey.com) allows you to make it anonymous if you feel that you will get more accurate results that way.

Here are 7 basic survey questions you can ask your team:

1. Do you know what your goals are? Do you clearly understand them?
2. Do you feel your goals are achievable?
3. Do you find yourself focusing more of your attention on any one goal? If so, which one?
4. Do you clearly understand how you get paid, and what you need to do to get into your accelerators?
5. Have you run into any conflicts or found yourself competing with someone on your team (direct or channel) over the same deal or account?
6. Do you clearly understand company goals?
7. Do you have suggestions on how to improve your current plan that are in alignment with company goals?

Sometimes the obvious path eludes us, but is often the best. Let us know if this has worked for you.

Larry D'Angelo
VP Business Operations
Makana Solutions