Commission Statements without Excel
Posted by www.makanasolutions.com Admin on Mon, Feb 02, 2009 @ 04:20 PM
Sales people priorities
1. Closed Deals
2. Commissions on closed deals
3. Food
4. Shelter
5. Etc
Time Spent on priorities:
1. Closing deals- 75%
2. Calculating & re-calculating commission payments in Excel- 15%
3. Food- 5%
4. Shelter- 4%
5. Etc- 1%
15% is a number based on my personal sales experience. We had semi-complicated plans with 4 measures both personal and team. Every month Linda would mail our commission sheets. We would compare them to the plan sheets we had on our desktops, looking at every deal, making sure we were getting paid correctly.
Depending how many deals had closed, how complicated they were, etc, it could take the better part of a day to get everything figured out, that doesn't even count if they were wrong, that could stretch into 2-3 days of back and forth with my boss, other reps, and poor Linda the payroll woman. All the while, my productivity on the phones was going down the drain, because as you see above. It's important to get the deals in, but it's almost as important to get paid on those deals.
And I was lucky. I actually got a commission statement; many of my colleagues at other companies wouldn't even know how much they were making on each individual deal. They just got a random chunk of money attached to a check two weeks after the end of a quarter.
This is why we are introducing a new feature in Makana Motivator Pro. It's the Sales Portal. Now, sales reps and their managers can login at the end of the pay period and see how team members are performing against their plan. Sales people also get to see what their commission payments will be (minus taxes). It saves time at the end of the month or quarter, and it keeps everyone motivated towards their goals. It's an easy way to make sure no one is surprised at the end of the month or quarter. Check out the new sales portal feature here.