Sales people are eager and enthusiastic to get started with a new plan, new sales cycle, new anything. This can be tough on the people who are trying to enhance or create sales plans. You want them to be engaged. Once this goal is achieved, your sales people are ready to sprint. It can be a challenge when every project begins with: On your marks! Get set! (The 5 year-old next to you starts running.) GO! And once again you are playing catch up. Prepare well before you start explaining your approach because you won't get much time once everyone is involved.

Our sales compensation solutions usually focus on the “close”. Sales people receive minimal incentive to inspire the old clients to new heights. Your best sales professionals know this and fill the gap. But your lower tiers of sales may need some help. Compensation plans can be a great way to communicate the importance…

Given enough Lego and you can build just about anything. Sales compensation is similarly simple, flexible, and potentially complex. Do you focus people on volume, quality of sales, profitability, growth, long-term builds? This list is nearly endless. How you motivate people to stay focused is similarly flexible. Do you use commissions, SPIFFs, spot bonuses, long-term incentives, quarterly goals, annual goals, team metrics, or individual achievement? Do you focus on granularity or stay tuned with the big picture? Any program requires buy-in from so many people and groups. The final result is something that people depend on to pay their own bills and keep their company afloat. Making small changes is simple, but real change is hard.

When the approach to sales incentives precedes the establishment of a defined sales structure and process, improving sales incentives can be driven by guesses. A compensation professional likes to mix just a little bit of science with their art, and sales incentives without a structure are basically 100% art. So, what do you do when you are asked to help fix these programs?

Everyone who has ever worked on sales incentives has heard people refer to roles as “farmers” and “hunters”. These two terms are used to simplify the focus of sales roles and the type of pay they receive. Unfortunately, this clouds the roles of salespeople in many of today’s businesses. Professionals who have the responsibility of bringing in new revenue are more complex than we often recognize. In truth, many are more like ranchers than they are farmers or hunters.

Sales compensation is both the easiest and hardest of incentive compensation. Pay must drive specific behaviors, but it needs to avoid unintentional bad behavior. It must align with success at many levels, but provide ease of alignment for each individual. It must be easy to understand, but flexible enough to adjust to critical unpredictable factors. It must be painstakingly exact, while giving everyone some wiggle room to pay as required. Everything about sales compensation design is a compromise.

The CEO or head of Sales asks for something that you know CAN be done, but you are not sure YOU can do it. Sometimes we take a deep breath and drop in, trusting on our training and instinct. When we can’t do that, it’s time to ask for help.