Comp & Incentive Plans
Critical Compensation and incentive structures
Proper compensation and incentive structures are perhaps the most critical miss in most sales plans. Yes, you may have a commission structure in place – but is it strategic? Suppose you are using a simple split structure (base + bonus vs. plan) and offer more than one product or service. In that case, you are missing out on a strategic opportunity to drive the actions most valuable to your business. Unless, of course, each of your offerings are the same price, cost, and sell-cycle.
Read further about a real-world example of these practices in place below, with our company’s solutions provided and the results.
a real-world example
A small manufacturer in the water monitoring market
Introduced a new leading-edge instrument to penetrate a market they previously could not access. This market was key to the organization’s future growth as they had a significant market share in their existing markets, and the new product supported significantly higher revenue per order.
However, while their brand recognition was exceptionally high in their existing markets, they were virtually unknown in the new segment. So, here was the situation from a salesperson’s perspective:
- Multiple products available to sell
- Existing portfolio of very well-known products, easy to sell, lower price-point
- New, higher revenue product in a segment that doesn’t even recognize the company name
- Simple commission plan based on overall revenue (regardless of product mix) with an accelerator starting at 100%
- One of the major metrics management used to evaluate individual performance was number of outside calls per week (if you are currently doing this, please contact us ASAP).
The result was that it took almost 3-years for the new product (more and superior features, better quality, industry-leading support and half the price of a significant competitor) to start gaining traction. Why did it take so long?
- Far easier to sell to the established market and no financial incentive to develop the new market
- The new market required significant research, time and effort to develop – which was in direct conflict with a major metric
example
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Choose Growth recognizes the critical nature of strategic incentive programs and will help you drive the right behaviors to help your business reach its maximum growth potential.
