Sales Intelligentsia

Should you create sales comp plans that cap upside earning potential?

No.

If you have a star performer who brings in a huge proportion of your company’s revenue why shouldn’t he or she be the highest paid employee in the company?

There is no logical answer refuting this point yet company after company fiddles with comp plans because X Rep is making ‘too much’.

The primary challenge of sales compensation planning is not limiting costs, it is balancing reasonable average costs with enough upside potential to motivate your people to high performance.

Your people need to see the path to success laid out in a way that makes logical sense and is realistic, if difficult, to achieve. Plans that offer huge payouts that are impossible to achieve are useless and to an experienced rep they are a red flag that the company doesn’t know what they are doing- or really doesn’t value their abilities.

Don’t cap success. Build a path of achievement that is possible but not easy. Comp your CEO on the same plan (more about that later). Consider building an incentive-based company in which everyone has performance-based targets (more on that later too).

Money is motivation. For some it is everything, for others recognition, toys, games, titles and entitlements (remember the key to the executive washroom?) are the carrot. They’re all ingredients in a successful comp plan.

Welcome to Sales Intelligentsia, everything successful in sales management

We’ve been involved in selling in one form or another for over twenty years, including everything from car sales to major technology sales, sales management and even writing sales books and training materials. We designed comp plans, recruited sales teams, made those cold calls and closed the deal over and over again. Sales Intelligentsia is about intelligent selling- no hammering, no pushing, no dirty tricks; just successful selling that builds your career, grows your business and improves the lives of your customers.

This blog is for business owners (you have to be a superlative seller to succeed in your own business, no exceptions), beginning salespeople, sales managers, experienced old hands looking for a little edge sharpening and even marketing people- because if you don’t generate leads, your sales team can’t bring in the business.

We’re going to review books, sales systems, sites and training programs (if you have one Contact us for a review), we’re going to tell stories, offer tips and shortcuts, help with elevator speeches and scripts, deal out some motivation and talk about money and comp planning. In short, everything related to sales of all kinds.

Stay tuned, we’re going to be giving you something new every day.