Emphasizing Business Value Drivers and Benefits of Sales Performance Management

Sales representatives are the most strategic asset in any organization that sells products or services. Trust is paramount to retaining a productive sales team, and trust is achieved through transparency. Sales dashboards that display the information sellers need, including current commissions, bonuses, attainment levels, and estimators for future goals, can help organizations earn that trust.

Inaccurate compensation calculations are a common problem with manual SPM solutions. Sales organizations need to be able to automate processes to improve calculation accuracy and expedite compensation plan distribution. At the same time, the ability to catch calculation errors as they happen using intuitive inquiry resolution provides visibility to both sellers and compensation administrators.

Every year, organizations start their planning cycles. Once sales compensation plans are designed, territories are aligned and quotas are set, so salespeople need to understand their goals as soon as possible. Results are directly impacted by how long it takes to deliver this information. In addition, organizations need to know who agreed to their plans and who didn’t. Completing the planning cycle, releasing plans, and tracking the fulfillment of the process is difficult with a manual solution, and only slightly better with something developed in-house. It can take a very long time to get the information into the hands of sellers, and during that time the opportunity has been lost. Plan information should be communicated in as simple a manner as possible, making it easy for sellers to understand their plan, quotas, and assignments, and easily access this information throughout the year.

Optimizing incentive spend doesn’t mean paying sellers less; it means compensating them in a way that incentivizes behavior. Sales leaders must be able to offer analysis into how spend is driving results and whether the results are aligned with expectations. Understanding coverage and quota targets before it’s too late to affect the performance period outcomes is critical. Modern sales performance management solutions offer AI recommendations, scenario modeling, and many other features that allow an organization to react quickly and maintain performance, enhancing the sales experience without breaking the bank.

Often businesses that have outgrown their current sales compensation design want to mature their plans, but processes and tools hold them back. Manual solutions don’t lend themselves to complex eligibility or crediting rules: ensuring effective dates are accurate across the board is next to impossible for large sales teams. Introducing quotas, assigned territories, and rules of engagement makes the process even more complex, as do sales role differentiation, adoption of omnichannel selling, and changing to subscription-based revenue models. All these factors have an impact on the maturity of compensation plan design, quota, and coverage, and must be manageable and compliant. Home-grown solutions usually require big investments and only enable the "today view", preventing the organization from growing and adding more maturity or complexity to its future plans.