Followup on Keys to Success Post

Ritu Thakur

I previously mentioned that I have been fortunate in that I have had the opportunity to work with a number of very knowledgeable people in the SPM space.  Ritu Thakur is one of those people.   (Follow this link to see her profile -  http://www.linkedin.com/in/rituathakur). She has worked on several SPM implementations in high-tech and large financial institutions.  We had an email exchange after my last Keys to Success post  (see the Keys to Success tab)

She agreed with the idea of ensuring the the incentive compensation team is trained and put on the project early, but she talked about another huge benefit that I wanted to pass on.

In addition to all the benefits that you have listed, I wanted to add one additional benefit of your new Key to Success. While the implementers have a lot of best practice experience, they are not as close to the intricacies of the client data and processes.  Despite the synergies across industries and function, there are always unique and specific requirements that can make or break a project.  Hence, having the client participate in the implementation brings those key details to the implementation effort.  It allows for an effective implementation, helps avoid gaps in design and reworking the project.

This makes a lot of sense, and just one more reason to ensure that your team has representation from the people who run the compensation process and know how it works at a very detailed basis.

10 great links for Sales Performance Management

Spotlight on Sales Compensation
 http://www.worldatwork.org/waw/salescompspotlight/html/index.jsp

WorldatWork has done a great job of putting together the Spotlight on Sales Compensation, a conference focused specifically on helping sales compensation professionals. This year’s conference runs August 24-26th in Chicago.

Survey:  CFO Research Services
http://www.cfo.com/whitepapers/index.cfm/display

CFO Research Services does a great job of understanding the role of Finance and marries that with excellent survey, analytical and writing skills to provide some of the best research available. I sponsored research to better understand what CFOs were thinking about their changing involvement in sales compensation. “Managing Sales Incentive Compensation amid Uncertainty” provides some great data on the changing role and changing perspective of CFOs when it comes to the need to change sales compensation. This is a good read and well executed by Sam Knox and his team.

Ventana Research 2011 SPM Value Index           
http://www.ventanaresearch.com/research/overview.aspx?id=3208

Ventana compiles an authoritative look at the Sales Performance Management Market. The 2011 Value Index provides a comprehensive look at the Sales Performance Management market and vendors.

BetterSalesComp Blog                                       
bettersalescomp.com/blog

Ted Briggs and Clinton Gott share their real-world experiences in sales compensation. They are particularly knowledgeable in High Tech, Financial Services and Medical Devices.

New Sigma Blog  SalesCompInsights                     
https://salescompinsights.com  

Industry veterans Scott Barton posts regularly with valuable insights and opinions. A must read for Sales Compensation professionals. 

CSO Insights - Compensation                                      
http://www.csoinsights.com/topics/Compensation-Territory-Quota
Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer are experts in understanding senior sales executives. Over the years they have gathered fantastic survey data on key trends in improving sales performance. Combined with their personal experiences and insights they are a great resource to understand the keys trends from the Sales perspective. This link leads to some of the great findings on compensation, quotas and territories.

Ann Bares - Compensation Cafe                              
http://compforce.typepad.com/compensation_cafe

Ann writes one of the best blogs on compensation practices. It's broader than sales compensation, but her opinions and posts are very useful for compensation professionals. 

Compensation Analytics                                             
http://www.compensationanalytics.com/resources.html

There are a number of good articles and insights from Mike Chapman on his website. Mike has a long career in Sales Performance Management. He brings lots of experience from being a practitioner with a couple of insurance companies, and also from the consulting side as a Accenture partner. This link takes you to some of the articles he has posted.

Sales Management Association                               
http://salesmanagement.org/

Bob Kelly has put together some impressive resources and experts all focused on helping sales and sales operations leaders. They provide tools and training for individuals who manage, coach or lead sales organizations. There is a membership fee for this site, but Bob does provide a lot of webinars and replays on slideshare.

The Alexander Group                                    

www.alexandergroup.com/blog

David Cichelli is Alexander Group’s principal thought leader regarding sales effectiveness challenges and solutions facing sales organizations during different stages of growth. He has written two books on Compensating the Sales Force, and speaks a lot of conferences. The Alexander Group blog has some information on driving sales force effectiveness

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sound Plan Design

 

At INSIGHT11 in Boston this week, Brandon Kulik from Deloitte’s Sales Effectiveness/Human Capital Management practice presented his thoughts on integrating administrative and technology functions into the sales compensation plan design process. 

He suggests that the plan design process is multi-functional, highly visible, business impacting, and yet for a lot of organizations it leaves out critical players who can ensure its success.  Two of the most critical and sometimes overlooked players include those who are responsible for administering the plans and those who provide the data and upstream systems which are part of the overall commissions management process.  

All too often sales teams design plans with the best of intentions, but without input from compensation administration and information technology groups.  Without their involvement in the design process it’s hard to determine the practicality, cost and time involved in implementing their ideas. For example, if the data required to calculate commissions for a new plan doesn’t exist then the plan needs to be reconsidered, or the time to implement extended so that the data can be sourced from new or different systems.  It is much better to know this early when there is time to adjust, rather than figure it out after the new plans have been communicated to the sales team.

Another key point of Brandon’s talk was that the compensation administration and information technology groups bring a detailed understanding of the way things work today.   Many new plan concepts are designed and work at a general level, but confusion and mis-interpretation creep in where there are exceptions, unique cases and the like.  There is a need for absolute clarity on how the rules should be interpreted and managed in every scenario.  Making sure everyone understands this, can significantly reduce delays, errors and significant cost and wasted effort further down the road. 

Two other key considerations to ensure a more effective plan design process are to ensure that there is a governance process that formalizes the involvement of the compensation administration and information technology groups to ensure that this involvement is not ad hoc or convenient, but rather part of the standard processes by which the organization operates.  The other was to leverage modern sales performance management solutions to aid in the analysis, implementation, communication, roll-out and eventual success of the new plans.  Relying on legacy systems, manual processes and spreadsheet based systems will not allow organizations to efficiently and effectively design, implement and roll-out new plans at the speed of business today.

If you have any comments or follow–up questions please post them here or contact Brandon directly at bkulik@deloitte.com