Explaining Gartner MarketScopes

In Varicent's  recent press release we noted that we received a “Positive” rating in Gartner Inc.’s Insurance Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) MarketScope Report.  We are thrilled with the news, but in conversations found that many people we talked to were confused between a Gartner MarketScope and a Magic Quadrant.  

The team at Varicent went to work and wrote a blogpost explaining what's behind a Marketscope and how to use it.   They did a great job of providing some background for those of you unfamiliar with the topic.  Here's the link: http://bit.ly/yJFhSp 

2011 Sales Management Association Sales Productivity and Performance Management Conference

Bob Kelly and the team at the Sales Management Association put together a great event in Atlanta recently.  The agenda was filled with many experts including academics, practitioners and vendors.   Most of the attendees were from sales operations and the people I talked to were happy that there were many sessions targeted specifically for them.  Some of the topics covered included Inside the Sales2.0 Organization, Predictive Analytics for Sales leaders and Technology’s impact on Sales Management Practice.

Andris Zoltners,  the ‘Z’ in ZS associates opened Day 1 with a presentation on the importance and impact of Sales Management on sales productivity.   Day two saw Barry Trailer from CSO Insights and Mark Selcow President of Merced, present a keynote comparing improving sales force productivity to the new Brad Pitt movie Moneyball.  Joe Galvin, former Gartner and Sirius Decisions analyst seemed to be moderating, participating and generally adding value to most of the sessions that I attended.  With his history and rich background in sales effectiveness I always find that Joe provides some great insights.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to present on the ROI of Sales Performance Management solutions with Justin Lane of OpenSymmetry and Rebecca Sandberg of Elavon.  Justin has such a broad base of experience implementing SPM solutions that he had a lot to contribute.  Rebecca shared her experiences at Elavon, a global credit card processing organization and gave advice on implementing an incentive compensation management solution in a global financial services organizations. 

While this was the inaugural Sales Productivity and Performance Management conference,   I certainly hope it was just the first in a long line of successful conferences hosted by the Sales Management Association.

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

INSIGHT11 - Varicent Customer Conference - final preparation

I was just sitting here packing up, getting ready to head out to Boston for INSIGHT11, our third annual customer conference.   The team here has been working at a frantic pace getting all the last minute things sorted out for the conference.  We just took a minute to think about how far this has come in 3 years since our first INSIGHT in Chicago.   It's come a long way!

Even though the conference has nearly tripled in size, the thing that remains consistent is that it is  the support of our customers, and our partners who truly make this event the success that it is.  I know that a number of people that wanted to come this year just couldn't due to scheduling conflicts and competing priorities.    We will do our best to tweet (follow #INSIGHT11)  and blog about some of the major happenings at the conference.  We will also post some of the pictures on our Facebook wall.   

If there is something specific you want to hear about you can send me a tweet @bhartlen or email bhartlen@varicent.com and I will try and get something posted.

 

Sales Compensation: Trends, Tools, Analytics, and Solutions for the Emerging Environment.

Sales Compensation: Trends, Tools, Analytics, and Solutions for the Emerging Environment.

View more presentations from The SMA Sales Management Association.

Michael Dunne to Keynote INSIGHT11

I am very happy that we managed to get  Michael Dunne, Research Vice President for Gartner to join us at INSIGHT11 (Varicent’s Users Conference) this year.  He specializes in researching leading issues concerning sales performance management, sales operations, sales enablement, sales incentive compensation, sales analytics, price optimization and management, as well as sales and marketing alignment for Gartner.  As a 16 year veteran of Gartner he brings a lot of experience gained not only from his research but a significant amount of client interaction.

I was talking to Michael last week and he was mentioning that he is has a lot of new thoughts on what is happening in the Sales Performance Management space.  He shared a couple of his ideas and I can tell you that we are in for a treat.  It got me thinking and certainly put some things in perspective.  Michael will open up the second day of our conference.