2013 - Sales Comp Bootcamp - Principles and best practices for designing great sales Comp plans

Overview : Everyone who has ever received sales compensation or managed a sales force has a point of view about what type of plan works best, but few of these perspectives are based on principles; they are based on that person's in-depth experience with a few plans. Broadening your perspective and understanding what's "in the toolbox" will enable you to see possibilities for plan design that you haven't considered, pinpoint the causes of the dysfunction in your organization, and start down the path to sensible value-creating plans that motivate your sales people and make sense for your business.
Sales compensation plan design is not magic. There are well-understood principles and best practices that can serve to guide your plan design thinking and fix your problems with sales focus and sales motivation. Starting with sales role definition and pay structure creation, you will learn how to align risk and upside appropriately for the sales job. Understanding what to measure and how to balance the compensation focus among the measures will enable you to focus your sales people on the right results. An overview of payout mechanics (payout curve shape, commission vs. goal-based incentives) will help you ensure you have a plan that will work this year and in the next few years without continuous structural changes to your plans.
Why should you attend: Are you involved in the sales compensation design discussion for your business? Are your leaders disagreeing about how the plans should work? Does your CFO feel the plans are too rich and don't hold people individually accountable while your VP Sales feels the quotas are unattainable or that the plan mechanics are so complicated that no one understands the comp value of the sales they close?
Shift the discussion from accusations and assertions and focus on the sales compensation design principles that can end the disagreements and bring the focus back to creating value for the business.
Areas Covered in the Session:
What sales compensation plans do well, and what they don't do so well
How to get clarity around your business objectives for your plans
Eligibility - what roles should be on a sales comp plan
Defining your sales roles for plan design
Establishing your sales pay structure - total comp, risk, and upside
Measuring sales, and prioritizing among measures
Payout form (commission vs. goal-based incentive)
Payout curves (thresholds, acceleration, etc.
Assessing plan effectiveness
Who Will Benefit:
HR Generalists supporting sales teams
HR Managers
Compensation Managers
Sales Leaders
Business Owners
Donya Rose is Managing Principal of The Cygnal Group, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has over twenty-five years of experience in leading the design and implementation of systems and processes to ensure alignment of business results with top business priorities.
Prior to founding The Cygnal Group, Donya was a consultant in Towers Perrin’s Sales Effectiveness Practice. Donya’s recent larger clients for whom she has led compensation design efforts include Red Hat Software, Comcast Business Services, Elster Solutions, and Novartis. In addition, Donya regularly assists smaller companies and startups with sales compensation plan design as they launch their sales teams and move through the early stages of growing their top line.