Donya Rose
Donya is interviewed by WorldatWork about the importance of a sales compensation specialty
Donya Rose is Managing Principal of The Cygnal Group, located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has over twenty-five years experience in leading the design and implementation of systems and processes to ensure alignment of sales results with top business priorities. She has led projects in sales target setting, measurement and forecasting, technology enabled selling, and sales incentive compensation plan design. Today Donya focuses exclusively on sales compensation plan design, and has designed hundreds of sales compensation plans since that became her focus in 1999.
Prior to founding The Cygnal Group, Donya was a consultant in Towers Perrin’s Sales Effectiveness Practice. Before joining Towers Perrin, Donya worked for a global materials science company where she managed numerous change initiatives. In addition, she served as IT Director for one of this company’s major sites, with responsibility for a full ERP system, 26 servers, a 600 node WAN and user support for over 1000 users.
Donya’s recent larger clients for whom she has led sales compensation design efforts include Red Hat Software, Comcast Business Services, Elster Solutions, and Tellabs. 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.
Donya’s passion is practical value-creating compensation plan design supported by thorough modeling to anticipate effects of proposed plans on individuals and the company. Because clients generally choose to stay engaged with The Cygnal Group for years, Donya has had a chance to learn which plan design elements often recommended by consultants are most likely to confuse employees and/or confound plan administrators. As a result, she focuses on simple, clear designs with direct links to strategically important business results.
Donya holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from Davidson College, and a Master of Science in Operations Research and Systems Analysis from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a WorldatWork Certified Sales Compensation Professional (CSCP).
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