When you think about it, it’s true in just about any sale that the sales person must be part of a team that has:

• the right offering (services staff, right skills, right organizational capacity, …),
• the right delivery system (tools, processes, methodologies, management structure, …), and
• the right business model (pricing, contracting/terms, contractors vs. employees, …)

to create perceivable value for both the customer and the company. So why do the sales people earn variable pay while the others vital to closing the sale (and delivering the value) not earn variable pay?

The answer may be that some of the others do earn variable pay. But more often the answer is that the sales person’s own individual value creation is reliably measured in terms of sales closed (order value, margin value, hours booked, etc.) than that of others on the team, AND the sales person is interested in placing a meaningful portion of their at-market compensation at risk (20% to 50% is typical) in exchange for the opportunity to double or triple the amount risked if they are able to put together a banner year. That’s the basis for much of “sales compensation” as we see it today.

So, even if “it takes a village” to make the sale, the hunter who finds the opportunities, identifies the decision makers, puts together a strategy to win the business, and coordinates the internal team often has both risk and upside in their compensation plan tied to the results they manage to produce in order to encourage and reward their success.

Many of the other vital technical or industry expert contributors may also see the value they help create and express an interest in sharing in the upside – but they often are not interested in putting a meaningful amount of their compensation at risk.So while you may choose to offer spot awards and/or recognition to those non-sales associates who make a great contribution to closing an important deal, that’s not the same as pay at risk, a structured incentive plan, and exciting upside for the “stars.”

By Beth Carroll, The Cygnal Group

“I just don’t understand why we aren’t seeing higher growth! The incentive plan should be highly motivational (it’s 100% variable, after all) and I want everyone to make a ton of money under the plan, but it seems like some of the reps are content where they are.” – Mike Fouts, President, CRST Logistics

The words may be slightly different, but the theme is the same from presidents to front-line sales managers – “why aren’t we getting more growth from our salesforce?”

When faced with this problem, Mike Fouts believed that in large part the lack of growth was due to something amiss in the compensation plan. What Cygnal Group and CRST have learned over the past six months highlights the truism told by every sales compensation consultant to every client – compensation can only go so far. There will always be factors to consider and address when seeking to improve growth. Role clarity is one of the most important factors (and unfortunately, most often neglected) that should be resolved prior to developing a new compensation plan.

The most crucial task for successfully driving growth in any organization is to provide role clarity to the sales reps. This goes far beyond what is typically found in an HR job description and must really address the nature of the selling role. Without accurate knowledge of both parts of the equation: how management wants the salesforce to sell and how the salesforce is actually selling, it will be impossible to design an effective compensation plan.

A rep’s perception of the company’s sales strategy and business objectives is never 100% aligned with that of the management team. Nor is their role, as executed, exactly what management thinks it is, whether it is the amount of time spent with clients versus on administrative tasks (it is always much higher on administrative tasks than expected) or time spent cold calling versus revisiting existing accounts (it is almost always less time spent cold calling than expected). Reaching out to the salesforce through surveys, interviews or focus groups can help identify the gaps so steps can be taken to close them.

Once the gaps have been identified, it falls on management to determine how best to change the reps’ behavior, and then communicate this vision to the reps. Surprisingly few companies actually take the time for this exercise. Listed below are some sample questions that will increase role clarity for both the sales reps and the management team. When reviewing each question, remember the objective is not to simply answer the question and move on, but to have a robust dialog (from different organizational perspectives including sales, finance, human resources and marketing) out of which will come a clear role profile.

1. Is the product being sold as a single product or a bundled solution?
2. How complex is the product being sold? What specialized skills or training are needed to sell the product?
3. How long is the typical sales cycle? Are there key milestones along the way that are tracked by the organization?
4. Who is the primary buyer – is it a single person or a group or team?
5. What is the customer perception of the seller? Is he/she a service provider or a trusted advisor?
6. What will be the customer’s primary decision factor: price or value?
7. What is the typical deal size? (Define this in a relative sense within the organization rather than in any absolute sense, as what is a large deal for one company may be a blip to another.)
8. Where should most revenue come from — new or existing customers? Where does it come from now?
9. Should the rep try to make the most from each deal, or instead focus on building long-term, highly profitable (and stable) customer relationships?
10. How much involvement should the rep have after the sale? What type of involvement (service, installation, collections, complaint handling, billing, etc.)?
11. How many active customers or prospects should an average rep have? How many do they actually have? What’s the reason for any difference?
12. How much time should the reps spend cold calling? How much time do they actually spend cold calling?

Many organizations believe that to have full role clarity, each sales rep must have a unique role and must be compensated uniquely as well. This results in an over-abundance of roles and compensation plans. There is a point of diminishing returns when trying to sub-divide roles into the most precise functions, and one of the keys to successful compensation plan design is understanding when you have reached that point.

Once the roles have been defined, grouping them by selling method can be helpful in understanding when compensation plans can be similar and when they must be different.  The most common distinction used between selling roles is “Hunter vs. Farmer.” Combining a hunter and farmer generally gives you a farmer when organizations typically need more hunters, but there are times when it simply is not practical to have separate roles covering the same territory. In this case, a hybrid role is a practical necessity, but it is even more crucial to go through the 12 questions above and answer each from both hunter and farmer perspectives. The answers will likely be different, and the rep needs to be clear about which hat he/she is wearing and when.  Likewise, the compensation plan developed will need to reflect the proper proportion and put the right emphasis on each role.

1. Be clear on how much and for what measures the managers involved can “move the needle,” with a direct effect on the company’s financial results. Product Managers could be measured on product line gross margin or operating income, with a similar measure for Program Managers, for example. But make sure the measurement and reporting systems will support robust measurement of their results.
2. Be sure you have enough incentive to actually motivate and drive behavior towards the results you want. Anything less than about 15% of target cash compensation may not be worth the cost of designing, reporting and administering the plans (in terms of the effect on results). This can be tricky if you are offering incentives for the first time as you probably don’t want to reduce base to fund them. If you can redeploy budgeted money from a broad-based employee incentive plan to help fund it, you can bring the pay mix in line over time through reducing the increases in base and putting them towards the variable portion.
3. Be careful with target setting. You need to aim for about 60% of your employees on variable pay plans to be at or above target, or it won’t motivate much.
4. Offer enough upside. If you are putting people in an at-risk pay situation, possibly for the first time, you need to be sure a few people really ring the bell and get a handsome payout (1.5-2.0 times the target incentive), and publicize and celebrate these successes — it helps motivate everyone.
5. Be sure the people in the role have the risk profile to find this motivating (or that that is the sort of person you want in the role, and are willing to make the needed adjustments). Not all solid employees are “coin operated.”

The roles you ask about (account manager, business development manager, technical sales support specialists, and sales engineers) are more in the gray area in terms of eligibility for “sales-type” incentive plans. I would need to know more about the exact job descriptions before I could give an opinion about whether or not the role should be on a sales incentive plan or a corporate-wide plan based on overall company performance as Account Manager (which is a very common selling role title with best-practices all its own in terms of incentive design) may not mean to your company what it means in other companies.

That being said, here is some general guidance that may be of help. If performance in the role is objectively measureable on an individual basis and the result of that performance has significant business impact then you should seriously consider investing the time and expense in developing a customized incentive program. If you can’t objectively measure individual (or small team) performance and/or the performance impact has limited business impact, then you are better off leaving them on the corporate-wide plan. Developing sales-type incentive plans (often referred to as customized plans for non-selling roles), takes significant time and effort and can be complicated to track and administer. You have to be sure that the resulting change in behavior that you may get from the plan is worth the added administrative expense.

If your Account Managers are individually responsible to manage and grow a defined set of accounts, with objectives such as upselling, retention, penetration, and growth of those accounts then this role should be on a sales incentive plan (but the plan would look very different than plan for a sale reps plan who is out selling widgets every day, and might not use a commission structure at all, but instead use a goal-based bonus approach).

Business Development Managers could be low level lead generators, or could be out closing really large new business deals on their own. My hunch is that it is likely this role would be on a sales incentive plan, but the exact nature would depend on the accountabilities and expectations of the role.

Technical Sales Support Specialists (if this role is similar to what I’ve seen elsewhere) are often paid using a less variable pay mix (80/20 or 85/15) and are paid based on the results of the sales reps they support. This is also the case for Sales Engineers, although these roles often support the entire sales organization w/o being directly aligned to a team of reps, so their individual contribution becomes even less clear. For these two roles, the line starts to blur between corporate plan and sales plan, and often you end up with a hybrid. Part of their plan is like the corporate plan, but there may be a portion that is tied to the overall performance of the sales team as a whole or the sales region or team they support. There can also be a small individual performance modifier, but this often based on subjective manager evaluation.

What type of inside sales are they doing?

Do they qualify for the 7i exemption or are they non exempt employee?

These questions must be answered because, if they are non-exempt, any incentive earned must be included in their hourly rate. If they are exempt, it would make it much easier to implement an incentive with less administrative costs. Assuming you conclude they are either exempt, or that the administrative burden if they aren’t is “worth it,” then here are a few tips for designing their incentive plans:

1. Incentives are a great way to support an initiative to change behavior, but the rest of the initiative needs to be in place as well. This may include training, systems enhancements, coaching and mentoring, etc.
2. If you really want to use incentives to motivate and excite, then you need “carrots and sticks” to be part of them. Over time you will want to migrate base salaries down as a percent of target total compensation so that the target incentive must be earned in order for the employees to maintain market-competitive pay.
3. The amount of pay at risk depends a great deal on the nature of their inside sales roles. Although it can be more complex than this, one simple division is between jobs that are primarily “inbound” and those that involve more aggressive “outbound” calling. If an inside seller mostly reacts to requests from customers and is primarily doing an order management function (perhaps with some ability to cross-sell or up-sell), then a relatively smaller percent of pay at risk (in the incentive) is appropriate. For outbound inside sales people who more strongly influence a prospect’s decision to buy through their own creativity and initiative, more pay at risk (and more associated upside) would be a good idea.

Let’s start with the core incentive component (part of the official compensation package, documented in a signed plan document or employment agreement, representing a portion of the official compensation package, with on-target payout needed to provide market-competitive total compensation). For core components, give some thought to what you’re trying to accomplish with your eligibility requirements. Some companies feel that requiring people to be currently employed at the time the payment is made improves retention and is more fair to the company. Consider the possibility, however, that you will have people who have already decided to leave staying in the role, collecting their base, cementing personal relationships with important customers or prospects, and delaying your hiring of a more committed resource while they are waiting for their incentive payout.

In addition, it is true that payment in this category must be paid regardless of employment status at the time of payment in certain states and industries. The criteria here have to do with the nature of the job (selling, not delivering services or managing sales people), relationship with the company (employee, not a contractor or outside rep), and the mechanics of the comp plan (communicated as a percent of sales, not a bonus). My counsel on the core components is generally to pay them regardless of whether the employee is currently employed at the time of the payment.

There can be some protection here by noting that payments (made following order intake, for example) are an advance against earnings, and that the commission is not earned until the cash is collected. So if the cash is not collected until after the employee has left, the commission has not technically been earned.

Regarding contests and SPIFFs, you are probably safer in not paying unless employed, legally (but check with real lawyers). And you are also probably not risking any unproductive lingering by disengaged employees if you do require people to be present to be paid – mostly because contests and SPIFFs are generally shorter in duration between announcement and payout, and the stakes aren’t as high. It is a very common (and in my view reasonable) practice to only pay for these incentives if the employee is still employed when the payment is made. A good practice in these cases is to make that intention clear in the contest/SPIFF documentation – fine print at the bottom of the flyer/email works fine.

As always, while we can provide some general guidance on this topic, we strongly encourage you to seek additional legal counsel and review of your official sales compensation plan document to ensure it is compliant with local laws, specific to your company and the location of your sales representatives.