Compensation is something you want to get right no matter what. Why? Because you could lose your valuable personnel if you don’t. Research shows 43% of employees are willing to leave their companies for a 10% salary increase, for example – and that even applies to your sales team.
Most sales compensation plans are updated every year, and rightly so. The rapidly changing market means what worked last year may not necessarily be the best option in the future. Here are a few trends to help you find what your sales team needs to keep their enthusiasm levels high.
There’s been a movement to close the gap between the hunters and the farmers in the sales team. New business reps have traditionally gotten paid more than those who came before them, and that’s largely because the old guard tends to spend more time focused on managing their existing accounts. This is not surprising, as most companies value new business more.
A growing number of organizations are now buying into the land-and-expand selling model, though. This means the old guard is getting their due, as current sales motions seem to be ensuring they get similar incentives to those allocated to sales reps bringing in new business. You can thus expect the pay gap to keep reducing for both groups as time goes on.
Gone are the days of overlay quotas and simple crediting to allocate rewards for a sale. Those mechanics simply do not work in a world where more selling resources are required to build up the sale. Modern selling is a cross-departmental team effort, with multiple parties investing time and resources to make it happen – and all need to be properly compensated for their parts.
A new trend is emerging that has pre-sales experts, marketers, engineers, subject-matter experts, and other non-sales employees taking a bigger piece of the pie than ever. This is altering the role and expectations of the new business rep as well as their compensation plans. New business reps are much more likely to receive compensation for a role played in just one part of the sales process, for example.
Lead generation remains one of the bedrocks on which any company is built, and has traditionally been a role of the marketing department. sales reps have begun to awaken to the fact that they can cultivate their own pipelines and generate leads for themselves, however. This is good news for the companies that ultimately benefit, so a lot of employers are leveraging incentive multipliers to offer rewards for different lead factors – like the source of the lead.
Under this trend, sales reps get paid more for sales generated from leads they cultivated themselves than for those that stemmed from the marketing department. This acknowledges and compensates the sales rep for the cost of acquisition as well as incentivizes the initiative involved in developing their own sales pipelines. In spite of the advantages, though, this trend is currently more popular among companies with more experience in sales that can accurately track data to prevent negative scenarios.
The general understanding in sales compensation is that reps get paid on whatever is measured. Data-driven sales organizations are going beyond the norm, however, and leveraging insights to redesign compensation plans. Companies are gaining better insights into the effort and skill that goes into making sales, leading to plans that compensate for the efforts that keep their economic machines turning.
The truth is that many sales reps don’t understand how they get paid, which lowers their chances of making the most of well-thought-out compensation plans. Data could offer greater visibility into specific elements that get rewarded, however, making it possible to see incentives based on factors such as:
Technology allows for adjustment of these factors to be automated, too, leading to more effective sales compensation plans and higher engagement from representatives.
The sales apparatus is always in flux and changing with the market. The rate of change has never been as dramatic and rapid as we’re experiencing today, however. Evolving technology, customer habits and expectations, and overall possibilities have brought about a need for new mindsets, tools, enablement factors, and compensation plans.
As a business owner, founder, CEO, or sales manager, making the mistake of not keeping up (or worse, intentionally choosing to stick with what worked last year just because it went well) could be fatal for your business.
Keep all of this in mind when recruiting, training, and deploying your sales team, as well as when deciding on a sales compensation plan.
If you’re worried that you don’t have the right sales personnel in place or might be at risk of losing them due to a poor compensation strategy, working with an expert consultant can help. MetaGrowth Ventures specializes in assisting founders with taking their companies to the next level through the development of a world-class sales team. We help you staff the right team, then train everyone to be as productive as possible so you can stop worrying about founder selling to achieve growth.
If you are looking for a strategic partner who can help your company make sense out of the complex world of sales, contact the experts at MetaGrowth Ventures today.