In a BLR webinar entitled "Sales Compensation Strategies: How to Motivate and Re-Energize Your Sales Staff in a Challenging Economy," Dan Kleinman, principal of California-based Dan Kleinman Consulting, described some of the trending sales drivers and issues in the context of sales compensation.
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Get Your Report Now!Trending issues include:
- Dispensing with sloppiness, e.g., acknowledging and aligning environments with sales plans and defining the real sales staff;
- Minimizing vulnerability and maximizing compensation flexibility so the company "owns" the book of the business in a team-oriented approach;
- Optimizing compensation costs and processes -- the difference between bad and worse; lack of complacency;
- Moving toward profitability measures; and
- Increased transparency.
Its important to acknowledge your environment and ask yourself these seven questions:
- How engaged is your organization in strategizing and planning?
- How well does your organization communicate to itself, to customers to suppliers and partners?
- How does your company make decisions?
- How risk-oriented is your organization?
- What's the level of psychic equity in the company?
- Does the company perceive itself as a unit or as silos?
- What's the level of trust in management to lead and support?
Then it's time to define your sales staff. Regardless of whether it's relationship or transactional selling, real sales people influence the customer's decision and cause the close.
Ticket takers are not sales people. Easy renewals, cashiering, standing aside and letting the product or price point sell are all critical, sometimes cost-effective and worthy of compensation -- just not sales compensation.
Dan Kleinman is the principal of Dan Kleinman Consulting (www. dankleinmanconsulting.com), a California-based compensation and human resource consulting firm. For the past 18 years, he has served as an independent consultant for a broad spectrum of regional, national, and international companies, providing compensation, performance, organizational planning, and reward-system design services. His last assignment was serving as vice president and manager of compensation, benefits, human resources information systems, and payroll for Charles Schwab.
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