Reasons Sales Performance Management Projects Fail Innovations often bring challenges in addition to better, faster and cheaper solutions to industry problems. Sales performance management systems are the way of the future for sales-driven companies, though, the initial implementation of such systems can make things a little hairy, logistically. Below are four common problems that arise when implementing SPM systems to your company: Involvement One of the biggest reasons that sales performance plans fail is they are constructed without the input from the staff members they are slated to manage. When sales teams are involved from the planning stage of a new project, valuable information potentially critical to the project’s overall execution may arise that c-level planners may have missed. Training When it comes to company-wide participation, cross-department communication is necessary to get a new project off the ground. Bringing in senior company executives or figureheads is a great way to not only inspire your team, but also to help keep them on track. While scheduling may present a bit of an issue for company leaders, this step can prove critical to an SPM project’s success. Foresight Because SPM projects actually affect many different parts of an organization, production and and other project timelines should be created with a little extra allowable deviation than normal. Plan for hiccups and unexpected changes to your company’s standard operating procedure. Understand that, in an effort to improve company productivity in the long run, shifts must and will be made across your business. Chaos Try not to overwhelm sales team members with too many changing responsibilities. The best way to plan for the oncoming changes is to assign alternative tasks for certain key members, as a way of providing alternative, backup training to key employees without training an entire alternative team. When dealing with SPM-related issues, always remain steadfast in your decision. Incentive and compensation management software is tailor fit for sales teams, and is a proven method to increase not only a department’s performance, but the company’s overall output long term.