Managing a team of salespeople is difficult, and keeping morale up throughout the selling season can be a struggle. Any salesperson will experience highs and lows as the season wears on, and sales managers need to craft an incentive plan that offers consistent rewards and attainable goals. That will keep sales people focused and contribute to a successful cycle overall.
Newly promoted sales managers may find it difficult to start planning a compensation strategy for their team. Luckily, modern tools make it easy to identify successful strategies and create a plan that works for the majority of salespeople on the floor.
The data-centric approach
New sales managers may not know the strengths and weaknesses of each individual team member, and may not yet fully understand the intricacies of each individual salesperson’s territory. While the new manager will want to become very knowledgeable about these elements over time, they need to create a sales compensation strategy before they can develop expertise. To create something workable, sales managers should focus on data from previous quarters to create a solution that works in the future, according to Insight Squared, a business analytics firm.
Of course, it’s impossible to use a data-driven approach if data doesn’t exist, and that’s where a compensation management solution becomes invaluable.
Dedicated compensation management tools make it easy to track the success of different compensation strategies over time. More importantly, they make it easy to implement a complex compensation strategy that rates employees according to several metrics. This software ensures managers get more data, which allows for a fuller picture of individual performance.
Sales managers who integrate compensation management into their workflow will better understand how each salesperson is progressing toward quota and can adjust future decisions accordingly.
