Avoid the Pandemonium of High Turnover
Last year the Harvard Business Review estimated the annual turnover of salespeople in the U.S. to be 27%. That is twice the rate of the overall labor force. Most companies use commission-based incentive plans to encourage sales staff to stay on board. Unfortunately, this can be counterproductive and have the opposite effect when a company cannot follow through on accurate and timely payments because of the inability to calculate commission payments correctly.
A lot of companies default to using excel spreadsheets to track sales, commissions, and employee performance. This may be sustainable for the simpler start-up, but can quickly become unmanageable when company growth leads to increased products, sales and a more complex commission plan. A company which is unprepared and attempts to implement an incentive program can find itself over or underpaying sales staff.
Having little or no way for sales reps to verify details of how they are getting compensated for their work can create chaos for any commission administrator, and frustrate your sales team- the opposite of what you are spending a lot of money to achieve.
It is not uncommon for companies to use excel spreadsheets to track sales, commissions, and employee performance. This may be sustainable for the simpler start-up, but can quickly become unmanageable when company growth leads to increased products, sales and a more complex commission plan.
Get in Control:
- Communicate with sales staff about what incentive plans have been put in place and make sure they understand the incentive plan requirements.
- Understanding the reporting complexity of plans can be tricky – be aware of personnel changes and how that can affect/delay payments and relay that information to your team.
- Record their feedback and keep orderly records of sales details that will allow for less disruption if there is any dispute in the future.
- Give sales staff accurate performance progress reports. This will reduce stress, boost productivity and provide a tangible way to measure their success.
Hang Onto Your Sales Force – Commission Plan Automation
Too many companies pay out inaccurate commissions and end up angering and driving off their salespeople. This can be avoided by automating the many steps of processing incentive pay, including importing data from other applications, relaying information across multiple sources, applying rules criteria and distributing reports and analytics. The Core Commissions application lets you build complex rules fast and see the resulting output each step of the way. The Core dashboard allows employees to track performance measures by region, salesperson, and product. Core even provides an online portal for sales staff to login and look up individualized reports on performance and quota attainment. Schedule a demo to see how to get your team paid right on time the first time.