Description
Is your salesforce pay plan the right one?
According to What’s Your Plan? Smart Salesforce Compensation in Wholesale Distribution, there is absolutely no relationship between your sales incentive plan and your likely gain or loss in market share.
In fact, here’s what matters most:
Setting an objective
Getting management to use it in rating salesperson performance
Making sure your whole team buys in.
This book debunks the myths and shows you how to bring these three all-important factors into alignment. Get ready for a real “A-ha!” experience.
Take this little quiz:
To increase market share, a wholesale distribution firm should pay its outside salespeople:
Commission to keep them hungry
Salary so they think beyond the short term
Some combination of A and B
It doesn’t matter.
Our hunch is you didn’t pick D. However, according to the authors, there is absolutely no relationship between your sales incentive plan and your likely gain or loss in market share.
In fact, here’s what matters most:
Setting an objective
Getting management to use it in rating salesperson performance
Making sure your whole team buys in.
The authors surveyed hundreds of wholesale distribution executives and talked to dozens more in-depth by phone. Their main finding is that pay plans don’t or can’t operate effectively in a corporate/sales management vacuum. That may seem obvious, but the data here raise this question: If it’s so obvious, why are so many wholesaler-distributors operating otherwise?
By reading this book and thinking deeply about the real-life compensation case studies presented, you can determine whether your firm has the preconditions in place to verify that your salesforce pay plan is the right one, or to adjust it as necessary so it produces the results you’re seeking.
