The brilliant Josh Melick has written yet another fantastic blog post lately, this time focusing on the sales comp plan which businesses are putting into action. These plans are of course fundamental to the way in which we inspire and engage our staff, and how we push them to make them and us more money.
The piece that josh has scribed really centers around how to set up this kind of plan, but it can also be used to clearly highlight where so many businesses falter in terms of getting one of these plans in place. With this in mind, here we are going to look at the common mistakes which so many companies are making.
Not Paying Staff
In one of the more spellbinding revelations from Josh, we see that there are a number of companies who simply have this system set up the wrong way around, or poorly. This results in staff not being paid the right amount of commissions, or not being paid their commissions on time at all. This of course is completely absurd and we have to always ensure that the staff are getting the money which they have earned, and getting it on time. A failure to do this basically opposes the whole point of incentivizing them in the first place.
No Tweaks For Trainees
It is simply a bad idea to be training staff and to be paying them in the same way as you would pay your well established staff. It is highly unlikely that your new team are going to be able to mach the sales in the beginning, that your old team is achieving, so having a different payment structure in place is the smartest idea here. A failure to do this will not encourage the new member of staff and many companies may find that they lose the talent which they have found, because of the way that they are trying to pay them.
Giving the Extra Push
Sales companies have to support all of their staff, all of the time, and always be looking to try and take them to the next level. This is why supporting it is so important that companies have accelerator percentages built into their sales comp plan. This basically ensures that those good sellers do not get stuck in a rut, but instead that they continue to improve so that they can move into the next sales band, which will then pay a much higher commission percentage than what they have been earning already. This is about turning killers into assassins on the sales floor and this will help the company to really start to bring in the big bucks. Having these various sales and percentage levels makes sure that everyone is being motivated and incentivized at all times.
Having read Josh’s piece, it would appear that these are the three key areas where so many businesses fall down with their sales comp plan.
