The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation: How to Design and Implement Plans That Work
About this ebook
Incentive programs are seductively powerful but complicated instruments. Without careful planning and implementation, they can be too stingy to motivate, too complex to understand, too quick to reward mediocre results, and too difficult to implement. The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation is a practical, accessible, detailed roadmap to building a compensation system that gets it right by creating motivating incentives that produce positive outcomes.
Packed with hundreds of real-life examples of what works and what doesn't, this important guide helps you:
- Understand the value of building an incentive plan that is aligned with your company's goals and culture.
- Avoid the common trap of overusing incentives to solve too many sales management problems.
- Measure the effectiveness of your current incentive program, employing easy-to-use tools and metrics for pinpointing its weak spots.
- Design a compensation plan that attracts and retains successful salespeople, including guidelines for determining the correct pay level, the best salary incentive mix, the proper performance measures, and the right performance payout relationship.
- Select an incentive compensation plan that works for your organization -- then test the plan before it is launched.
- Set territory-level goals that are fair and realistic, and avoid overpaying the sales force or demoralizing salespeople by having difficult goals or not fairly assigned.
- Create and manage sales contests, SPIFFs (Special Performance Incentive for Field Force), and recognition programs that consistently deliver the intended results.
- Manage a successful transition to a new compensation plan and build efficient administration systems to support your plan.
Filled with ready-to-use formulas and assessment tools and a wealth of insights from frontline sales managers and executives, The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation is your hands-on, easy-to-read playbook for crucially important decisions.
About the author
Andris (Andy) Zoltners is Founder and Co-Chairman of ZS Associates, and a Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he had been a faculty member for more than 30 years. In 1983, Andy and former Kellogg colleague, Prabhakant Sinha, founded ZS Associates, a global leader in sales and marketing consulting, outsourcing, software and technology. Andy’s areas of expertise are sales force strategy; sales force effectiveness; sales force size, structure and deployment; and sales force compensation. He has assisted over 250 companies in over 20 countries and across a wide range of industries including healthcare, technology, transportation, and financial services. Andy has spoken at numerous conferences, has taught sales force topics to several thousand Executive, M.B.A. and Ph.D. students, and continues to teach executives at the Kellogg School of Management. He has published more than 40 academic articles, edited two books on Marketing Models, and has co-authored a series of books on sales force management.
Prabhakhant (Prabha) Sinha is Founder and Co-Chairman of ZS Associates. He was an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management until 1987. In 1983, Prabha and Kellogg colleague, Andris Zoltners, founded ZS Associates, a global leader in sales and marketing consulting, outsourcing, software and technology. Prabha has assisted over 250 firms in North America, Europe and Asia with issues related to sales force strategy and sales effectiveness. He continues to teach executives at the India School of Business and the Gordon Institute of Business Science. He has published over 30 academic articles and has co-authored a series of books on sales force management.
Sally Lorimer is a business writer, and was previously a Principal at ZS Associates where she consulted with numerous companies on sales strategy, sales force effectiveness, and territory alignment. Together with ZS founders Andris Zoltners and Prabhakhant Sinha, Sally has co-authored of a series of books on sales force management and several academic articles. Sally received her Master of Management degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and is also a graduate of the University of Michigan.
