Editor's Note: Sales - and sales compensation - plans positioned to drive success? What would Zig Ziglar do? Margaret O'Hanlon channels the famous encourager and shares ideas about what we can learn from him.
Zig Ziglar was a good friend of salespeople. His unflagging optimism will be missed. While most people in sales adore their life work, they will admit that it is very tough emotionally. When losing is considered an opportunity, you know that it takes a very special person to love the work. When winning is based on your ability to build relationships, a truth that good salespeople know, the ups are affirming but the downs can feel like it's all about you.
hat's why Zig Ziglar's quotes are well loved. "If you dream it then you can achieve it." A real pro knows you've got to learn from each sales encounter. If you do it well, trust between you and your client will turn into mutual satisfaction, which is another way of describing a sale isn't it?
Effective sales are relationship-based and so are effective sales compensation plans. That's why the "transactional" communications that are so often used to explain sales compensation plans -- here's the formula, notice the threshold and multipliers, etc. -- will not leverage sales goals as successfully as you might hope.
Human nature needs to be taken into account. Sales reps won't truly understand their quotas until their first incentive check. They'll nod their head at the sales meeting but muddle through until that check. Then the questions come. Questions that will be far be too late for those 1st Q numbers.
Look beyond your high performers to build sales. Fast forward to your payout dates, and think about what your core performers will need to get there. Most sales comp is based on complex measures. Salespeople are often faced with aggregate quotas achieved through a range of sub quotas or targets. Knowing the plan formula won't help sales reps identify interdependencies between targets or understand how to develop priorities that align with the overall sales strategy. Plan ahead to turn core performers into high performers by giving them tactical and strategic insights to increase their results.
Communication on your sales plan really matters, both to your relationships with your sales force and to your numbers. Don't assume your typical sales compensation explanations are building relationships or delivering the best results. Admit that your human nature makes it difficult to get beyond your own feelings about each of the sales people.
One of Zig Ziglar's most well-loved sales quotes is, "You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want." A good description of sales compensation and sales management, don't you think?
Margaret O'Hanlon, CCP brings deep expertise to discussions on employee pay, performance management, career development and communications at the Café. Her firm, re:Think Consulting, provides market pay information and designs base salary structures, incentive plans, career paths and their implementation plans. Earlier, she was a Principal at Willis Towers Watson. Margaret is a Board member of the Bay Area Compensation Association (BACA). She coauthored the popular eBook, Everything You Do (in Compensation) Is Communications, a toolkit that all practitioners can find at https://gumroad.com/l/everythingiscommunication.
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