E-Book

Understand Your Commissions Data to Drive Behavior and Hit Your Numbers

5 Things Every Head of Sales Should Know About Sales Performance Data

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You live by the numbers. Hitting quotas and sales forecasts is often the only metric that matters. But the reality is you don’t always make your numbers. And, you may not even know why.

Gaining deeper insight about your sales team’s performance is available through another well of information: commissions data. Getting inside those numbers can help you hit targets with better accuracy.

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In this ebook, you’ll learn the five things you should know about your sales commission data, why it matters and how to optimize it. Topics include:

Keep reading to discover the insights you may be missing, and get back to hitting and exceeding your sales goals.

Introduction

Real-time leaderboards

1

SPIFF optimization

2

Who is selling what and when

3

Quota analysis and its impact on numbers

Effectiveness of commissions rules

4 5

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Real-time leaderboards

Do you know right now how your team is performing? If not, then how will you know if your team is going to hit its numbers? It could be a guess. But it doesn’t have to be. With real-time data at your fingertips, you can monitor exactly how your team is performing. You’ll know what’s in your reps’ pipeline and have info on closed-won business readily available. You can share who is leading and who is struggling. Recognize the leaders, and mentor those struggling.

It may be that your underperformers need training or help, which they may not ask for. Drive the right behaviors to get reps to sell more to stay on top of the leaderboard or get off the bottom.

You can also do comparisons of different teams, whether by location or product in your leaderboards. This may present opportunities for cross-team collaboration to boost everyone’s numbers.

You need a platform that reports in real-time and allows you to intuitively drop, drag and visualize your data. No manual processes or delays in information.

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SPIFF optimization

How effective are your SPIFFs? You may think all you need to answer this question is what was sold and paid out. That’s part of it, but it’s not the whole story. Often, you only have a minimal budget to incent your sales staff. So, you need to use what you have to drive the behavior you want most.

To truly optimize SPIFFs, rely on prescriptive recommendations generated by Augmented Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Model these recommendations to understand how certain SPIFFs will impact sales. You don’t have to guess. With easy comparisons and trend lines visible, you’ll know when to use SPIFFs.

SPIFFs should be that extra bump for sales to hit numbers, not something they’re always chasing. The last thing you want is for them to be a distraction. That’s why it’s imperative to understand what effect a SPIFF will have before you even launch it. Start with what behavior you want the SPIFF to drive—you need deals to close before the end of the year or you need staff to focus on a specific product—then look at your models to see how to get there.

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Who is selling what and when

Every person on your team is going to have different strengths and weaknesses. When you manage an enterprise team, you’ll need tools to determine who is selling what and when.

Drill into this to understand performance. It’s like peeling an onion. There are many layers to commissions data. Depending on many factors, the commission for salesperson A and salesperson B, even when selling the same product, may be different. They could be on different teams or be at different levels. It’s not an apples to apples comparison.

You need a system that allows you to view team performance from different angles.

The when is also important. What’s motivating timeliness? Is your sales cycle long? Could some factors improve this and move salespeople to close sooner? Maybe, they are sandbagging, waiting on a SPIFF or new commission rule? Ultimately, you can’t allow your staff to exploit incentives solely to their favor. Enhance every coaching conversation and accelerate sales performance with AI-powered recommendations tailored for each salesperson to drive the best outcomes for all parties.

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Effectiveness of commissions rules

Is your commissions structure so complicated that you have hundreds of rules? Do you know which ones work? What if you changed them, could you model what may take place? Lots of questions, and they all need to be answered. Without this information, you may just have superfluous rules. Try to eliminate confusion and barriers. Does it really make sense to have so many rules? It can be effective to have different rules for different employees, especially relating to tenure and hierarchy, too much complexity defeats the purpose.

Commissions rules are necessary. These rules should drive results. You need to evaluate and change the rules intelligently.

The best way to find clarity among the chaos is using AI to optimize your compensation plans. Understand what is truely motivating staff and when you’re just paying for deals. Act on prescriptive recommendations - adjusting quotas, payout rates or eliminating entire rules - to align incentives to the desired sales behaviors and outcomes. To do such a task manually, is not viable. It would take months and be irrelevant when a conclusion is reached. AI continuously learns and delivers this in real-time.

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Quota analysis

Quotas are the cornerstone of your sales plan. They need to be set to be reasonable and realistic, but they are typically something that’s going to keep moving up, not down. So, do you know what happens when the quota changes? Wouldn’t you like to know before you change it? You can with the right tools.

Quotas are tied to the specific revenue goals of your business. You should be able to find out who needs to sell what to meet or exceed quota. Yet many organizations struggle with quota accuracy. When quotas aren’t data-driven and viewed in a holistic manner, mistakes happen. Numbers and expectations fall flat. And what happens when quotas aren’t set in a timely manner? Has your team headed into a new year with no compensation plan? When quotas aren’t managed and analyzed properly, complexity, errors and churn will overshadow efforts.

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As a sales leader, you have the ability and responsibility to influence outcomes. You can’t control all the end results of your staff’s performance. What you can do is focus on what you can control, and that’s the activities and commissions that are capable of driving behavior. These controllable parts need not be a guess or based on lots of unknowns.

Control what you can with the right tools

When data is accessible and aggregated on a central platform, you have the tools you need. Use Analytics to quickly visualize real-time sales performance. Rely on Augmented Intelligence to personalize every coaching experience and optimize your incentives. Model prescriptive plan recommendations and make quick, confident and impactful decisions to hit your numbers. You can get there with Intelligent Commissions, a powerful engine to fuel real-time leaderboards, SPIFF optimization, knowing who is selling what and when, commission rules effectiveness, and quota analysis. Get in touch today for a demo.

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