A well-crafted sales compensation plan is crucial for building a motivated, high-performing team that consistently achieves targets. In contrast, a poorly designed or overlooked plan can lead to missed key goals and expensive setbacks.

Designing and assessing a sales compensation plan can be challenging due to its complexity and the significant impact on sales success. Following a thorough, best-practice approach may be time-consuming, but it’s essential to avoid missing targets or losing top talent..

Here are ten strategies to optimize your sales compensation plan, aligning it with business objectives and empowering your team:

1. Align plan with strategy and job roles.

Start with a clear strategy and a model that identifies needed sales resources like field sales, telesales and partners. For each role, identify critical success factors, detailed descriptions and necessary competencies. Make sure base pay, draw and performance measures correspond with the role's current functions, not outdated job descriptions. This way, you can set accurate target pay, a balanced pay mix and appropriate performance measures, and ensure incentives reflect each role's key responsibilities. 

2. Match pay mix to job role

Tailoring the pay mix — the ratio of base salary to incentive at target performance — involves balancing the ratio of base salary to incentives in a way that aligns with the specific responsibilities, objectives and challenges of the role. Consider account management versus acquisition, buying complexity and sales cycle length when setting the mix. An overly aggressive mix won't suit long and complex sales cycles while a conservative one might stifle performance in quick acquisition cycles. Ensure top sales reps earn more than average performers without overpaying underperformers.

3. Focus on relevant performance measures.

Use measures that reflect priorities for each role with financial and strategic metrics. Keep them simple and focused, with up to three primary metrics that indicate progress on reaching business goals. Best-in-class plans use a maximum of three primary metrics, each accounting for at least 10% of the target incentive.

4. Establish a clear link between pay and performance.

Your sales compensation plan should communicate business goals and reward their achievement. Determine if the plan rewards revenue, profit, growth or retention. Also, ensure it does not unintentionally encourage counterproductive behaviors, such as discounting, territory competition, quota manipulation and the like. The performance results should be clearly tied to the incentive measures and pay with critical success metrics.

5. Promote teamwork and minimize conflict.

In complex sales environments, the plan needs to foster cooperation among direct sales and channels, instead of creating friction. Encourage collaboration across sales roles and minimize conflict among product lines, geographies, segments and sales processes. Test the mechanics to ensure the metrics are not too high level for individuals to influence.

6. Refine plan mechanics.

Plan mechanics define how performance translates into pay. They should be simple, intuitive and suited with pay levels for each territory and job. Eliminate outdated commission structures that skew incentives and ensure the plan offers clear direction for the sales team.

7. Understand plan economics.

Analyze the total cost of sales, not just overall compensation costs. Examine costs by strategy, product, customer segment, geography and job type to ensure they align with your sales strategy.

8. Set market-based quotas.

Avoid quotas based solely on historical performance, which may misrepresent opportunities. Quotas should be market-based and account for territory size, growth rates and market potential. Ensure objectives are equitably distributed and gain the sales team's input on quota setting.

9. Build organizational buy-in.

Involve key stakeholders early and often in the plan's evaluation, design and implementation. A good plan executed effectively beats a great plan implemented poorly. Conduct regular audits to verify understanding, behavior and results.

10. Follow a proven design process.

Plan redesigns require more than minor adjustments. Begin with the sales strategy and role definitions before proceeding to the payout details. Evaluate qualitatively and quantitatively, then implement and refine the plan using a systematic approach. Regular evaluation cycles will help proactively manage the plan's success.

These simple strategies will help to optimize your plan to drive results, foster collaboration and support your organization's success.

Looking for a sales incentive compensation solution? Our consultants provide a proven plan design process to ensure your company produces a compensation plan that attracts, retains and motivates top sales talent. Connect with us today to get started.