Best Practices in Commission Pay Plans

Make sure your commission plan is effective in attracting and retaining key employees.

There are few management tools that work as well in recruiting, directing, motivating, and retaining salespeople as a strong commission plan. This is critical because salespeople are often highly paid, remote from headquarters, and entrusted with customer relationships (very valuable assets). A properly designed commission plan clearly and personally communicates the strategy of the organization to resources that have a direct impact on financial performance. The design and deployment of a new commission plan can create a 5-10 percent uplift in revenue in a single year. However, mistakes in commission plan design are quite common and can have disastrous effects on performance. Help your company avoid sales force turnover, dissatisfied customers, runaway expense, and in the worst cases, litigation by understanding the core elements and decisions in commission design, management, and optimization. Simon-Kucher's Sales Effectiveness Practice leader will introduce a framework to help make large, complex, cross-functional decisions about commissions smaller and simpler. This material will also use real company examples to highlight best and worst practices.

Faculty

Scott Sands

Simon, Kucher & Partners