00:00 - 00:15

You know , Larry , you've been a global sales leader for a very long time , have dealt with different size organizations. How important is it for the organization when it comes to developing a sales comp plan ?

00:15 - 01:36

I really feel like the development of the sales compensation plan is , is actually key to , building a successful team and having a successful business. And so I take the sales compensation plan really , really seriously.

There are different parts of the compensation plan. It's the quota development.

It's , are we going to pay on margin ? Are we going to pay on revenue ? And it is how frequently are we going to pay ? Are we going to pay bonuses ? How are we going to accelerate payment ? There's just so many factors to sales comp that are , are important. And if you get it right , it really drives the behavior of the salespeople.

And you want it to use it as a tool to drive the behavior of salespeople. So I just think it's really important to get that piece right.

And it does involve talking to , you know , if you're the sales leader , you , the CEO , the general manager , the operations people all have to be a part of this discussion with sales comp because whatever you decide to do , that's the behavior you're going to get from the salespeople. And it needs to reflect pieces of everybody's business.

So it Yeah. I just think it's key to the success of the company to get the sales comp right.

01:36 - 01:53

It's really interesting how many professionals are talking about , like , mid quarter change or a comp plan change. I see companies do that.

Would you ever part of those mid changes , or how do you feel about that stuff with organizations ? Because I could tell you the candidates do not like it.

01:53 - 04:04

Yeah. And they should.

Okay. You know , when you change a comp plan midstream , you only do that out of , like I'm I don't wanna use the word desperation , but you do it because it just has to be done.

And , and so who , I , I won't say you never do it because there are times where if you have totally screwed up your original comp plan and you're running out of money as a business because you're way overpaying your sales reps for revenue that's not bringing in margin dollars to pay it. You have to make a change.

So , but you have to really be in bad shape to do that. So you could tweak a comp plan mid midstream , but like you could decide that one of the products solutions that you guys are selling is generating higher margins than expected.

So let's drive the sellers that way by tweaking the comp plan and maybe giving them more quota credit for that particular product. Interesting.

Absolutely. You can do this in 2 different ways.

The comp plan is the comp plan , and you could say , right , we're gonna have a contest now. And you can tweak.

It's still the comp plan , but it's outside of the comp plan rule. So we're gonna have a contest now and try to drive our sellers toward selling this particular solution.

The other way is to actually tweak the comp plan and say , you know , we're paying 8% of revenue on that particular product. We're gonna pay 9 or something like that.

So you can do it. Either way , I I'd rather tweak the cop plan than have a whole lot of different contests.

Yeah. But I've been in organizations where that did contests , that really rewarded , solutions higher during certain parts of the year and , and have that work very effective.

So either way , as long as when you're tweaking it , you're not tweaking it so people get paid less. You if you're gonna tweak it , you always wanna tweak it so people get paid more.

04:04 - 04:11

Now as far as ,...