A sales compensation plan is one of the main focus areas for sales leaders, and so you should be investing some time to prepare for the 2022 sales compensation plan. While each business is different and their sales compensation plan may vary, we're going to address some of the building blocks of any sales compensation plan and what you need to keep in mind.
The two critical elements of a sales compensation plan are incentive plan eligibility and plan guiding principles.
Eligibility
This is self-explanatory in a broader sense. As a simple rule of thumb, we can say that salespeople who are into customer-facing roles and directly influence the buying decision of a customer are eligible for this incentive plan. We also need to consider that an individual or a role needs to spend at least one-half of their time in this customer-influencing role to be eligible for the incentive.
Guiding principles
Once the eligibility is determined, you need to have guiding principles or unbiased guideposts to make decision-making easier. Having unbiased guiding principles is extremely important to make it a fair game for everyone. Your guiding principle should also be linked back to the overall company strategy. To make your guiding principle effective, be as specific as possible. For example, "pay based on performance" might not be that effective. But specifying it like top 10%, performers receive twice the target incentive amount" makes more sense. Being specific with the criteria helps you to reduce ambiguity among the team.
Reward team-based sales
Modern selling requires complete teamwork to close a deal. So it makes sense to compensate each of the team members based on their contribution. For example, you can see that pre-sales, SMEs, and engineers are taking the bigger shares while the role of the traditional new business rep is getting redefined. As a result, their incentive plans will get renewed, and they will be increasingly rewarded for their role.
Significant sales trends to watch out and embrace for 2022
Finally, to pay a handsome sales compensation to your team, you need to improve your company's bottom line. Watch out for these trends that will certainly give a boost to your revenue.
Automate to increase efficiency
Salespeople have lots to do, so they must focus on automation to free their time from the menial tasks. Did you know salespeople spend almost 64% of their time clearing their appointment scheduling, updating their to-do list, or simply responding to emails?
Automation in sales helps salespeople to ditch all the time-consuming tasks and focus their time more on nurturing leads or closing a sale, or such important tasks that can be on hold due to the lack of time.
Focus on value-based selling
Most B2B companies try to shove down deals to their customers where buyers are considered cash machines to boost sales. This attitude is now changing, and businesses are embracing a more value-based selling approach. 87% of high-growth companies take the value-based approach. That is compared to 45% of enterprises that have negative growth and do not have the same sales strategy. That's because these high-growth companies resorted to showing customers the benefits they can gain from their products or solution rather than focusing only on hard selling.
Key Takeaway
Knowing the latest sales trends and sales compensation plan will help you to prepare better for the future. While embracing the latest sales trends can help you improve your bottom line, incorporating the sales compensation trends in your compensation plan design will ensure that the best people in your sales team get rewarded, make them happy, and keep them motivated at work.