Sales Comp challenge — Taming the End-of-Period Push

[Go here for sticky wickets #1-#3.]

The problem: Sales peak at the end of each period.

Sales Comp Impact:

Source of the Problem: The problem results from two primary factors:

• Period end order push by senior management, product management, or finance.
• Customers wait, knowing that discounting will be available at period end.

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Upstream Solutions:

• Revenue Management: Arrest behavior by stakeholders that drive period revenue spiking. Resist excessive sales pressure.
• Discounting: Reduce reliance on period-end discounting practices.

Sales Comp Solution

• Early Bird Incentives: Pay additional incentives for off-peak sales production.
• Payout Accelerators: Eliminate period incentive “accelerators.” Move to an annual accelerator number.

Managers Need Your Help

“When you ask your managers about quotas and other compensation issues, they will always say, ‘We’ve got this totally under control.’ Just ask them to see the plan,” says Cichelli. “You’ll get ‘Ah, it’s under revision’ or ‘We can’t find it right now.'” Bottom line, the managers need your help. Be proactive and give them a hand before things are set in stone and the plan won’t work.

Quotas, mega orders, period end push; compensation is never easy. “Maintain internal equity and external competitiveness and control turnover, but still meet management’s demands for lowered costs.” That’s a challenge. Many of the professionals we serve find helpful answers to all their compensation questions at Compensation.BLR.com, BLR‘s comprehensive compensation website.

And there’s great news: The site has just been revamped in two important ways. First, compliance focus information has been updated to include the latest on COBRA, Lilly Ledbetter, and FMLA. Second, user features are enhanced to make the site even quicker to respond to your particular needs:

• Topics Navigator—Lets you drill down by topical areas to get to the right data fast.
• Customizable Homepage—Can be configured to display whatever content you want to see most often.
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• Quick Links—Enable you to quickly navigate to all the new and updated content areas.

The services provided by this unique tool include:

• Localized Salary Finder. Based on reliable research among thousands of employers, here are pay scales (including 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles) for hundreds of commonly held jobs, from line worker to president of the company. The data are customized for your state and metro area, your industry, and your company size, so you can base your salaries on what’s offered in your specific market, not nationally.

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Try BLR‘s all-in-one compensation website, Compensation.BLR.com, and get a complimentary special report, Top 100 FLSA Overtime Q&As, no matter what you decide. Find out more.

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• State and Federal Wage-Hour and Other Legal Advice. Plain-English explanations of wage-hour and other compensation and benefits-related law at both federal and state levels. “State” means the laws of your state because the site is customized to your use. (Other states can be added at a modest extra charge.)
• Job Descriptions. The website provides them by the hundreds, already written, legally reviewed, and compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandate that essential job functions be separated from those less critical. All descriptions carry employment grade levels to current norms—another huge time-saver.
• Merit Increase, Salary, and Benefits Surveys. The service includes the results of three surveys a year. Results for exempt and nonexempt employees are reported separately.
• Performance Appraisal Wizard. Takes the “dreaded” out of performance appraisal.
• Weekly E-zine and Best Practices Advice. Comp and benefits news updated daily (as is the whole site).
• “Ask the Experts” Service. E-mail a question to our editors and get a personalized response within 3 business days.

If we sound as if we’re high on the program, it’s because we are. For about $3 a working day, the help it offers to those with compensation responsibilities is enormous.

This one’s definitely worth a look, which you can get by clicking the links below.

Click here to get more information or start a no-cost trial and get a complimentary special report!

In yesterday’s Advisor, we covered three of David Cichelli’s “sticky wickets” for sales compensation pros. Today, sticky wicket number four—end-of-period sales push—plus an introduction to the all-in-one compensation website.