Sales Compensation Consultants for sales compensation plans

Sales Compensation

TopMark creates and implements sales compensation plans that align, calibrate and sensitize sales compensation to: business objectives; sales strategy; sales roles; performance; and the competitive marketplace.

Our experience and successes span the full sales compensation plan design
process - creation through successful implementation.

Benchmarking and
custom-designed sales compensation surveys
Bonus and commission plan design
Compensation of
non-traditional sales roles
Sales contest and recognition program design
Current situation assessment
Deferred compensation
design and funding
Sales compensation plan testing and detailing
Longer-term incentive design
Measurement of sales compensation plan and incentive effectiveness

Participant communication
Sales compensation plan competitiveness
Sales compensation plan objective and strategy development
Sales compensation plan transition and change management
Post-acquisition sales force integration
Quota and goal setting
Retention incentive design
Development and evaluation of sales compensation plan administration solutions
Monitoring sales compensation plan effectiveness

Best-practice companies have high performance sales cultures. They're intolerant of, and pay stingily for, below goal performance. They under-reward low performance and aggressively reward high performance, creating incentive payout differentiation.

Best-practice companies realize that they can raise their overall performance by achieving a better mix of high and low performers - offsetting any potential increase in sales compensation plan cost through higher overall productivity. And, they know that under-rewarding low performance encourages those individuals to improve their performance or voluntarily exit - "pruning the tree" of low performers and providing management with opportunities for upgrading selling talent.

Sales compensation plans that reward the right performance have the following design and plan management attributes:

Sales Performance Measures	Growth- and profit-oriented, emphasizing product or category results and account-penetration.
Sales Incentive Mix and Leverage	Substantial proportion of sales compensation at risk. Elevated incentive payout opportunities at "excellent" and "outstanding" performance levels.
Sales Performance Thresholds	Fit tightly to growth objectives and territory/account histories.
Sales Incentive Payout at Threshold Performance	.10 to .25 of incentive payout at quota performance.
Performance-based Sales Incentive Payout Discrimination	Incentive payout at outstanding performance vs. incentive payout at quota or on-goal performance: 3x to 4x Incentive payout at outstanding performance vs. payout at minimum acceptable performance: 14x to 25x
Sales Compensation Plan Build Process	Design subjected to rigorous testing of performance alignment, calibration and payout economics - focusing on "critical to retain" high performers and segment of the selling population that can elevate its performance.
Quota Setting	Stretch but fair and attainable quotas connected to business imperatives and verified against territory/account histories and the market.
Sales Performance Tracking	Able to attribute performance results to the appropriate individual and/or team, regardless of the cross-functional nature of account management or satisfaction tasks.

site designd, hosted, and maintained by pabodie design studios