By: David Johnston, President, Sales Resource Group
From Problem to Solution...
In the early 1990's there were very few people that understood the mechanics of sales compensation design and even fewer still that had experience in how to manage it. In our consulting with some of the largest and best known sales organizations in North America at that time, I realized that most organizations struggled with not just designing plans but also administering them.
We would work with them to design the "right" plans for their organization going forward. Two years later we would get a call and they were all messed up again. They did not have the tools to design new plans on their own, they could not make changes to the existing plans and heaven forbid that they acquire a new business or start a new sales team. They needed "tools" that could assist them to manage the increasingly complex sales environment and to track and administer performance of the field sales force.
In order to support our clients, I sat down and created the specifications for a piece of software that would support their design and information needs. After having searching out and having many different software development firms offer to take the idea and develop it and then pay me a small royalty on each sale, I put the specs away and continued to consult. It was not until 2000, when the Y2K issues surfaced and companies rushed to install new financial systems, none of which accommodated the needs of the sales organization. This is when I saw my clients really begin to struggle again to cope with the complexities in their plans and the internal sales environment. It was then that I hired two developers to create my vision of an application to support our customer's sales compensation needs.
Much has changed in the last nine years. The application, PlanIt Sales Compensation has gone through three versions, one desktop and two SaaS versions. PlanIt was first created as a Windows desktop version that allowed companies to design and create customized sales compensation plans for each salesperson based upon their personal targets and compensation. After its launch, clients loved the application (and a couple still use this version for plan documents) but needed a lot more in the way of tracking and measurement of performance. The functionality and software requirements of clients over that time period have undergone significant change. The need for accurate and consistent payouts of incentive compensation has blossomed to include management of draws, guarantees, contests, manual adjustment, quota changes, automated approval workflow and many more "bells and whistles". The need for flexibility has required a move to user tools and dashboards that remove the need to understand how the software works and I.T support to an environment where a user can log on and within a few clicks can access their data and reports that enable them to, in a real-time environment, manage sales performance.
As we are moving into the future, the application is continuing to evolve to incorporate integration features with other software platforms, applications that address the capability of the salespeople and their managers to perform as tools to support their development and sales execution. Stay tuned as we embrace the future and drive sales performance. Did somebody say voice recognition and holographic imaging??????? Well, maybe not yet.
From Problem to Solution...
In the early 1990's there were very few people that understood the mechanics of sales compensation design and even fewer still that had experience in how to manage it. In our consulting with some of the largest and best known sales organizations in North America at that time, I realized that most organizations struggled with not just designing plans but also administering them.
We would work with them to design the "right" plans for their organization going forward. Two years later we would get a call and they were all messed up again. They did not have the tools to design new plans on their own, they could not make changes to the existing plans and heaven forbid that they acquire a new business or start a new sales team. They needed "tools" that could assist them to manage the increasingly complex sales environment and to track and administer performance of the field sales force.In order to support our clients, I sat down and created the specifications for a piece of software that would support their design and information needs. After having searching out and having many different software development firms offer to take the idea and develop it and then pay me a small royalty on each sale, I put the specs away and continued to consult. It was not until 2000, when the Y2K issues surfaced and companies rushed to install new financial systems, none of which accommodated the needs of the sales organization. This is when I saw my clients really begin to struggle again to cope with the complexities in their plans and the internal sales environment. It was then that I hired two developers to create my vision of an application to support our customer's sales compensation needs.
Much has changed in the last nine years. The application, PlanIt Sales Compensation has gone through three versions, one desktop and two SaaS versions. PlanIt was first created as a Windows desktop version that allowed companies to design and create customized sales compensation plans for each salesperson based upon their personal targets and compensation. After its launch, clients loved the application (and a couple still use this version for plan documents) but needed a lot more in the way of tracking and measurement of performance. The functionality and software requirements of clients over that time period have undergone significant change. The need for accurate and consistent payouts of incentive compensation has blossomed to include management of draws, guarantees, contests, manual adjustment, quota changes, automated approval workflow and many more "bells and whistles". The need for flexibility has required a move to user tools and dashboards that remove the need to understand how the software works and I.T support to an environment where a user can log on and within a few clicks can access their data and reports that enable them to, in a real-time environment, manage sales performance.
As we are moving into the future, the application is continuing to evolve to incorporate integration features with other software platforms, applications that address the capability of the salespeople and their managers to perform as tools to support their development and sales execution. Stay tuned as we embrace the future and drive sales performance. Did somebody say voice recognition and holographic imaging??????? Well, maybe not yet.
