Motivation is the center of war for the commercial. Finding new contracts while sustaining existing business is an integral part of the business. Also, how can you motivate your sales force and encourage them to give their best?
According to a recent Monster study, compensation is the first motivator for employees globally, with more than 27% saying that's the first reason for accepting and keeping a job. In that regard, how can compensation help you to motivate your salespeople? How do these new forms of retribution, mixing quality and quantity, act as real motivators?
In this article, an analysis of the close relationship between remuneration and motivation and its impact on commercial populations
1) INDIVIDUAL INCENTIVE COMPENSATION: THE FIRST LEVER OF COMMERCIAL MOTIVATION
"Individual variable compensation schemes are one of the main levers for motivating and stimulating performance and efficiency," said Grégoire Forbin, partner in charge of the Strategy & Transformation practice - Cognizant Business Consulting.
Individual compensation : a balance between bonuses on quantitative and qualitative objectives
It would be dangerous to continue to objectify salespeople based solely on their quantitative performance. Indeed, the idea being to motivate salespeople to make sales on a regular basis, the fact of rewarding a salesperson only against individual criteria, punctual and purely quantitative, can be counterproductive in certain situations.
In a commercial strategy highlighting the "repeat business", that is to say, succeed in opening new accounts and above all in keeping them as loyal as possible, offer a financial incentive based solely on "one- shots "does not participate in the real business development of the company. This quantity-based system of individual compensation will encourage salespeople to focus on large sales transactions and thus neglect customer loyalty work. In another side, it is proved that this type of organization, very individualistic, could harm the collective work within a team. Indeed, as the elements that value cooperation between employees are not taken into account in the calculation of individual remuneration, it is natural to ask why then to invest in collective actions that ultimately will not impact the individual payment!
The aim is to propose a system of individual variable pay based as well on bonuses on quantitative objectives as on more qualitative aspects of the work valuing the behavior of the salesperson within a team or a department.
Thus, the idea is to add to the quantitative individual criteria, other evaluation grids, to highlight aspects involving more the behavior of the commercial. For example, measuring your involvement in a team or within the company, taking initiatives on cross-cutting projects, engaging in the organization, sharing information with colleagues, working with others other services are criteria that can be used to assess the quality of an employee's overall investment. As these criteria are still difficult to measure today, it is necessary to use objective elements to evaluate the actions performed by an employee. Tools such as evaluation grids can provide a first objective approach.
The right balance between the introduction of quantitative bonuses and bonuses based on the quality of the work provided is a significant motivation for salespeople. In addition, individual bonuses promoting collective work and personal commitment on a daily basis encourage employees to give the best of themselves while keeping a certain desire to invest. Granting more autonomy to the employee while caring about his quality of life at work, represents today, the first motivation lever and in fine performance in business.
2) SHOULD WE LINK THE VARIABLE PAY TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION?
Pay a salesperson based on customer satisfaction: effective?
Indexing the variable of a salesperson directly to a level of customer satisfaction is risky if the evaluation of the level of satisfaction is not rigorous and objective. In order to be able to decide an individual variable remuneration on customer satisfaction criteria, one must first be able to measure this level of satisfaction in the most precise way possible. Offering a customer satisfaction questionnaire once a year is absolutely not enough. It is also necessary to have enough number of answers so that the evaluation is the least biased possible. That's why it's usually easier to do in BtoC than in BtoB where there are fewer customers.
Keepnig this in mind, it would be more appropriate to evaluate more qualitative criteria describing the quality of the customer relationship, such as, among other things, the customer departure rate, the return rate, the post-purchase service recommendation rate, etc.
To another extent, objectifying salespeople according to their individual as well as collective performance allows them to grasp more concretely the extent of possible bonuses, thus making them more efficient in their work. Indeed, offering a financial incentive only correlated to the overall figures of a group remains unvisible for employees who do not really feel concerned by these premiums disconnected from their daily lives.
Motivating salespeople therefore takes several forms, from individual variable remuneration, through collective remuneration promoting teamwork, to the integration of qualitative elements rewarding the involvement and cooperation of the employee in the organization, etc. ... You have a lot of levers to operate to motivate your employees!
