Empower Your IT Sales Team with Efficient Sales Performance Management for IT

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hi my name is Kevin gray I'm a product marketing manager at Vera sent an IBM company thank you for joining this session an overview of sales performance management today I'm going to spend the next 20 or 30 minutes talking about what sales performance management or SPM really is how it fits into the technology ecosystem as well as how an SPF solution can really streamline the business processes around territory management quota planning and incentive compensation management will also look at some of the key drivers that are making organizations look at sales performance management and implementing a solution to an SPM solution and finally we'll wrap up around a round of discussion around how organizations that have deployed an SPM solution have gained better business intelligence improve the accuracy of commission spend and really how they've taken advantage of SPM to distribute management reports that drive informed decisions and greater performance in the sales organization to begin I want to just call out that sales performance management has typically been owned by the sales sales of Finance and Human Resources lines of business so it's a set of business processes that that sales and finance and HR can take it you know can use sales performance management to help streamline those business processes however the data that really comes out of sales performance management has really significantly improved other lines of business in their decision-making their analytical reporting and that sort of thing so the data that comes out provides useful insight to the overall organization it's not just sales finance and HR that's benefiting from this it's all across the the entire organization all lines of business so how does sales performance management align with smarter analytics or the IBM Smarter analytics initiative smarter analytics IBM Smarter analytics really is made up of four key themes or goals in under the smarter analytics initiative and so what I want to talk about is how does sales performance management really align to those those those goals under smarter analytics so if you take the first one grow routine and satisfied customers sales performance management allows you to design plans that will drive behaviors of their salespeople to help you grow your business to help you retain and satisfy all your customers based on the plans that the sales reps are actually working towards and those plans can be aligned to what the overall organization sales strategy is so if you're moving into new accounts if you're trying to retain customers if you're trying to build relationships we can build comp plans in sales performance management that will help you drive that growth the second one is increased operational efficiencies and this is really the core of mo of sales performance management and what we mean is is paying more accurate incentive compensation reducing the errors many organizations are still using Excel to manage their comp plans and we'll talk a little bit more about that as we move through this presentation but it's really about reducing errors error rates increasing the speed of processing compensation cycles some organizations are taking 2-3 weeks to get through the business process of paying their people they're calculating commissions paying them handling acquired disputes we can using sales performance management really increase or streamline the increase operational efficiencies by streamlining those business processes the third one under smarter analytics is really transforming financial processes and many organizations are moving away from a standard revenue type comp plan where you know a sales rep will generate X amount of revenue dollars and we pay a certain percentage against those that revenue there are very simple plans and more organizations are trying to hold sales reps and their sales teams more accountable to generating more profit watching the margins on on their sales and we can design plans under sales performance management that will help help motivate the sales staff to do those activities as well as having the ability to forecast you know accurately forecast commission spend revenue generated you know we're we're word is we're we're performing well in specific territories or regions it's really around you know having a true impact on the financial aspects of the organization and then the fourth one is really manage risk fraud and regulatory compliance and how sales performance management can really align with that goal is to be able to meet and put in place better controls better better ways to audit confident the the entire compensation process so how did an inquiry get resolved why did we pay extra Commission or why did we take away Commission did drawers you know some sales rep take a draw at the beginning of the period did they pen you know was it recovered when we calculate Commission's there may be a hold on that commission before before we can pay that commission payout to the salesperson we need to make sure that the performance of the organization is still doing well three months in after that that after that calculation so after that period so a lot of the banks a lot of the insurance financial institutions have to meet these business days regulations and and legislation and in certainty sales performance management can help manage that risk that fraud those though that compliance level so under sales performance management there's four key business processes that I want to define here and the first one is really around territory management where do we sell and who do we give credit to so it's really about managing territories territory definitions assigning those territory definitions making sure that they're fair territories that they're equitable for the sales team realigning territories should we need to throughout the year things like that so managing territories optimizing those territories and and really it's about where do we sell and who do we give credit to for selling our products the next one business process under SPM is really quota planning how much do we need to sell so setting out good quotas accurate quotas at the beginning of the year maintaining those folders adjusting those quotas at an individual level at a team level at a region level managing those quotas throughout the year and that's really all about how much do we need to sell to meet our targets so if we're setting our targets for the end at the beginning of the year we want to try to meet those targets by the by the end of the year how can we manage those quotas and distribute those quotas through the sales sales team to make sure that that we are on target to meet those to meet the meet our objectives our revenue objectives and the third third business process under sales performance management is really around channel management so this is it can be a very complex business process as well as the others who is eligible to sell a product so there may be training that's a sales rep has to take there may be certification that they need to maintain they may you know there may be indirect sales there may be direct sales there may be inside sales reps insurance for example has agents and brokers that we have to manage so it's all about who is eligible to sell the product that we have in our organization or inner sales sales salesman's and then the last one is is really the core of SPM and that's calculating incentive compensation so what do we pay people to sell it so designing good plans that are going to motivate good sales behavior that will align to our strategy or sales strategy whether that be breaking into new accounts breaking into new verticals launching new products it's really about designing good plans that are going to manage or drive behavior of the sales team and then calculating what do we pay people for selling those products and across all of those business processes and they can be very complex we want to make sure that we're monitoring and evaluating the performance of each one of these so are we are we on target for for you know the quarters that we have set how are how are the territories doing so are we in jeopardy in any particular territory do we need to realign a territory do we need to allocate new resources into territory to meet those targets do we need to manage temporary coverage in those territories so looking at all of those things making sure that the channel is selling the products that would that they're eligible to sell and no one's no one's selling products that they may not be certified in or may not be trained upon and then and then watching what our Commission spend is so reporting scenario management and analysis spreads right across all of these business processes and we definitely want to take a look at how can we take xtour achill data how we're doing today or yesterday I mean so leading up to this you know maybe we're at the end of the year and we're moving into the next year we want to do some scenario management or or forecasting so that we can adjust those plans so that we can adjust the quotas we can set realistic territory or more equitable territories and really kind of correct what we may have done in the past so it's really about monitoring and evaluating the performance of the sales organization and so how does that all fit into the technology ecosystem in an organization well organizations enterprise organizations have many applications out there they have lots of data out there big data stored in their ERP system CRM or HR system or other system maybe there's industry solutions out there that that contain specific engine industry data it's about taking all that big data bringing it into to a consolidated view and processing that through a the sales performance management process and underlying all of that data is really things like designing good data models managing workflows for approval processes automating in data imports automating calculations scheduling those calculations to run through all of these different four business processes that fall under under SPM and as a result of that it's turning it into useful outcomes and what we mean by useful outcomes is really about you know publishing the accurate payments out to payroll and integrating with a payroll system Publishing out good and clean data back into our crm solutions managing our DGL accounts for finance and and really taking that data whatever it might be that's coming out of sales performance and using BI tools you know that may be able to analyze the data better improve the Precision's and improve the performance of the sales organization so tools like Cognos or tm-1 can be used to take the data from that that is published out of sales performance management and make you know analyze that data further and better better decisions moving forward so under the sales are sorry I under I be M smarter analytics it's really about taking big data turning it into some some useful outcome that the organization can benefit from and so what are some of the the activities that lie within territory management quota planning and incentive comp and so I'm not going to go through all of these but you can see or get a flavor of what types of activities kind of fall into these extremely complex business processes so there's strategy and plan design there's plan set up and administrating those plans there's managing the whole compensation process and reporting and making taking a further deep dive or analysis on the data and making corrective actions so under these four buckets what categories what activities kind of take place are setting the sales strategy so sales optimi say I want to go into these verticals I want to launch new products I want to retain customers what is the sales strategy and making sure that based on that sales strategy we have good sales coverage you know the proper proper sales roles proper sales coverage within all of our territories we also want to look at how we're going to measure the success of the sales strategy so how are we going to evaluate a sales rep how are we going to evaluate a product specialist and in defining what those measures might look like we want to as a sales operations team we want to make sure that we have good accurate have budgeting for Commission spend and optimizing our territories making sure that our salespeople are equipped to get to the accounts that when they need to making sure that their territories are defined equitable and fair throughout the the territory sales territory other sales operation type of activities might be setting appropriate quotas designing a good quote strategy aligning those quotas with the territories and distributing those quotas managing the hierarchies what we mean by that is is as people move within the sales organization we need to manage who they report to and what territory they're assigned to and what geography they belong to we also want to manage new product hierarchies so maybe we categorize our hierarchies for products in one way with with a product family and the product and accessories to that product and maybe we could find those hierarchies differently in different regions our customer hierarchy is another good example where our customers located maybe we want to divide those customers into enterprise accounts to mid market accounts so very complex managing these hierarchies sales ops will also define territories and assign those territories what does a territory look like not from just the geographic perspective but what products belong into those territories are we selling you know those territories at a and you know defining those territories at a zip code level or just a region level lots of complexity in that as well as crediting rules so how do people get credited for selling within those territories and then you know designing a good plan and distributing that plan out to your sales people you know to take a look at to agree to to sign off on and managing that whole processes process and then you move into more of the compensation and reporting and analytics piece and often where these activities lie are really in the finance or or comp team you know finance or HR maybe owns the comp process but it's essentially calculating good accurate commissions in making sure that the crediting rules have been applied for every sale to calculate the payment and distribute that payment handle any inquiries and disputes about what a sales rep may have been paid in a particular payment or period and then finally just you know what adjustments need to be made do we need to you know did someone get overpaid in the last period and we need to make an adjustment to their payout for them for the current period under reporting analytics and correction what we mean by correction is not so much we need to correct the the Commission payment but it's really taking corrective action that that we can we once we've looked at the results and objectives taking corrective actions and making sure that we're in alignment with the say overall sales strategy that was set in the beginning other activities under under reporting and analytics is really taking a look at earning estimation so how much is a sales rep going if we keep trending this way how much our azar count compensation earnings going to be in next period the following period at the end end of the year and making sure that we're monitoring that we also want to look at forecasting and modeling so if we change our plans how does that impact commissions how does that increase revenue so we want to be able to model some changes out there roll those out quickly and be adaptable to the market and then finally there's there's always going to be audited tracking and compliance and risk so we want to make sure that we're reporting on those so why did we pay somebody an extra thousand dollars in a particular period as a manual adjustment what was the reason for that it was an inquiry dispute what did they put forth more effort in a particular sale and we want to be able to track that so that we pass our audit audit our audits our internal audits our external audits and then finally coaching so looking at the data looking at who sold who our top performers who are our bottom performance entering you know identifying those bottom performers so that we can roll out new training programs mentoring programs and adjust to make them that say that those salespeople into better performers top performers so the question is is how the sales management I'm sorry how is sales compensation managed really today and often what we hear is how tough can it really be we're cutting checks were calculating Commission's cutting checks and making sure that those checks are accurate but when you take everything into account are we flexible for change did the market change I'll be able to change our plans did the territories that we defined in the beginning of the year are they really working out are they equitable are they optimized can be a very complex process did we set accurate quotas in the beginning do we need to make adjustments with the plans that we designed is the the sales reps reeling through Suzy astok about how they're they're selling the products how they're earning their commissions can we deliver timely and insightful reports can we can we manage that whole process can we handle inquiry disputes questions that are coming from the sales sales team on the way they're there they're paying out and obviously we're always expected to do this with less headcount you know let's just get get it done it can't be that hard but it really is those processes can be very complex and so when you look at all of those things these four processes are very you know key to to the success of the source sales organization as well as being very complex to manage and so today the way organizations are really managing comp commit compensation and performance of the sales sales organization well through CSO insights who perform often perform you know analysis in this space and in commissions and performance management what they're tracked what their their analysis revealed in a 2011 study is that 24-hour sorry 54% of organizations are still managing complex we've worked with organizations that have hundreds if not thousands of spreadsheets with very complex calculations two or three people managing that process can be very cumbersome very hard to manage but 54% of organizations are still doing it this way now 22% have actually moved into a homegrown solution so whether that be Microsoft Access maybe it's a custom code coded application that they've developed internally we worked with an insurance company that manages all their comp programs on an old COBOL legacy system that you know is very you know difficult to make changes a whole significant number of staff managing that as developers when there is a change they're not able to adapt to those changes quickly it's really these things are really forcing organizations or making organizations take a serious look at an SPM solution so you know 14% of organizations out there now that through this study is really have really moved on to commercial software and realizing the benefit of a sales performance management solution so it's a huge huge market out there still looking at a lot of organizations still wanting to adopt commercial software and then of course there's always manual and and unknown in the in the study that comes through so you know it can be a very tough business process and and we recognize the pain that organizations are feeling through these business processes so some in analyst quotes these are actually from Gartner market scope Gartner watches Gartner's a research firm that watches the sales performance management space and what they what they say here there's three quotes here that organizations you know in terms of compensation spend on as a percentage of their annual revenues up 11.5% so they're spending 11.5% in commissions for their revenues of the revenues that they've generated and the second quote is really you know recognizing that organizations that have adopted SPM technologies they tend to outperform those that don't they make they set retainment of quota or sorry they achieve higher attainment of quota more reps making quota higher win rates on their deals and and definitely increasing their revenues and then the final quote from this study by Gardner was really around reducing errors so 90% of the organizations that have adopted SDM technologies have reported back that they've made a reduction in errors by more than 90% and then reduced processing time which is a huge one many organizations as I said earlier are taken to three weeks to go through these processes pay out Commission's calculate the Commission's managing acquired disputes they've they've reported back that they've they've reduced their processing times by more than 40% and then by implementing a sales performance management solution there's a reduction in IT admin staff this'll the technology is is streamlining these business processes there's less dependency on IT it's owned by the business and and many of these organizations are coming back saying that we've read actually reduced our staffing by more than 50% so what are some of the key drivers that are you know making organizations look at sales performance management as a viable solution to streamline these these business processes well we can really categorize them into these three three groups here the first one efficiency and accuracy organizations want to reduce the errors the the amount of overpayment they're they're calculating and commissions they want to shorten the time cycle the cycle times for calculating Commission's you know the time it takes to resolve issue inquiry disputes the time it takes to calculate the Commission is the time time it takes to validate those commissions they also want to replace all technology so spreadsheets they want to you know are a homegrown solution another driver is really around business enablement a lot of cop is is managed you know with IT groups or development staff or you know a group of people within the comp team that understand the the Excel spreadsheets very well and so they want the entire business to be enabled not just sales and and commit comp teams but the entire organization so maybe the organization's going through a merger or acquisition we've got to realign plans making sure that everyone's paid the same in equitable territories they we have to redistribute quotas and and look at our quotas through it through the merger and acquisition we may want to take a look at how we're doing last year from historical data and design new compensation plans or even from period to period you know depending on the practice within the organization often often it may wait to the end of the year you take a look at the historical data did we meet our objectives are they aligned with the sales goals how do we perform as an organization taking a look at that valuable historical data and looking at how we can design new plans for the following year or maybe the the company is just doing a reorg you know people are reporting differently people territories are different you know lots impacted but the bottom line is is the bot the business really wants to own the the process of sales performance management or the process associated with sales performance management and then the third one is really risk reduction we mentioned this or have before you know maybe the organization failed an internal audit there's lots going on out there around legislation and in controls around how we pay Commission Federal Reserve and in the dodd-frank Bob Franks report what's coming out of there is holding payments back on commissions for banks financial institutions insurance companies lots driving that in in you know we you know organizations are really looking for solutions that can manage the compliance the regulatory things that are governing their comp plans and comp programs so bears are sort so sales performance management really spans across all industries and all sizes so here's some customers that we have today customer references you're looking at large insurance companies like Farmers Insurance where they're you know paying eighty thousand people out of our RS PM solution at any given time and Elavon they have huge so Elavon is really not a household name but it they essentially calculate Commission or calculate or process credit cards and debit cards that sort of thing and pay commissions on those transactions so huge data volumes you know you've got waste management out there that really pay their truck drivers for delivering waste and the quality of customer customer you know satisfaction lots of banks here there's it really expands across all of the different verticals in sizes of organizations so what makes Varys and different the very sent PM solution well it's really around four key things from from our competitors so we we believe we have the best sales performance management product in the market today you know in terms of business user friendly people are able to configure the solution from a business user from the lines of business there's no custom code required it's lots of visual elements to manage it drag-and-drop wizards things like that so it's very intuitive easy to use we have the you know the Verisign product is actually very flexible in the way we design our comp plans our MBOs we can incorporate bonuses we can do spiffs or contests but but we can adapt to change so if those comp plans aren't working halfway through the year it's very easy to make those changes in the SPM solution the Barisan solution we meet you know again meeting changes you know from all different perspectives quota changes territory management changes so it's a very flexible solution the way the data model is designed embarrassing is that you know we don't believe that we need to build our solution in a way that organizations have to fit the data model that we've designed we go out to our customers and say what how do you want to format your data and we can bring that data into a very flexible data model you know with a very little effort to to accommodate the customers business and the way they are doing their business rather than the solution dictating how they they need to format their data the third one is really around being a very integrated product so we have a calculation engine that's very high performing ETL tools workflow scheduling reporting all of this is part of the Barisan SPM solution it's not a group of third party applications that are all bolted together to try to come up with a solution it is a all encompassing integrative product that we've developed to manage all of these different different capabilities which really lowers the cost of ownership you don't have to buy additional licenses for other tools to do reporting for example etc and then the fourth one one that we're very very proud about if Aricent is around our performance and scalability of our solutions so we have been up again you know up with customers where they say there's 50 million a hundred million in transactions that they need to process with very complex territory and crediting rules and lots of salespeople and you know these are huge volume data transactional volumes that we have to process through sales performance management so the solution has been designed to be high-performing as additional users get added to the system more pays grow it's very scalable without without impacting you know the overall experience of our end users import calculation times and etc they're very high-performing and outperform any of our competitors so let's take a look at a sales rep how does a sales rep use sales performance management really to gain better business insight these are things that I called up before improve accuracy and commissions you know generate reports etc well a sales rep is going to come into the system and they're gonna want to look at Commission statements they're gonna want to look at you know what their earnings were they weren't they they may need to reach back and say what did I what was my plan agreement look like how am I you know what's expected of me when did I sign off on that how do I handle inquiry disputes through to the resolution you know process so if I have a problem with the way I'm being as a sales rep being commissioned how should I talk to who should communicate that who should look into a resolution I want to be able to know how I'm performing and being a sales rep we all know sales reps are very competitive so as a sales rep I'm going to want to look at how I'm stacking up against the performance of my team but there's lots of other things that we want to look at here and in sales performance management we want to be able to manage my pipeline in the CRM I want to know what activities are are close to being closed you know where do I put my effort I might want to take a look at self calculators or estimators and you know the whole sales performance management the very sense solution can can include you know includes all of these types of activities and tools so in the next screen here we we are actually looking at a sales representative dashboard and here you'll see that you know there's key metrics on here that we're showing to that sales rep they can log in from any web browser anywhere in the world take a look at you know key key performance indicators like what are my year-to-date sales how is my quota doing how am I tracking against my team or ranking against my team for your date today entertainment you know how close am I getting to to meeting my targets but most you know the one thing I'm mostly interested in as a sales rep is what does my commission look like so what's my gross Commission did I take it were there any adjustments in this period made today today do I have any drawers outstanding that I that need to be paid back am I going to get an MBO or a bonus here you know things like this as well as taking a look at my pipeline and top opportunity this this screenshot this dashboard that I'm showing you today is just a highlight of what a sales rep might look at in our solution in the Varys and sales performance management solution however this can be designed any way you know our customers want or you know as a customer you want we really you know whatever key metrics that you want to place on a dashboard we can put in you know in the sake of time I can't take you through all of the solution here but hopefully this gives you an idea of what a sales rep might look at in the solution but then there's a sales manager they they have the same they use the same or interact with with the solution as well and saying some same needs but but they may want to look at different metrics they want to look at the performance of you know and how they're being measured up in the sales performance management solution they want visibility of the whole sales organization or at least you know where they're responsible for what their territory looks like and how its performing they want to be able to manage those territory assignments they may you know may lose a rap and hire a new rapper you know on board a new rap reassign the the territory to that particular person or maybe somebody's left for for a few weeks you know on vacation and we got to manage the coverage of their territory while they're out there could be you know several sales roles collaborating on a sales deal and I've got a as a sales manager manage the credit assignments for those maybe there's some splits maybe there's some overrides I might have to adjust some quotas depending on how I'm tracking I want to monitor you know the attainment levels of my sales sales reps and I definitely want to look at my top performers and bottom performance so as you can see the sales managers dashboard looks looks similar to a sales reps in this case but it shows different metrics so again we can Verisign can be designed or configured to display whatever metrics that for each individual role whether it be a sales rep a sales manager territory manager so really as a sales representative I'm just looking at the health of the organization are we meeting our targets within you know the the different regions are you know in terms of quota attainment who are my top performers who are my bottom performers you know where am i paying where my year-to-date sales levels within each region I want to look at the average-sized deal that we're selling we want to look at gross margin as well as the pipeline activities and you can see that I'm displaying Pike pipeline activities a little bit different here what we're looking at is the pipeline activities for the entire sales team that reports into the sales manager so where whereas the last screenshot we showed the sales manager looking at their particular pipeline and their top opportunities so again it can be very customized the way or configured the way that is most applicable to the sales to the to the organization where we're working with so I'm just going to go on to the next the next role is really around the compensation administer administrator so you know how do they interact with the Verisign solution compensating comp admin's will want to set up the territories and crediting rules that were designed by the sales ops they want to manage the the plans any changes to those plans so whether it be new new rates or a new structure for the plan they want to model plans for the next year and create what if scenarios in the solution they may want to calculate and distribute commission statements through through at the end of each period you know and and build reports and analyzing the results so these are all key activities of a common man and so when we take a look at the way a comp inman would look or HR professional would use our use the Verisign solution you're looking at a screenshot of how they they might manage the overall solution and the way the way the varus and SPM solution has been designed is that we can display process lists so once the solution is installed and set up we want to make it as easy to navigate easy to maintain plans inquiries disputes etc is possible for the business user and so what you're looking at is what we call process lists and within our solution and you're looking at a month and process list so this is just one example of how a comp and min would interact you know at the end of the period they may have to import some some data from the upstream systems your ERP or CRM solution there is a process list for you know an activity in the process list to do that and they may have to review some of those transactions they may have to change some payee information enter some plan overrides or you know manual adjustments whatever it might be these process lists are in alignment with each customers process and you can create you know for the month end for the quarter end for the annual annual lock down of your Commission's planning ma you know scenarios and models we define these business process in alignment with the with the organization that we're working with and you know to help streamline their unique business processes so very easy to navigate and use for a comp amendment and the business line of business day to take ownership of the solution so that concludes our presentation today hopefully this gave you a good overview of what sales performance management is how vert ascent comes to the market with a with a very robust and very user-friendly solution that is high-performing scalable for for our customers and and provide you a good overview of what sales performance management is thank you for joining me today