I am a self-proclaimed SaaS tool aficionado. I could go on and on about email sequencing tools (Outreach, Salesloft, Groove, Apollo), call recording/coaching software (ExecVision Chorus, Gong), chat bots (Simpu, Intercom, Drift), and all of the niche sales performance management solutions out there (QuotaPath, Xactly).

Instead of playing favorites and talking about the tools I use every day, I’m going to offer some tips on what to think about when building out your organization’s tech stack.

Understand your organization’s needs

This is probably the most important thing to think about when building your company’s tech stack. You will need to straddle the line of being proactive and reactive, which typically is dependent on the solution the tool provides. When it comes to prioritizing your tech stack, a good approach is having constant communication with your stakeholders.

Talk to reps and management to understand what inefficiencies they’re currently dealing with or how they feel they could be doing their job better. You’ll likely find that there are commonalities in the responses you get. Take those and prioritize accordingly.

If your team expresses a need for something and you act on it, it will help immensely with my next point–ensuring organization-wide buy-in.

Ensure organization-wide buy-in

Something I learned when building out the tech stack for the Customer Success team at my previous company was that it’s imperative to have buy-in from everyone.

From individual contributors to directors, each team member should understand how the solution you’ve chosen addresses the current or future pain the organization may deal with. Throughout the implementation process, it is important to ensure management is encouraging their team to adopt the new solution. Also, leverage the vendor’s resources, as it is just as important to them to have a seamless onboarding and organization-wide adoption.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint

You don’t need to build your entire tech stack at one time. In fact, you should do your best to avoid implementing multiple solutions at a time.

Introducing your organization to multiple new tools and processes at one time could cause tool fatigue. Tool fatigue leads to confusion and frustration for everyone in the organization. Reps and managers won’t know what tool does what, taking them away from closing deals or servicing their customers, and you’ll be met with a barrage of questions about the new tools.

Don’t be afraid to take a chance on an up-and-comer

One of my favorite things about building a tech stack is finding the newcomer to the space and watching them grow into a unicorn. It almost feels like buying a penny stock and watching them become a Fortune 500 company right before your eyes.

There are many benefits to choosing an up-and-comer over an incumbent. One being, you’ll typically get a better deal, since the company is trying to grow its customer base. You’ll also have a greater voice in influencing the company’s product roadmap and get early access to cutting-edge features.

Sure, there are risks to choosing an up-and-comer, but if you’re able to take some risks in your tech stack, it may pay massive dividends in the long-run.

Allocate your budget wisely

To tie together some of my previous points, remember that you don’t need all of the shiniest and most expensive tools to have the tech stack that makes the most sense for your organization.

Do your homework throughout the buying process. You can find the up-and-comers in the space and save some money. Also, understand the features that would provide the most value for your organization–you don’t need to overbuy a tool that gives you functionality that won’t be used.

Lastly, negotiate and buy at the right time. There will always be wiggle room in the buying process–try to get a price that makes sense for your budget.

What’s the ROI?

I’ll leave you with one last thing to consider when building out your organization’s tech stack. Ask yourself, ‘what is the ROI of introducing this tool?’

If you aren’t able to figure it out yourself, ask the vendor to provide you with reference customers and ask them how using the vendor added value to their company. If the ROI you come up with isn’t substantial enough, it may not make sense to add that tool to your tech stack right now.

To bring things full circle, I have the pleasure of talking to QuotaPath customers and users for the majority of my day. Oftentimes we hear that these companies formerly relied on spreadsheets or other cumbersome manual processes when calculating commissions. Most are thrilled to adopt a new sales performance management tool like QuotaPath into their tech stack because it helps them dramatically reduce time and automate the commission process. If you haven’t checked us out, it’s free to sign up and play around. Let me know what you think and if there’s anything I can help you with!

Tell me about your journey that lead you to QuotaPath?

So many Paths! (no pun intended). I studied Design and Public Relations & Communication in college. I started my career as a designer at a large agency working with well-established brands across all sorts of industries. From there, I went and worked in-house at a SaaS company as a product designer and asked to transition to marketing when that team was created. I am happiest when I’m able to work on several projects and contribute broadly, not just delivering on design, but also copywriting and overall strategy.

I was freelancing full-time when I saw that Ralph (Head of Design) posted a part-time marketing role in the Philly Design Slack channel. I had heard a lot about Ralph, we’d worked at and interviewed at several places around the same time, but never synced to working together. After 5 years of our paths almost crossing, I wanted to meet him. So I reached out and asked if he’d like to get lunch.

The Marketing Designer role looked interesting because I was freelancing at the time and some part-time, steady income sounded great. We got lunch and hit it off. After that, I did the design challenge, which I really enjoyed because I was able to combine data visualizations skills I had from my intern days, illustration, branding and creative marketing. It was kind of a perfect storm of things for me.

What was your interview process like?

The interview process was an informal lunch at The Foodery in Rittenhouse, Ralph and I chatted about design, personal interests and the role at QuotaPath. I believe the other side of the story to be Ralph leaving feeling confident that I’d fit the role and he wanted to hire me — and I felt the same, I wanted to work with him. The process remained casual. The meeting with Ralph face-to-face for an impromptu interview was followed by a phone screen with Darby (Product Marketing Manager). And then a call with AJ (CEO) and with Graham (Head of Growth). Everything was done remotely, so that was really nice. The process felt quick.

Tell me about QuotaPath’s design challenge.

The design challenge was to create a social ad and a product email. The prompt had suggestions on copy but it was pretty open-ended and there were a couple of options for me to choose from depending on what sparked my imagination and my vision creatively.

The ad prompt had messaging that said, “Eat sushi in Japan, not the gas station.” So I designed a sushi roll that had been turned into an illustrative earnings chart. I like that opportunity because I felt like I could really display my creative chops, and illustration was something I was interested in developing skill-wise. For the email, I have a lot of experience from my time working at an email marketing company and agencies. The copy was about a pretty standard product update, so I jazzed it up by creating a .gif for the ad which had a little bug getting squashed. I’m still proud of both of the executions and would like to roll the concepts into something else someday! But next time, with a better understanding of the brand and guidelines.

What’s your favorite part about the culture at QuotaPath?

The people. I’m pretty sure everybody else answered similarly when asked this question! But really, everyone is so friendly and passionate and a little bit different from me, so I feel like I’m always getting a new, interesting perspective that challenges my way of thinking. And that’s true for conversations on a professional and personal level. I’m constantly learning stuff from others, and I love that.

Explain your role at QuotaPath. How does your skill set fit onto the marketing team?

So tying this back to when I had bounced between agencies and SaaS software, I feel like Quotapath gives me the opportunity to contribute a lot and grow. Design is something that comes naturally to me – I can whip things up quickly. But, I also think I have more strategic value to add in copywriting, coming up with campaign ideas, and other marketing knowledge that I’ve just absorbed through various channels. Design has always been a priority, but I enjoy doing those other little things.

With our mighty startup marketing squad, I think we complement each other and have a great balance of diverse skillsets. We somehow manage to get lots of sh*t done and people don’t realize how lean our team is. I was at a conference in December, and someone had asked to meet with me for a mentorship opportunity. She thought I oversaw a creative team of about 20 people and was shocked to find out it was just three of us behind everything QuotaPath produces marketing-wise.

What’s the communication style on the marketing team?

It’s pretty fluid. I feel like I talk to them all day, every day. Though Slack and in person, video conferencing. We’re very in touch.

What about the tools you use on the marketing team?

So many tools! I use the Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Slack, I take notes in Evernote, listen to Spotify all day, use Zoom to connect with and see our remote friends, calendar, HubSpot, Asana, Clubhouse, etc. It’s a large stack, but staying organized helps me produce the best work I can.

Also books, which is a different kind of tool. I’m reading “Obviously Awesome” right now. It’s a great read, but I wish I could read faster. It’s hard to carve out time for that. And not to forget, a pen and paper. I bought sketchbooks for the first time in a while when we were redoing the onboarding emails. I always think I can do everything digitally in Illustrator, but it’s really way more effective for me to start on pen and paper.

What excites you most about the work QuotaPath is doing?

I see a lot of potential in the tool. When I was contract and freelancing, I was using it to keep track of my own pipeline and income. I was able to level-set easily against my monthly income goals. Having not been exposed to anything sales-related prior to working at Quotapath, I didn’t know about this whole world. It’s pretty fascinating though. I enjoy what we call “hacking” or “breaking” Quotapath to find other uses for it. I think it is so powerful and can be helpful for all kinds of people who may not be in traditional sales roles. I think anybody who uses spreadsheets, or markets or sells in some way, can find value in it.

If you could give advice to anyone who is looking to grow their career as a designer, what would it be?

Make sure to look at and absorb things, really study design in the real world – why and what things work, why certain decisions were probably made. Look at billboards and display ads, movie posters, books. I find it interesting to notice and point out those principles because they repeat themselves so often. A strong foundation like that will really set you up for success in whatever you want to do. It’s a low effort way to absorb constant inspiration because design is literally everywhere.

Tell me about your best experience or day at QuotaPath.

My favorite days are when something ships and I get to track the response to it. Whether that’d be an email campaign where I’m checking open rates and click-through rates obsessively. Or, when I finally figured out how to link all our systems to attribute sources our users come from. I love watching the #new-user Slack channel. The Girl Scout cookie post by AJ kept me buzzing for 2-3 days. I like understanding what’s resonating and getting a better understanding of salespeople and the content they’re looking for. And of course, seeing something I had a hand in being successful is always really exciting.

This is a touchy subject and one that no one likes to talk about. Ideally, if you follow my advice on interviewing salespeople you won’t be in this predicament very often. But no matter how careful you are with your sales interviewing and sales hiring, you’ll end up with a bad hire from time to time. Or, even worse, a good sales hire who has gone downhill.

Let me start by saying there are a lot of laws around firing people. No part of this blog should be construed as legal advice. Ensure you know all the laws in your area before firing someone. Also, as you’ll see below, I’m not one for euphemisms. So don’t expect any “letting go”, “moving on”, etc. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t show compassion and sympathy for someone being fired. It’s a gut-wrenching experience all around, so the more you can ease the pain by following these steps, the better off everyone will be.

Understand that firing someone is a failing of yours

As a manager, if you have to terminate someone you hired it is a failing on your end. You either didn’t provide them with the sales training they needed to be successful, didn’t explain to them well enough what it takes to be successful, or shouldn’t have hired them in the first place. This isn’t an excuse and doesn’t mean you SHOULDN’T fire them. Instead, it allows you to learn from the experience and find ways to improve your sales management skills. After every time you do fire someone, you should do an exercise where you review where the failings were and how you can prevent them in the future.

Never surprise them

A trope in movies is when our protagonist is called into their boss’s office only to be fired without warning and for seemingly no reason. This happens in real life too and is one of the least professional things that a sales manager can do. Someone who is fired should be given fair warning and the opportunity to improve well before it actually happens. In sales, this is fairly simple: if they’re struggling they should be put on a Performance Improvement Plan (often called a PIP) with clear, measurable goals. This Performance Improvement Plan should also explain the outcome if they don’t achieve the goals laid out.

Be direct, don’t sugar-coat it

“Unfortunately, I have some bad news: we have to terminate your employment at COMPANY.” Those should be the first words out of your mouth when firing someone. Not “it’s been great working with you but…” Don’t lead with “so this is hard to say, and it’s not something I want to have to do…” Get to the point, you can give them reassurances and explain all the reasons why (which they should know) afterward. If you lead out with these mealy-mouthed excuses, you’re prolonging the point and building the suspense. It also gives them false hope that this is simply a reprimand and not an ultimatum.

Time it correctly

No one wants to get fired and then have to walk out onto the floor surrounded by their peers to clean out their desk. It’s humiliating and demoralizing for the team. Try to plan it around a team-wide meeting, the end of the day, or a time when no one will be at their desks.

Be transparent with everyone

This is twofold. First, make it clear to the person being fired exactly why they will no longer be working for you. They should know all the reasons because it will allow them to focus on improving those things to prevent this from happening again. Secondly (and again, being aware of employment laws) you should inform your team that the person no longer works on the team and that they are welcome to discuss with you 1 on 1. If you hold off or let people guess as to what happened, rumors will begin flying.

Again, this is an uncomfortable situation for everyone involved, but if you handle it professionally and with compassion, everyone should walk away respecting the process. I’ve even had people come back to me months after firing them thanking me because they were able to find a new job that aligned with their skill sets better.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever encountered a bad situation with your compensation. If you work in sales, you probably have a story or two (or ten!). We asked the sales community what some of their less-than-ideal experiences were when it comes to sales compensation plans and commissions. Some of the stories were shocking, while others are far too common. All of them resonated. Some common themes we saw were:

• Lack of trust
• Lack of transparency
• Poorly designed sales compensation plans
• Being paid incorrectly on commissions

We know this is a sensitive topic, so all of the responses will remain anonymous. Let’s dive in!

Lack of trust

One salesperson didn’t get their new comp plan for the year until March. This didn’t happen just one time, but many times. “It really sucked for the sellers.”

After being told to trust the sales org, this rep experienced incorrect payout 60% of the time. Most of the time they’d get paid their next commissions without the previous being fixed.

This one’s a doozy. Someone was once told they were going to get a ~$4,000 cash bonus for killing it this quarter but instead, they got a Domino’s pizza… “Expensive pepperonis!”

Lack of transparency

After a number of suspicious months, one Senior Business Development Executive asked their accounting team for the information used to calculate commissions. The reply they got was, “We don’t give that information to salespeople.” They felt they had been lied to during their onboarding about the “transparency” in the commission process, especially since they were the #2 seller in the sales organization.

One Enterprise Account Executive experienced a lack of visibility or communication around being paid out on a large deal. They were paid 30 days late on it.

An entire sales organization of over 100 sales reps got their bonus “ACH debited” from their personal account after the company found a clerical error. The worst part? It was one week before Christmas! “The bottom line was that the lack of transparency is always a morale killer for a sales team.”

Poorly designed sales compensation plans

One manager talked about their experience with a comp plan that had decelerated commission percentages as sales increased. This led to the sales team selling against company interest. “Why bother to close that deal on the last day/week of the month/quarter. If you hold it until the calendar turns, you get paid more on it.”

Doing 110% of their number, only to find that the following year’s comp plan was doubled and the % of each deal halved.

One Account Executive said they org “always” had an excuse for the lack of sales compensation plans. And when they finally rolled it out, quotas had doubled.

Being paid incorrectly on commissions

One rep was told that they were not going to get paid what was on the compensation plan because they totally blew their quota out of the water, more than anyone could have imagined.

We hear about this one happening all the time… If this rep was not keeping track of their own attainment in Google Sheets, they would have missed out on a lot of money from being shorted on their paychecks. “Luckily, they were always happy to right the wrong.”

Unfortunately, these stories are real and happen in sales organizations all the time. A lot of them are reasons for why people seek out a tool like QuotaPath to help calculate and automate commissions. Thanks to everyone who submitted answers! As we’re building features, we want to help solve your specific pain points, so we’d love to hear them.

It calls to question a core tenet of business, but there is a lot of research around whether interviews matter in predicting on-the-job performance. It sounds so bizarre, but companies like Google (which claims that college grades don’t matter), news sources like Bloomberg and NYT, and dozens of academic papers argue that unstructured interviews are no better than flipping a coin at determining whether someone will be successful at their job. The good news about hiring for salespeople is that there is a very clear determiner of success: quota attainment. I believe that if you look for these 5 traits (in no particular order), you’re more likely to hire people who will close more deals.

Curiosity

Good salespeople ask good questions and are actively listening to see if the answer can help them close a deal. It would stand to reason, then, that salespeople who are naturally curious about how the world works are good at asking questions. Focus on how curious someone is by asking them questions about what they’ve been researching or what they’ve learned recently. Alternatively, look on their resume for experiences that are not naturally related to salespeople like a coding boot camp or a certification on yoga instructing.

Example sales interview questions:

• What’s something you learned this week?
• What’s your favorite fun fact?
• Teach me something I don’t know.
• What’s going on in the news right now?

Self Awareness

Salespeople are notorious for being overconfident, bordering arrogant or conceited. That’s why I always look for sales candidates who are very aware of their own strengths and weaknesses (without asking them “what’s your greatest weakness?”). Sometimes, by stepping out of the formality of an interview and asking them how they think the interview is going or asking them what they think of the interview process, you get a candid view of their self-awareness. If they are nervous and they tell me they’re nervous, I’m much more likely to look past the nerves than if they totally ignore it.

Example sales interview questions:

• How do you think this interview is going?
• What will you do if you don’t get this job?
• Do you think you’re the most qualified person for this job?
• What advice would you give yourself walking into this interview?

Coachability

This is a trait that is often repeated as an integral part of good salespeople. If a salesperson comes into a new job refusing to learn your sales methodology, they will become a lone-wolf. Even if they’re successful, this can wreak havoc on your organization as a whole. Not that every person needs to sell the same way, but they need to be open to guidance and feedback. In addition to asking questions about coachability, I’ve found the best way to determine someone’s coachability is to do an exercise where they make a fake cold call to you, you give them feedback, then they do it again. See if they took your feedback seriously.

Example sales interview questions:

• Tell me about a time you were wrong about something and changed your mind.
• When was the last time you did a call review?

Passion

Passion is very important for a high performing seller. Of course, you’re looking for someone who passionately cares about the customer’s needs, someone who passionately cares about your company, someone who passionately cares about hitting quota and making commission checks. However, every sales candidate will tell you that they’re passionate about those things. Instead, I like to see what else they are passionate about. If they can’t get excited about something they care about, I know they won’t be able to get excited about making cold calls!

Example sales interview questions:

• What are you passionate about outside of work?
• What does a perfect weekend day look like to you?

Past Success

This is the most controversial quality I look for in a salesperson because it can be the most misleading. Just because someone is good at selling accounting software doesn’t mean they’re good at selling escalators. However, someone who is focused on being the best seller on the floor is much more likely to see success than someone who is comfortable being middle of the pack. You have to be careful with this, though. I always joke that if you ask a sales candidate where they ranked at their last job, 90% of them will say #1. Instead, I look for a concentration of quota attainment on their resume (bonus points if they can prove it via QuotaPath!). If they have their attainment against quota, it means that they were focused on how well they were doing instead of comparing themselves against someone else.

Example sales interview questions:

• How did you stack rank among your peers at your last job?
• Why weren’t you #1?
• Why weren’t you in last place?

So while a good interview process can’t guarantee you’ll hire only top-performing sales reps, it will certainly help weed out the quota-missing, PIP-needing sales reps we all dread working with.

Have any additional traits of top sellers I’m missing? Send them my way: graham@quotapath.com.

If there’s one thing we will always preach at QuotaPath, it’s the empowerment of sales reps. It’s ingrained in our DNA, product philosophy, and even the way we run our business as a product-led company. The release of our newest feature, MyPath, is built with that same rep-first mentality. It’s an exclusive digital space for reps to track what matters most to them in their career. From daily tasks to long-term savings goals, MyPath empowers sales folks to map, track, and own their sales journey.

MyPath, a tool to empower sales reps

Working in sales means a lot of tracking and measurement: Tracking earnings and quota attainment, metrics like average deal size and win rate, measuring effectiveness of KPI’s like close rate, conversion funnels, and sales cycle.

There are also more personal metrics to track and measure: career aspirations, yearly goals, savings and financial goals, workplace satisfaction, and overall historical career data. Perhaps you’re saving up for an engagement ring or you’re tracking your earnings to make sure you can plan that trip to Bali. While these things remain top of mind for reps, they aren’t usually spoken about out loud.

Enter MyPath. While QuotaPath helps bring clarity to a sales rep’s compensation plan, MyPath allows reps to own the results of their career performance and bridge the success they have in their career to the goals they set in their personal life.

Sales reps deserve the ability to connect effort to reward

Unlike salaried roles in other departments, the success of a salesperson is tied directly to earnings, so more deals = more money. With so much focus being put on the end result, it can be easy to lose sight of the effort to get there. Reps need a way to visualize the motivational aspect of their earnings and how it directly represents success. MyPath allows reps to tangibly see the fruits of their labor, which is not only satisfying but a good indicator of skillsets and strengths.

Sales reps need a way to track achievements

There are a lot of goals that can take longer than one month or one quarter to achieve: saving for a house downpayment, closing $1MM, earning a promotion. MyPath gives sales reps the ability to visualize and keep track of these types of goals. This is currently being addressed in good organizations, just in a disorganized way. Longer-term goals are set but without a way of record-keeping. Sales influencers often talk about the early days in their career and the struggles they experienced, but there’s no record of it. MyPath is a sales rep’s source of truth for accurate earnings and career data that is uninterrupted by changes in roles, promotions, and moving companies.

Sales reps deserve to have a little fun

Life is all about finding meaning in the micro-moments. Working in sales is a hustle and grind and can easily feel like a hamster-wheel environment. Through delightful animations and a Mercury Retrograde tracker, MyPath adds fun and uniqueness to the day-to-day.

Salespeople are master jugglers and multi-taskers, so they’re always looking for ways to automate, organize, and ease their day-to-day lives, both at home and at work. MyPath gives reps a personalized dashboard to organize with the type of information they want to see, all while remaining totally private to them.

Long-term, we envision a portable version of MyPath that reps can take with them from job to job, carrying important career statistics like earnings and attainment, personal goals, a portfolio of logos, notes, and more as they advance through their careers. If you’re not using QuotaPath as your commission management software, sign up for free. And be sure to check out how MyPath can be customized to work just for you.

Salesforce®. If that word sounds familiar, makes you anxious, or is simply a reminder that you need to go update the close dates on your Opportunities, this post is for you.

So, what do QuotaPath and Salesforce have to do with each other? First, let’s break it down:

• Salesforce is best in class for managing prospect relationships, communication, lead tracking, opportunity conversion, and ultimately allowing sales reps, managers, executives, and organizations to measure whether or not they are successfully generating revenue.
• QuotaPath is best in class for tracking earnings and attainment. We empower sales reps, managers, executives, and organizations to understand commissions and bonuses to ultimately measure if they are effectively rewarding their team in a way that successfully generates revenue.

We have a similar mission for our sales software — to help sales reps and businesses to thrive. We’re excited to deliver this integration and we know our users will be too.

Introducing our first CRM integration: Salesforce commission tracking

QuotaPath can now import deals automatically from your Salesforce instance. Whether it’s Opportunities, Demos, Events, Products, or a custom widget that your director of sales ops made up, we can sync it.

This integration allows for one single source of truth for both your attainment and earnings – no more dual entry in multiple tools. You, your manager, and sales ops will all be looking at the same bonus or commission. Less confusion, more time setting demos and closing deals.

We’ve designed our Salesforce integration wizard to be simple and intuitive for sales reps. There’s no complicated logic or code required to get connected. You’re in control. If it takes more than 5 minutes, just let us know and we’ll give you a hand.

The best part? QuotaPath’s integration with Salesforce is totally free. As a product-led company, we strive to make QuotaPath accessible and useable for everyone in a sales organization, from reps to execs. It shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to automatically sync deals from your CRM to your commission tracking software.

And our Salesforce integration is only the beginning! Next, we’ll be working on integrating other popular CRMs so that you can automatically import deals into QuotaPath. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for QuotaPath and start the seamless sync to your Salesforce instance.

“How can I sell more this year?” A question that most sales reps ask themselves at the beginning of every year. According to the Salesforce.com’s, ‘State of Sales’ report, 57% of sales reps expect to miss their quota this year. It is becoming more important than ever to optimize the sales process and stay on top of deals. In this post, we go over 5 New Year’s resolutions that any sales rep can implement to stay ahead of the game and close more deals.

Improve time management

I know, I know. This seems really obvious but, in truth, there are few that make a concerted effort to manage their time as efficiently as possible. Any time you’re spending not closing deals, is time you’re also not earning your commission. One of the best ways to improve time management is to take a few minutes at the start of every day to plan out your strategy for the day.

Create a methodology for how you want to close your deals. Use a data-driven approach to prioritize the leads you think have the highest likelihood of closing a deal with. According to ‘State of Sales’, only 33% of salespeople actually prioritize leads based on their likelihood to buy. Lead prioritization is instead often based on factors like intuition or geography. By prioritizing the deals that are more likely to close, the chances of hitting your quota increase drastically as you now have more time to focus on the harder to close deals.

Emphasize personalization

Buyer standards for what they expect out of sales reps are higher than ever. It’s not enough to just offer lower prices or a good product. Customers are starting to expect a new level of personalization with products they are getting pitched.

As such, qualifying your lead is more important than ever. Make sure that you are actually listening to what the customer is saying. Nothing is more counter-productive than a sales rep that is just ranting about their product without allowing the customer to talk about what they need from you. You can use the information the customer gives you to tailor your sales pitch as a blend of the value your product adds to them along with some personalization. This will lead to a higher success rate on deals closed.

Focus on the customer journey

Elevating the customer experience throughout the entire customer journey is one of the most effective ways to close more deals. In fact, ‘State of Sales’ claims that customer satisfaction is the number one measure of sales success. For this reason, the sales process shouldn’t be complete after closing a deal. The sales rep should also be working with the customer after the deal gets closed to make sure the customer is getting the value they need.

Understand how you are contributing value to your customer

We mentioned in a previous blog post, that a sales rep drastically increases their chances of closing more deals when they have a great understanding of their product. This is due to the fact that the rep needs to be able to display to the customer how they are contributing value. The customer needs to be able to understand exactly how they are going to benefit from your product. The needs of every customer are going to be different so the same exact same pitch is not going to work on everyone. Once you understand the needs of the customer, molding the pitch to fit the customer’s needs allows for a higher success rate.

Utilize new technology

With the advent of new technologies in the sales field, reps have the opportunity to be more productive than ever. A lot of tasks that previously took up a lot of time are now able to be automated effectively. It’s often the case that the highest performing sales reps tend to make use of any technological advantage they can get. In fact, ‘State of Sales’ found that high performing sales reps are 1.6x more likely to use compensation management tools than underperforming reps. QuotaPath is a great way to ditch the manual data entry of spreadsheets and improve your overall efficiency.

If you’re not currently using a compensation management tool or you’re not happy with your current solution, QuotaPath is free and easy to use. Sign up for free here.

Even though it’s possible to change or improve your habits at any time, having a new year seems like a perfect time to do so. It’s a brand new calendar, you’re typically coming off a vacation, and everyone around you will be talking about resolutions. So here are a few ideas for New Year’s resolutions if you manage salespeople.

Coach more, close less

If you manage a sales team, you probably have a background in exceeding your own personal quotas. You’re likely a great salesperson, so when a deal gets stuck for someone on your team it’s second nature to jump in and get it closed. Starting this new year, when your rep is struggling, step back and explain the best way to get it closed. It will help them learn the process and save you time in the long run.

Prioritize your weekly one-on-ones

Don’t let your one-on-one meeting time fall to the wayside. This is a very important block of time for the people on your team, as it’s their time to give feedback and share their voice. Don’t control the flow of the one-on-one, instead focus on what they want to talk about, how they feel they could improve, and what they want to change. If there’s time after they have said everything they want to say, you can jump in and give feedback or tell them what’s on your mind.

Recognize and invest in your teams’ strengths

Say you need to run training on negotiating to kick off 2020, but everyone on the team is tired of your old Powerpoint. This is a perfect opportunity to grab your top negotiator and ask them to run the training. Not only does it make them feel good about being recognized for their skills, but it also allows your team a wider base of knowledge.

Improve transparency and align the team

The best way to keep your team accountable is to measure them. While this can easily grow out of control, (I’m imagining a sales floor filled floor to ceiling with Minority Report style screens) a good amount of transparency is always a good thing.

Take time to reflect. This year, did all of your reps know how they stack up against their peers? Did they know how much each deal was earning them? How close the team was to their team goal? Quick plug for QuotaPath, because with QuotaPath you can see all of that automatically… and free!

Never stop learning

If I’m being honest, I’ve never been a very strong reader. I’m the kind of person who would rather get a Cliffsnotes version of The Great Gatsby than force myself to sit down and focus on it. However, when I started managing people I discovered that if I listen to an audiobook version and read along to a physical book I can fly through books and retain nearly all of it. Most of my management knowledge comes from books, listening to podcasts, reading articles, and meetups with my peers.

If you’re looking to kick off the new year with some books, here is the list from my blog post My favorite sales books: Sales Acceleration Formula, The Challenger Sale, Extreme Ownership, and How I Raised Myself From Failure to Success in Selling.

Remember, New Year’s resolutions are all about improvement, not perfection. That’s why we focus on ways to keep improving, not a hard left turn from the way you’re currently managing your sales team. Get better every single day and by the time next year rolls around you’ll be a totally different manager! If you have some resolutions that have worked for you in the past, I’d love to hear them. You can always email me at graham@quotapath.com.

Changing a sales compensation plan can be a stressful and traumatic event for a sales team. With a new incentive plan comes the risk that you’ll be making less money for doing the same work. This is an understandable concern considering it’s rare that a new comp plan pays you a higher commission rate or your quota goes down. However, with this guide, you can minimize the disruption to the organization and keep your sales reps happy.

When to roll out a new sales compensation plan

In an ideal world, you will want to roll out a new incentive plan during a natural break in business at the end of an earnings period. The best time to roll out a new plan is at the beginning of the calendar year — if your fiscal year doesn’t line up with the calendar year, then use the fiscal calendar.

In some emergency situations, you can roll out a new plan mid-year or even in the middle of a month. However, you should ONLY do this if it’s to improve the plan for your sales reps. Maybe your compensation plan isn’t allowing people to earn what they deserve or an industry disruption makes it impossible to hit quota. In that situation, it’s entirely reasonable to increase commission rates or lower quotas in the middle of the month/quarter.

How to roll out the new comp plan:

Carefully! You should have a deliberate plan for rolling out a new compensation plan otherwise you run the risk of losing control of the messaging.

1. Understand the plan yourself: Ensure that you understand all the moving pieces of the plan and how it impacts your sales reps. If you don’t grasp it, you can’t be expected to explain it to anyone else.
2. Do it all at once: Unless the change in the plan only affects 1 person, discuss the new plan with everyone it affects at once. Otherwise, you risk gossip, conjecture, and misunderstandings.
3. Explain the why: If the quota is going up, explain the business reason for it. If the commission rate on a certain product line is decreasing explain that it’s less profitable. If it’s left up to reps to guess why their plan is changing, they will often have false assumptions.
4. Practice explaining it: My dogs must have a great understanding of lots of different compensation plans given the number of times I’ve used them to practice the intricacies of an incentive plan.
5. Prepare for questions: You don’t want to be caught off guard by any questions you’re asked. It makes the plan look more complex than it is.
6. Give your reps a way to track their attainment and commission: QuotaPath offers an incredibly easy, beautiful and free way to calculate commission and quota attainment. You can create the plan for your team and share it out with them so there are no misunderstandings. It’s simple and easy to create an account and start tracking.

The holiday season is approaching which means it’s time to show the important sales reps in your life how much they mean to you. Staying motivated and keeping morale high during this high-pressure time is so important to end the year strong. So what better way to keep morale up than through thoughtful gift-giving? We’ve compiled a list* of affordable and meaningful gifts to give the salesperson in your life this holiday season.

For the salesperson who likes their morning and afternoon coffee

Temperature coffee mug – This sexy temperature-controlled coffee mug keeps those coffee drinks at just the right temperature, all day long. Adjust the temperature up and down as you wish. Even do it from your smartphone.

For the salesperson who is a great organizer

Blackwing journal – 160 pages of acid-free, ivory paper that comes in dot-grid, blank, or lined. And you can feel good about this purchase because part of Blackwing’s proceeds helps fund art and music education for children and teens.

For the salesperson that appreciates beauty sleep

Silk sleep mask – Wearing this face mask is like sleeping in a dark cave, plus it’s silky smooth and nice on your skin. Pair it with some earplugs and you’ll get the best sleep of your life!

For the salesperson who takes calls on the go

Apple AirPods pro – If they don’t have them yet, they should. These Pro pods have a newly designed for a customizable fit and have noise cancellation and transparency mode.

For the salesperson who loves to stay hydrated

Hydro Flask Wide Mouth Water Bottle – No skimping when it comes to a good water bottle. The Hydroflask keeps cold drinks cold and hot drinks hot for an impressive amount of time. Choose the size and color that you think they’ll like most.

For the salesperson who always brings their pup to work

Casper memory foam dog bed – This memory foam dog bed provides a pressure-relieving and comfortable place for pups to sleep. It comes in three sizes and is easily machine washable. Because our four-legged friends deserve only the best.

For the salesperson who appreciates good desk decor

Hay 120-minute time hourglass – This gorgeous hourglass is the perfect accessory for any desk. It can even be used to time task completion!

For the salesperson with a creative eye

Fujifilm instant wide camera– Who doesn’t enjoy a nostalic instant-film experience?

For the salesperson who is always looking dapper

Woolzies wool drier balls – These eco-friendly drier balls will keep clothes soft, smelling nice, and static-free. They are safe for your clothes and your household. No more toxic drier-sheets, please.

For the salesperson who complains about dry skin in the winter

Desk humidifier – How neat is this USB cactus desk humidifier? It’s portable and easy to carry with you from home to office. Perfect to keep your skin from drying out, for sleeping, and to prevent coughs and sniffles.

*QuotaPath is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by these products. We just think they are great gifts to show some love over the holidays!

Short answer: Almost always, no.

Long answer: Capped commission is a very sensitive and complex subject within sales incentives. Let me first define what I mean by ‘capped commission’.

Capped commission means there is a ceiling of what you can earn when you generate revenue over a certain point. Example: You earn 10% of any revenue you generate up to $1MM in sales per year. Any revenue over $1MM you generate you earn 0% on.

Capped commission is NOT the same thing as a milestone bonus you can only earn once. Example: you earn a $1,000 bonus if you hit your quarterly quota. You don’t earn anything if you’re less than 100% of your quota and you can’t earn more than $1,000 by hitting more than your quota.

Why organizations often cap commission:

1. They’re afraid of overpaying their sales reps. Ever had a rep close a monster deal? Like one that can pay their mortgage for 6 months with the commission check? It’s a great situation to be in! Your rep is happy they made so much money and your company just got a huge influx of revenue. However, some organizations decide that it’s too much to pay someone so they cap their commission.
   
   Why this doesn’t work: Nothing is more demoralizing than closing the company’s record-setting largest deal only to have your boss tell you that you’re making half your expected commission on it.
   
2. They want consistency from quarter to quarter. The thought here is that if you cap commissions, sales reps will spread their deals out evenly throughout the year vs. having one blowout quarter/month. If you aren’t going to earn anything on a deal, you’re more likely to close it the following month. This provides more consistency and predictability throughout the year.
   
   Why this doesn’t work: If you work in an industry where there are literally 0 competitors and you control exactly when your prospects buy, this would help you with consistency and predictability in sales revenue. If you’re like 99.9999% of the rest of us, you run the risk of a competitor taking the deal, the prospect changing their mind, your buyer quitting, or any of 100 other reasons the deal falls through. There’s a reason ‘sandbagging’ is a 4 letter word in sales. Encouraging it with your sales incentive plan is just counterproductive.

I honestly can’t think of a single reason to cap a sales rep’s commission. If you have a good example, I’m all ears. Send me an email at graham@quotapath.com!