Several clients have approached us for customized, professional training, which typically begins with an unconventional needs analysis. (Our needs analyses do not ask “what kind of training do you need?” but rather “what kinds of problems keep recurring?” and “why aren’t more sales closing?”). Often in these exercises we find that the problem isn’t solved by training, because….
The people having trouble are in the wrong job altogether or
Tools and materials needed are missing or
The company’s products are not competitive in some significant way or
The firm’s compensation structure has become uncompetitive over time.
Although we’ve actually helped our clients through all of these challenges at one time or another – and hiring mistakes are a surprisingly common problem – a compensation study is often a great eye-opener. As baby boomers age and the population of available talent becomes smaller, it’s vital to make sure that sales compensation in particular is competitive. It is not unusual to discover that employers are actually rewarding their sales teams – and others – for behavior which is exactly what they don’t want, such as small individual sales, or less repeat business, or other problems.
In our experiences, we’ve conducted more than a dozen sales compensation studies with generally excellent results. For Davis Calibration, we made significant recommendations which, when implemented with a volunteer pilot group, resulted in much higher revenues and a better overall ROI on sales expense, with higher levels of retention.
