In sales, an effective commission structure serves as an important tool to drive performance and motivation among representatives. The strategic design of commission plans can significantly impact the productivity and success of sales teams. Commissionly, a leading commission software company, understands the importance of tailored commission structures. Let’s find out the top 10 sales commission structures that can genuinely inspire and propel sales representatives to achieve outstanding results.

 

1. Straight Salary Plus Commission

 

The traditional straight salary plus commission structure provides a fixed base salary along with a variable commission based on sales performance. This structure ensures a steady income for sales reps while encouraging them to strive for higher sales volumes. Commissionly facilitates seamless integration of such structures, allowing organizations to easily manage and automate payouts.

 

2. Tiered Commission Structures

A tiered commission structure sets predefined sales thresholds, with commission rates escalating as sales targets are surpassed. This approach motivates sales representatives to exceed their quotas, as higher sales volumes result in increased commission percentages. Commissionly’s intuitive platform supports the dynamic calculations required for tiered structures, fostering transparency and ease of management.

 

3. Revenue Share Commission Model

The revenue share model distributes a percentage of the overall revenue generated by the sales team among individual representatives. This approach aligns the interests of salespeople with the company’s overall success, driving collaboration and teamwork. Commissionly’s robust reporting capabilities enable organizations to accurately track and distribute revenue share commissions.

 

4. Profit-Based Commission Structures

Aligning commission structures with profit margins ensures that sales representatives focus not only on increasing sales volume but also on maximizing profitability. Commissionly’s sophisticated analytics tools empower businesses to calculate commissions based on net profits, fostering a strategic approach to sales that benefits both the company and its representatives.

 

5. Performance-Based Commission Plans

Performance-based commission plans tie earnings directly to individual achievements, such as meeting or exceeding specific sales targets, closing deals within set timeframes, or securing high-value accounts. Commissionly’s customizable performance tracking features enable organizations to design and implement intricate performance-based commission structures tailored to their unique needs.

 

6. Customer Retention Commissions

Recognizing the value of customer retention, this structure rewards sales representatives for maintaining long-term relationships with clients. Commissionly’s platform enables organizations to set up and automate commissions based on customer retention metrics, ensuring that sales teams are motivated not only to acquire new clients but also to nurture existing ones.

 

7. Product-Specific Commission Structures

Tailoring commissions based on specific products or product categories can drive targeted sales efforts. Commissionly’s software allows for easy customization of commission plans, enabling organizations to align incentives with strategic product priorities. This approach ensures that sales representatives focus their efforts on promoting key products and maximizing revenue streams.

 

8. Milestone-Based Commission Plans

Recognizing and rewarding significant achievements or milestones can boost morale and motivation among sales representatives. Commissionly’s platform facilitates the implementation of milestone-based commission plans, providing organizations with the flexibility to structure payouts around specific accomplishments, such as surpassing annual targets or securing large-scale deals.

 

9. Draw Against Commission

The draw-against-commission model provides a guaranteed base salary, which is later deducted from earned commissions. This structure offers financial stability to sales representatives while maintaining the incentive for high performance. Commissionly’s software simplifies the calculation and management of draw against commission plans, ensuring accuracy and transparency.

 

10. Team-Based Commission Structures

Fostering a collaborative sales environment, team-based commission structures reward the collective efforts of sales teams. Commissionly’s collaborative features allow organizations to track and allocate commissions based on team performance, encouraging teamwork and camaraderie among sales representatives.

 

Choosing the right sales commission structure is a critical decision that directly impacts the success of a sales team. Commissionly’s advanced commission management software empowers organizations to implement and manage sales teams with diverse commission structures seamlessly, optimizing motivation and driving exceptional performance among sales representatives. By strategically aligning commission plans with organizational objectives, businesses can create a powerful incentive framework that maximizes productivity and propels sales teams to new heights by using Commissionly.

Leading sales force automation system launches a new offering, designed to allow its clients to provide more value to their customers.

Commissionly – the simple system which enables payment, motivation, and time-saving for sales forces – has announced the impending launch of its new Partner Program.

The system will allow Commissionly’s client base to offer the platform to their own customers. This will enable Commissionly partners to have a transformative effect on their customers’ businesses.

Test cases have already shown that the Partner Program is capable of having a positive impact on client businesses, and even opens up new business streams for them. Commissionly clients will now have a new opportunity to offer a commission consultancy and add value to their service provision.

Commissionly has confirmed that pricing will be scaled to the size of the business applying for partner status. It is expected that the Partner Program will appeal directly to its core client base, including accounting businesses, consulting businesses, managed service providers and value-added resellers. Aside from attracting new clients and boosting revenue streams, the Partner Program is set to give Commissionly partners the opportunity to help their own customers by reducing the time and resources they need to direct into the calculation and processing of commission payments. Visibility will be another key advantage, as partners will benefit from a listing on the Commissionly website, offering access to a huge potential client base.

There will also be a Referrer Program which will run concurrently with the Partner Program. This initiative will reward Commissionly referrers for introducing Commissionly to their own customer network.

Patrick McCarthy, Commissionly Co-Founder & CTO, said:

“We believe that the best way to extend the reach of Commissionly benefits around the world is side by side with our clients. In the current climate, it has never been more important for businesses to streamline their resources and up efficiency – that is why Commissionly is perfectly placed to address the needs of modern-day accountants, business consultants and managed service providers. Our Partner Program will mean that more companies can switch on to the advantages of our time and money-saving system for sales forces.”

Fully scalable, Commissionly is now the sales commission software of choice for many small and medium businesses around the world.

To apply for a Commissionly Partner Program go to this link and fill in the sign-up form.

Covid-19 has dramatically changed the way businesses operate, almost overnight. Many companies have had to shut their doors to customers, and have their staff working from home. This means that the way companies act has had to change too. While each team will have been impacted in a unique way, sales teams are facing an immediate need to bring in revenue to keep the company stable, despite the new lockdown rules.

Here are three ways that sales teams can adapt during Covid-19 with a little help from sales performance management software.

1. Keeping your sales team motivated

Many sales teams have competitions surrounding their sales performance goals, and this should be true while working remotely. Keeping your team motivated with additional bonuses and benefits will encourage them to stay focused at work, while also showing them that you understand the increased pressures of working remotely. Your existing sales targets can easily be adapted for remote working, especially if you have effective sales performance management software. Also, try these tips [https://commissionly.io/how-to-build-motivation-during-a-slow-period/] for building team motivation too!

2. Continue listening to customers

Listening to customer feedback is always essential, and if your work practices have had to change quickly, then it is important to understand how your customers feel about your new way of working. Ask your team to gather customer feedback, as it is essential to enriching the customer experience. This could be in the form of feedback sheets or questionnaires, but simple verbal feedback is also useful. This may not normally be the job of your sales team, but remind them how important it is, and implement the constructive feedback that you receive.

3. Increase internal communication

Because you no longer have a centralised place for your employees to gather, you need to ensure that they are still getting the important information they need. Everything from information from head office, all the way to new remote sales strategies need to be communicated in a timely manner. The best way to do this is through digital team meetings, where all the new information can be disseminated to the team quickly and efficiently, making sure no one is missed out.

At Commissionly, we are keeping our fingers on the pulse during these trying times. For more information about how our sales performance management software can help you, schedule a demo call with one of our team members: https://commissionly.io/book-a-demo/

Are you a growing ‘start-up’ business looking to increase your sales growth?

Sales commission schemes are a great way to get your employees putting in extra effort towards reaching their sales goals. However, it is difficult to decide on the type of incentive you should offer your staff, especially if you are relatively new to the scene.

1. Design your sales commission scheme appropriately

Explain to your employees that alongside their base salary, the sales commission scheme will grow and develop alongside the business’ success. Therefore, the greater effort put in early on would prove beneficial to all.

This is a useful way to start as it will be based on the real numbers being achieved, as opposed to a number sucked out of thin air.

2. Be careful with stretching goals

Offering audacious goals or targets beyond 100% can be a great way of getting staff already achieving to push themselves even further. However, if someone is struggling to meet targets this may cause further frustration. It is important to be optimistic but also to be realistic. And tailoring these ‘stretched goals’ to the individual will be far more effective in the long run. This is because people don’t work the same or have the same motivation. So essentially you’re helping them help you.

3. Properly incentivise your sales team

There can be a lot to calculate when starting out, and an easy mistake is to offer an incentive that is either too low to adequately motivate, or too high that you end up out of pocket.

Using sales commission management software is a fantastic way to alleviate these time-consuming tasks, therefore giving you more time to build your sales team’s confidence and ability. You can continue to recalculate commission rates with the software as your sales team grow in success and your profits rise.

So it is important to maintain a commission structure that works best for everyone through using real-time performance figures. ANd here at Commissionly, we offer many useful software packages and tools that can make the running of your business much more seamless. Our software is able to calculate complex commission values efficiently and accurately that can be tailored to the needs of your business.

When it comes to sales performance goals, there are many different aspects to consider. One of those is the current trading conditions of the industry. For most industries, there are going to be times when there are slow periods.

During these times, it can be hard to motivate your team. Sales teams that aren’t motivated will often fail to meet sales performance goals. And this can be a problem in the long-term.

If this happens, your business’s performance can be worse than expected. And some staff might think they’ll lose their jobs during one month of bad performance.

The key to this is to keep motivation high when times are tough. So, how do you do this? Here are some of the top solutions.

1. Non-monetary rewards

A great option is to add non-monetary rewards. These can be applied to work such as the time spent on the phone, adding new leads to the database, etc. Such a reward need not be linked to the conversion of sales (that is “rewarded” with sales commission), it is rather rewarding tasks that may be neglected. Keep in mind that such tasks can still be monitored in sales performance software.

Some Good examples might be an extra hour off at lunch or food hampers. Having some non-monetary rewards, allow for the effectiveness of the sales commission to still be maintained.

2. Run team-building exercises

Team building exercises can be a great way for your team to come together and face the slow times as a community. They can build communication skills, learn vital selling skills and even have some fun. All of these build on the effectiveness of the sales team.

It’s also good to arrange team-building exercises during quiet periods. Then you won’t disrupt the successful run of sales and restrict the team’s earning potential. It also means they could exceed sales performance goals and feel better about their skills.

3. Good leadership

The importance of leadership is really vital during slow periods. A good leader will continually communicate with their staff and remind them of their skills and/or value during the good and bad times. You can use comparisons to the past year’s slow period and show any sign of sales improvements since then.

Leaders should always be present. Team members can feel more confident when they see the leadership team taking an interest in their everyday work. When out and about, talk to your team and ask them how they are going. You can offer guidance on how they can improve and meet sales performance goals. And if you are unable to be in the office together, then do the same through conference calls, emails, etc. The team needs the communication, while stuck at home, more than ever to get through bad times.

All businesses have good times and bad times. During the good times, you should push them to maximise results. This ensures that during bad times, you can build on the skills of your sales team and keep spirits high, preparing for the next busy season.

Incentive compensation is a form of pay structure which is based upon how the business and its individual employees perform. Essentially, employees receive a base salary with an extra reward (tallied up using a sales compensation calculator) for meeting specified targets. There are multiple performance metrics that can be used to determine which employees qualify for commission.

Create and track incentive compensation

When developing your incentive compensation plan, your decision-makers will need to work hard to create a system which attracts the best sales talent, motivates and encourages the right business decisions. However, incentive compensation plans can become complicated, particularly when they involve several different performance measurements – or if you have different employee levels, for example. Your sales compensation calculator within Commissionly can help speed up the process.

The benefits of incentive compensation

Incentive compensation is incredibly effective when it comes to encouraging desired behaviour in employees. It allows organisations to promote upselling, incentivise customer interaction and the use of a variety of different sales techniques.

Here’s how a sales compensation calculator within our compensation software could help your company to benefit:

Help align your incentives with your business objectives.
• More likely to meet long-term and short-term targets of the business.
• Focus attention on the behaviours and working culture of the business.
• Encourage your teams to plan ahead and highlight any expectations.
• Attract more sales-driven candidates for vacancies within your business.
• Save money related to salary rises through the allocation of funds for when goals are achieved.

Creating the perfect incentive compensation plan

While incentive compensation is a great concept for improving productivity, it can be difficult to implement without the right commission calculation software.

It’s virtually impossible to manage different commission parameters with manual systems or spreadsheets. This is where a sales compensation calculator comes in. With our commission calculation software, your organisation can ensure that employees are rewarded accurately and on time, to help keep them motivated to continue hitting those all-important sales targets.

For more information on how Commissionly could help you to develop your incentive compensation strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us today.

High employee turnover among your sales team can be toxic to your whole business. And unfortunately, it’s an issue that affects a huge number of organisations. There are a number of factors that can be at the root of this problem and, more often than not, they’re linked to sales performance management.

Here are 3 of the most common causes you may need to address;

1. Over-the-top expectations

Sales, by nature, is a high-pressure area to work in and no one ever applied to a sales job expecting an easy ride. However, when your sales team has over-the-top quotas and expectations hanging over their heads, it should be no surprise that people start jumping ship.

Quotas should always be challenging in a way that gets the most from your team. But they should never be impossible.

As a starting point, analyse your sales targets and compare them against your team’s output. From there, you can set targets that will still get great work from your sales team, without sacrificing (vital) morale.

2. Uncompetitive compensation

Compensation is obviously a major factor in sales performance management. With salary and commission being such a fundamental part of sales work, perfectly competent sales managers can be at risk of missing the forest for the trees in this area.

Obviously, the ever-changing landscape of your industry will mean that simply offering higher basic wages or commission is not always an option. But this is never an excuse for poor compensation that isn’t as good or better than what your sales staff can get elsewhere.

Be sure to assess how you’re compensating your staff regularly, both in terms of salary and commission, and various benefits and frills.

3. Poor training

Your bright new prospects won’t last long if they’re not given adequate training. A hardcore sink-or-swim method of sales performance management can make some salespeople thrive, but they will always be the minority. For the rest of your team, this will only cause stress and more errors, leading to a negative snowball effect.

Be sure to invest in thorough, personalised training to get the best results from your team members. More importantly, remind them that they are an asset; worthy of investment and long-term personal development.

Sales compensation is a tricky thing for some companies, who’re reluctant to give away profit. But sales commissions can benefit your company in a number of ways.

Commission is motivating

The idea that staff should prioritise the company above their own interests is a nice one, but it’s simply not grounded in the facts. Motivation is essential if you want staff to perform at their best. Remember that for a lot of people, more money is a strong motivator.

And, naturally, your sales staff are the team you want to motivate the most. Without them, your business can dry up fast.

Commission means more revenue

Companies that object to a commission-led environment usually see the size of commission payments from their industry and wince. However, they’re not thinking in terms of what those commissions really mean.

Imagine paying out $100,000 a year to your top salesman. Now that’s a LOT of money, for sure. To a small business, it’s a massive payment. Nigh impossible. But now imagine that this salesman has made you $2,000,000 in revenue; then, $100,000 is just his cut of 5%. Would you get rid of that salesman? Of course not!

Don’t think of commission… think of just how much bigger the revenue will be to the company.

Commission gives more certainty

Measuring results gives employees and companies more certainty. It’s motivating for staff to know exactly what they’re contributing to the company. This motivation is intrinsically linked to the company’s success.

Reviewing staff performance for many businesses is too subjective. They grade staff according to how they ‘think’ they’ve performed. This can be awkward for the company, and frustrating for the staff member who’s put in years of extra work but doesn’t get rewarded because ‘subjectively’ the company isn’t sure how their work is paying off.

Commissions require specific tracking, which lets everyone know where they stand.

Commission attracts the best staff

The best salespeople thrive on competition and measured performance. They want to excel, and to be rewarded for excelling.

In a commission environment, you’re giving your staff everything they need to thrive and reap the rewards. The best salespeople will go where the rewards are, so you give yourself a better chance of attracting them. Commissionly is the first step.

Yes, sales commission software is a great aid for calculating and tracking how much is owed to your staff. And if you choose the right program, you enable your salespeople to track their own progress in real-time.

However, the software now available can do so much more than just track and provide live updates on sales compensation figures. It can also offer team leaders and financial management information that will facilitate sales forecasting. This same data can also be used for planning strategies.

Increase sales efficiency

Leveraging the Cloud for software programs is the way to go. Programs can easily integrate with other applications. This provides you with a powerful tool that can improve the efficiency of any sales operation. Enabling frontline staff to keep tabs on their commission, creates incentives that drive sales staff to greater heights.

Linking accounts into the loop makes the commission payment process much more manageable. It also provides managers with important information relating to running costs and the impact on profits and losses.

Access the benefits of built-in CRM

If you choose a commission software program that incorporates CRM, it can really revolutionise the sales process. When your sales team uses the dashboard to update their sales compensation progress, they can also access all sorts of other data. This data includes; who orders what, how frequently they order, who the main contact points are, what the accumulative spend is, etc.

This is all insightful information that your salespeople can have at their fingertips. Managers and team leaders can share the same information. Using this, they can create strategies and assemble sales targets.

If accounts are tied into the data too, they can use it to drive their cash flow predictions. The more integration that takes place, the bigger the potential efficiencies and benefits.

Software for all industries

Commissionly sales commission software has been expressly designed to create benefits and efficiencies in industries across the board. By including the Zapier App, you can integrate seamlessly with as many as 2,000 apps and programs, including the likes of Hubspot, Insightly, Quickbooks, Sage, Salesforce, and Xero.

If you are not yet using Commissionly sales commission software, it’s about time you started. For more information, contact us and set up a free trial today.

Are you thinking about installing sales commission software? If so, the one thing you don’t want to have to do is to reinvent the wheel. You want a program that you can tailor to your exact needs. It will make life so much easier.

Here are three things to look for:

1. Software that runs the way you want it to

Each business has its own way of doing things. The end goal is always the same, but the way it needs to be achieved is always very specific depending on the business. This is a universal problem, which is why sales commission software is flexible to suit your needs. When you choose the right package you will be able to enjoy the advantages already built-in. And experience far less hassle maintaining the system.

Take manager overrides for example. Many companies grant their sales managers small override commissions on the sales their teams make. This is something that can be easily set up in some of the leading sales commission software programs.

2. Out with the old and in with the new

A lot of businesses still use spreadsheets to calculate sales commissions. There is nothing wrong with spreadsheets per se. However, they do take time to set up and maintain. In addition to which they are not easily shareable and are error-prone in terms of inputting data.

By switching across to a specifically designed program for capturing and calculating outstanding sales commissions, you can make life a whole lot easier. Easier for both management and employee too.

Calculations will be error-free. With each member of staff being able to get real-time updates. As a result, everyone can measure their performances against their targets.

3. Integrate and share data

There is something else that is very attractive about the latest sales commission software. It integrates with most other existing systems, and it’s easy to install. Leading state-of-the-art software will also integrate with other disciplines. It can be linked to customer relationship management and accounting software. Sharing data in this way obviously has many benefits.

If you would like to discover more about how you can tailor the latest sales commission software to your business needs, contact us or peruse our website for more information.