Global Technology Provider Faces Sales Strategy and Execution Challenges
Situation: The company, a leading, global technology provider of cloud-based content management and collaboration solutions, faced a variety of sales strategy and execution challenges. In addition to refining job design, the compensation and quota programs had defects that had to be addressed to drive the right behavior and, more importantly, to focus reps on the growth opportunity.
Challenge: The EVP, Business Operations and the company’s new CEO sought to develop new compensation plans that would be more in sync with the market and core job responsibilities, and drive pay for performance. To enable the new compensation program, they needed to build a formal quota-setting process and framework for assisting sales management with setting individual quotas.
Solution: After confirming sales strategy and roles and obtaining guidance from Company executives on compensation program objectives, Alexander Group conducted a comprehensive assessment of compensation and quota effectiveness. We gathered input from the field using a survey and targeted interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analyses provided key inputs for the collaborative design sessions. At the heart of the solution were a redesigned set of compensation plans and accompanying quota model. The plans and models provided hyper-focus and guidance on acquiring new business and strategic transactions. The plan construct developed provided tension between acquiring as many transactions as possible (regardless of monies captured up front) and the monetization of said deals.
Benefit: The Alexander Group team delivered a comprehensive set of new plans that were more competitive in the market and truly aligned to the corporate strategy. Additionally, the team developed a robust quota setting methodology, process and framework that enabled geo leadership to create more accurate and meaningful quotas that improved the accuracy of financial planning and sales performance. Both plans and quotas were rolled out at the end of the first month of the fiscal year, a significant improvement from prior years.
