What Money Is Good For
"Why aren't you selling cloud? We're trying to move away from hardware and license, but that's most of what you're selling," One of my first managers in the tech world asked me. I responded "That's true, but hardware deals are bigger and I'm paid the same for either type of opportunity."
Working in sales with a comp plan is the best - it's a handout for how your company will pay you more.
It also showed me how true it is that "salespeople don't sell products - they sell their comp plans."
If you're a leader with revenue, finance, ops, or other responsibility, you need to consider what you're paying people to do. It's not as simple as setting OTE packages, assigning product accelerators, or creating KPIs.
Here are 7 questions to audit what you're really paying people for:
What result is most important?
What behavior leads to that result?
What outputs are you measuring?
What inputs are you tracking?
How often do you revisit your incentive structures?
Are managers and individual contributors incentivized to pull in the same direction?
What changes can you make to drive the behaviors that precede the result instead of just allowing for optimization of the metrics to maximize pay?
Instead of giving you the surface level metrics that come to mind first, Dunham Listens helps build systems that take into account how your org actually works.
We then align incentives to keep your team focused (and paid) on the activities that lead to your desired result. Send us a request if you're interested in building something that aligns your org instead of creates confusion.
Questionnaire to figure out what you’re paying people for and how that matches up with the results you want to drive.