Creating happy, motivated sales teams: why I’m joining Spiff

As an entrepreneur, I’m obsessed with finding practical solutions to real-world problems. Often, these lurk in overlooked areas of business – in the laborious tasks you might endure due to a lack of time or better alternatives.

So when I was offered the role of Chief Growth Officer at Spiff, I saw an opportunity to right an old wrong. To solve a problem that plagues thousands of companies, and help them save time, money, and resources while boosting growth.

I’m joining Spiff to help companies automate commission calculations and motivate sales teams.

After my first conversation with Spiff’s Chief Product Officer, JP Maitre and CEO Jeron Paul, I knew they were onto something big, something that would improve the lives of millions of employees around the globe. 

I was initially brought on as an adviser, to help Spiff grow through brand storytelling, a strong passion of mine. But as I learned more about the product, I could see myself back at Bizness Apps, a company I founded and later sold to a PE firm, presenting it to our frazzled CFO.

Back then, I didn’t know about Spiff. Our commission plan was complex, confusing, and changed often. Our CFO would spend a week out of every month calculating commissions for our 50-person sales and customer success teams. Imagine what it would be like for a team of 100 or even 1,000?

And since few employees understood the plan, team members kept their own spreadsheets. Our overwrought CFO would then have to explain why our figures were right or redo the calculations if they were wrong. Shared deals and split commissions were a particular pain point of ours – one of the many nuances Spiff handles with grace.

Don’t get me wrong – we tried to automate the plan. We spent around $50,000 on software that turned out to be inadequate and clunky (I won’t name the vendor). So we still spent 100s of hours doing sales commissions calculations, and still had constant disputes among the team. We’d simply shifted from one faulty tool (Excel) to another (clunky software). So the problem Spiff solves is very close to my heart.

Looking back, I realize I’d unburdened myself on the CFO. I’d let the sales commission plan become someone else’s problem. But in reality, it was my problem, in the same way it might also be yours. I can’t help wondering how much easier things would’ve been had we known about Spiff.

Stop calculating sales commissions manually – there’s a better way.

Sales reps don’t want to keep spreadsheets. CFOs don’t want to spend hours on numbers that are later challenged or proved inaccurate. Commissions are supposed to motivate teams, not give them headaches. With Spiff, I know everyone from the sales reps to the CFO would’ve been one big happy motivated team. 

No matter how complex your commission plans are, Spiff can handle it. Rather than being hidden away on some spreadsheet, commissions are presented in an intuitive dashboard, updated in real-time (including retroactively), and flexible enough to handle every nuance of your commission structure. Think of the motivational power behind that!

No longer will Finance need to crunch numbers for hours or weeks at a time manually in Excel. No longer will everyone depend on a meticulously-maintained offline document to keep the sales pit happy.

I’m really excited to be joining Spiff and their amazing team. It’s going to be a wild ride and I’m looking forward to every minute of it.