It's time for BBQs, Golf, and...Sales Comp Planning Season

Hello there,

It's golf, patio, and BBQ season, sure, but if you're working at a typical enterprise organization, there's likely another big event on your mind....

The (official) annual planning cycle is upon us again. We say "official" because it's our hope your approach to sales performance management is dynamic and you're able to pivot quickly throughout the year to impact your goals.?

That said, as your org considers sales compensation effectiveness and incentive structure for 2025, we've curated some expert highlights that might help you bring especially novel solutions into your planning.

This July and August, bring your best data-game to earn a strategic seat at the table

As a multi-variate optimization problem, sales compensation requires not only excellent visibility into product strategy and longer-term objectives, but also terrific relationships and trust among leaders across the org for buy-in on plans. The best plans are built in collaboration.

For a smooth planning process, you'll be focused over the next few weeks on gaining total alignment with all the upstream functions supporting sales comp.

?As Alex Gousinov, Senior Director of GTM Planning at Twillio shared with us on the Sales Compensation Show podcast—it'll be data-backed insights on behaviors and outcomes that really earn you the credibility or right to bring your recommendations to the sales leaders.?

As you enter planning season this time around, consider:

• Have you collectively defined the biggest 'boulders' of the business's strategy impacting compensation? Are there any components of the company strategy that may be changing (or anticipated to change down the line)? Maybe there's a product that's struggling or a focus on expansion revenue that you could design incentives around?

• Have you defined work streams and dependencies upfront??What data might you need for analyzing plan effectiveness (who can help you get access to this data)? Which core individuals need to connect in your planning process and what cadence makes most sense? (Weekly, bi-weekly?) Have you collaboratively defined sales roles, territories, and how quotas are set? How will changes to these influence incentive plans and how can you be as flexible/adaptable as possible when things change??

• How might you incorporate not just standard historical data (previous sales and financials), but also future-looking data and more granular data points from the sales process? Consider projected sales data that could help paint a picture of future growth, especially if there are material changes in business strategy (e.g. new products, acquisitions, etc.) consider data a layer deeper from sales outcomes that shows how behaviors are linked to key aspects of growth (e.g. sales activities, compliance to sales process steps, quality of sales opportunities).

According to Alex, July and August are the best time to begin planning next year's plans, beginning with those big boulders. If you don't have a good sense of these now, you can ensure those conversations happen ASAP.

Now's also the perfect time to consider how you might model various scenarios to paint a clear data picture of best-case vs. if targets aren't met.?

Catch our full chat with Alex on the planning process in episode 12 here ??

• On Spotify
• Apple
• Or watch the video

What we're reading

Should RevOps own the sales playbook?

We all want an aligned revenue organization. And this requires eliminating siloes, but—what's the best way to make this happen? In this article from Jake Dunlap of SKALED, he paints five compelling reasons why RevOps should own the sales playbook. From having a clear view of the entire journey—to the fact that RevOps is typically more familiar with the tech stack—it's a strong argument.

Read it here

RevOps can save the day by storytelling (well) with data

Whether you're preparing a dashboard for your sales leader, or a deck for executive data reviews, the way you tell stories with data matters. This piece does a great job highlighting the importance of your ability to uncover and communicate insights (vs. just metrics), plus how to handle uncertainty in forecasting by focusing on trends.?

Read it here

Here's the kicker...

Discover how activity-based incentives can help you maximize sales motivation and revenue?

To date, activity-based incentives (ABIs) have been difficult and financially challenging for sales organizations to implement—but they have massive potential to drive hyper-focused sales motivation and grow revenue.

Fortunately, with advancements in SPM data infrastructure, activity-based incentives aren't only becoming possible, but could soon become the norm considering their upsides.

Learn about the four steps we think are must-haves along the way to ABI's more powerful role in the future of SPM and sales compensation:

Best practices for optimizing your incentive program

Over the next month or two you're likely assessing how your current sales incentive plan is or isn't achieving desired results.

From defining what a successful incentive plan looks like, to aligning plan metrics to key aspects of growth—it can help to break out the essential steps of your process to orient around.?

Check out this post on ensuring you’re considering the ICM process holistically as you pick areas to iterate and improve upon this year.?

The 5-day virtual summit for RevOps & Sales leaders: Nudge 2024

To unpack the way behavioral psychology plays into sales performance and motivation, we're hosting the SPM event of the summer. ????

?This July 29 - August 2, 2024, we hope you'll join us live for NUDGE 2024. In an especially timely event, you'll hear directly from compensation and revenue experts from organizations like Zoom, Cisco, Unity, Equinix, Thomson Reuters, Harvard Business School, and more.?

Register to save your seat

Attending Sales Comp '24 at WorldatWork? We'll see you there.

Our very own Kyle Webster, Forma.ai's Chief of Staff will be hosting a deep dive on the use of Monte-Carlo Simulations for managing uncertainty in budgeting. Connect with Kyle ahead of the session on LinkedIn, and be sure to swing by the Imperial B Room, Tuesday, August 20, from 1-2 pm.? See the schedule here

Looking for your next role in SPM?

We rounded up a few great opportunities spotted recently that may be of interest:

• Senior Compensation Business Partner II - Instacart
• Director, Sales Compensation Strategy and Design - Equinix
• Sales Compensation Manager - New Relic
• Director, Sales Compensation, Design & Analytics - Epsilon
• Manager, Incentives Planning - Volkswagen Group Canada Inc.

In case you missed it...

Forma.ai acquired SeaMonster?

Aligned with our broader vision, this acquisition places us in a very strong position to continue delivering the most innovative SPM solution for you.

?This significant milestone will ultimately help us enable you with the critical data infrastructure necessary to unleash the potential of activity-based incentives.

Learn more here

Thanks for being part of our community! If you know of another revenue ops leader who'd enjoy these resources, be sure to forward this issue on!

If this was forwarded to you, you can get your own copy by subscribing here.

Until next time,

Mike Roberts

VP of Marketing at Forma.ai