Many employers struggle with sales compensation plans that just don’t satisfy either the sales staff or the company’s business objectives. Built on the flawed premise that sales people are motivated solely by money, the design process often involves commission formulas that are designed to result in total cash compensation sufficient to attract and retain sales staff – yet they don’t.
Given that sales compensation plans are often ineffective – not to mention frequently revised – they can become the bane of the HR professional’s existence! Our 90-minute audio conference recording is designed to help you think strategically about your company’s sales goals, organization, and effectiveness, and establish an approach that both motivates and gets results.
You and your colleagues will learn:
- How sales compensation strategy differs from incentive compensation strategy
- How to establish, in a big-picture way, the roles of the sales function in your organization – including accountabilities
- The single most important factor for success
- How or whether sales people should function as teams – and, if so, whether their compensation should hinge on team performance
- Steps for thinking through the different ratios of base pay to target variable cash compensation
- The role of the sales VP in plan design
- How much your company should be willing to pay in sales compensation per dollar of sales revenue
This audio conference was recorded on Tuesday, February 5, 2008
About Your Speaker:
Shari Dunn is the managing principal of CompAnalysis in Oakland, California. Prior to establishing CompAnalysis in 1980, she held management and professional positions with a number of companies, including McKinsey & Co., Deloitte & Touche, Castle & Cooke, Fibreboard Corporation, Bank of America, and Boise Cascade Corporation. While employed by these organizations, she functioned as both consultant and manager in the areas of salary administration, executive compensation, and sales/incentive compensation.
Today, the firm has a staff of seven. CompAnalysis has worked with more than 700 different companies and organizations to improve their compensation management practices. Clients have been in a broad variety of industries, including technology, health care, manufacturing, agribusiness, financial services, professional firms, nonprofits, and government agencies. Typical client sizes range from 30 to over 2,000 employees.
In addition to leading management and consulting activities, Dunn is a well-known speaker and regularly leads seminars and workshops on employee compensation and related matters for a variety of audiences. She also serves as an expert witness in connection with wage and hour litigation and other compensation matters.
Dunn has a BA degree in psychology from the University of California at Berkeley. She is the former president of the 5,000+ member Northern California Human Resources Association (NCHRA), the nation’s largest chapter of the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM). In addition, she maintains active memberships in the Bay Area Compensation Association, World at Work (formerly the American Compensation Association), and the Women Presidents’ Organization. She is a member of the executive committee of the Board of Directors of the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and the California Alumni Association Personnel Advisory Committee. Previously, she was active on the Board of Directors of Easter Seals of the Bay Area and a director of the Haas Alumni Network of the School of Business at U.C. Berkeley, where she serves as a guest lecturer.
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 recertification credit hours toward PHR and SPHR recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI). For more information about certification or recertification, please visit the HRCI homepage at www.hrci.org.
