1 / 13

Getting Beyond Pay in Managing “The Deal” with Your Sales Force

Getting Beyond Pay in Managing “The Deal” with Your Sales Force. Compensation and Business Review By: Timothy W. Weiler and Christopher Tuffli. ABC’s Vulnerability. In the middle of post-merger sales force integration A few key products were approaching patient expiration

hallie
Download Presentation

Getting Beyond Pay in Managing “The Deal” with Your Sales Force

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Getting Beyond Pay in Managing “The Deal” with Your Sales Force Compensation and Business Review By: Timothy W. Weiler and Christopher Tuffli

  2. ABC’s Vulnerability • In the middle of post-merger sales force integration • A few key products were approaching patient expiration • Launching new drugs • Competition for good sales reps was depleting • Turnover for experienced sales reps was increasing

  3. Total Rewards Package • Four major elements of the package: • Pay • Benefits • Learning and Development • Work Environment

  4. Preparing Packages • Research shows that it is better to prepare all of the benefits in a rewards package together rather then one piece at a time. • Total rewards encompass every single investment that an organization makes in its people, including salary, bonus, pension, 401(k) plans, medical benefits, disability, and training. More intangible elements, such as high-profile work assignments, developmental opportunities, flexible work schedules and the chance to be a part of a pioneering team, cannot be overlooked.

  5. Importance of Benefits • Benefits need to be competitive and attractive, and in line with an individual's sense of his or her "worth," based on skills, education and experience • They also need to be designed as a whole, not separately. Separately, the programs tend to be disconnected from one another and from the broader business strategy. They could undercut one another and even hamper, rather than support, a rep's ability to meet his or her goals.

  6. Fixing the Problem • Working in teams, ABC managers and sales people identified gaps between perception and reality, and between the present state and where the business wanted to be in the future.

  7. Company Recommendations • The team made the following recommendations in this quadrant: • * Close the gap between the manager's view of significant career advancement opportunities and the sales force's view that such opportunities were limited. • Modify and communicate the career paths in the new merged sales organization, including defining the entry points for representatives interested in pursuing new roles and developing a fast track for high performers. • * Tie developmental programs to specific career steps. • * Clarify and communicate promotion criteria.

  8. Pay Recommendations • Research revealed that pay levels were competitive with the market. Simply raising pay would have skipped over two critical issues-the changing sales roles and poor morale-which could be precursors to even greater turnover rates. • For the pay quadrant, the team recommended (and implemented) the following: • *Vary the pay mix to reflect differences in selling roles and career level. • * Migrate outliers to market competitive base salaries. Preserve the higher-than-market upside opportunity in the incentive plan. • * Create long-term incentive mechanisms (stock options) to become competitive with the market. Link option grants to an individual's performance versus goal.

  9. Benefit Recommendations • At ABC, benefits turned out to be of little concern to reps. To correct this, the team recommended and implemented the following changes: • * Tying perks to consistent individual performance against objectives • * Adopting a life cycle benefit program to better fit the unique sales force needs • * Adopting a flexible benefits program to allow sales employees to "spend" their allotted benefit dollars according to their specific needs.

  10. Environment Recommendations • At ABC, the foremost work environment issue was the lack of communication, particularly regarding performance, pay plans and benefits. ABC was also challenged by the rep perception that the force's role within the overall organization had been degraded as a result of the merger. • The team made the following recommendations with regard to work environment: • * Establish a communications department dedicated to the sales force. • * Develop a detailed communication plan for the upcoming changes. • * Broaden the use of recognition and reward processes. • * Create better sales support processes and systems to maximize sales time and to preserve the rep!s treasured autonomy.

  11. Results • The team built more visibly defined and better communicated career paths with clear opportunities to earn additional pay, stock options and perks. • The company now has a more measureable way to not only pay their employees, but also give them more benefits.

More Related