Sales Performance Management (SPM) is not a new concept, and for most who have deployed a traditional SPM system, it was essentially a back-office solution that calculates commission payments and generates some basic reports for earnings and quota-attainment ...and that’s about it. As a result, the business stakeholders of such solutions often feel like they should be getting more than just a “fancy commissions calculator.”
Clearly, compensation is an important lever that affects sales performance, yet we know there are many other factors. But what are they? How can you tell which factors are influencing sales, and how do those factors vary across the parameters that matter such as by market segment? Enter Analytics.
Introducing a powerful analytics capability to SPM solutions can bring many benefits, but it requires a proper strategy and bit of preparation to realize them. Those who have tried to make use of analytics discovery tools quickly find that the data they pull from sales incentive systems is not optimally aligned for useful analysis out-of-the-box. As a result, little insight can be gained from the exercise and they end up wondering what they did wrong. For useful analysis or predictive analytics to be possible, we have to be thoughtful about the questions that need answering and identify the data underpinnings that will be required as a result.
With proper preparation, we can understand the influencing variables that affect our performance outcomes and see how some of our outcome measures might interact with each other.
Download our "Using analytics to impact sales performance" e-guide to gain an understanding of predictive analytics concepts, how to align your data sources to unlock the value of the data in your organization, analyze the correlations, and reap the benefits of analytics in optimizing sales performance.
In the era of big data, next generation SPM systems can equip you to make decisions that will drive revenue and motivate sales teams like never before. Get the tips you need to implement an effective strategy and system with our e-guide: The Data-Driven Approach to Sales Performance Management: New techniques that will drive revenue in 2019.
