Knowing so many sales people in the industry allows me to see many different comp plans. It seems that there are no two sales manuals or comp plans that are alike, unless you are working for one of the Direct manufacturers.
A comp plan is simple, you get what you get and you make what you make. If you're a slacker you get squat and if you're an over achiever you get the world and make a lot of dough!
However, a comp plan is more than a sheet of paper, describing your salary your benefits, your expenses, your quota, your bonus levels and you percentage of commissions!
There is the sales manual, which is tied directly to your comp plan, here's lies the rules that you need to play by. If you make a mistake with any of these rules, then the punishment is simple, you get a "charge back". The first time I heard the term "charge back", I was mortified that I would be charged back if I made an honest mistake! WTF, no one else is charged back in the company if they make a mistake, right? (well, they may get fired!)
To this day, I still make mistakes and 99.9% of those mistakes are made because I'm not paying attention, I comprehended something wrong, or I didn't take the time to double check my math or work.
The other day I called my comp plan "conditions", it will always be there and there's nothing I can do to change it. Kinds takes all the fun out of it right? At least Captain Kirk was able to change the rules for the kobayashi maru test for star fleet!
I can remember getting my first new sales manual in years, it was handed to me and I was told to read it. Well, I tried to read it and after the first ten pages I had to put it down because I could not comprehend all of that information in a short period of time. Again, I blame my self. But, it would have be nice to have someone to teach me the comp plan or at least a coach that I could bounce questions off. I had a sales manager and he too received the same copy and to be frank, my sales manager was worthless. So, there I was with a new sales plan, no guidance and I still had to sell.
Over the early years, I made many mistakes which cost me big bucks, but, I hung with it. Even to this day, I'm not the expert on the comp plan, but, I do how to make the best of the plan. No plan is perfect, there are as many loop holes as there are sink holes. You need to identify those holes and move forward.
Thus, the other day I wanted to help the new reps and explain the "sales manual" to them. Thus the first items I went over were the sink holes, after identifying those I moved to the good parts of the plan.
I explained to them that we want you to succeed, what we don't want is for you to hit a sink hole, then get upset at the company because you did not understand a certain section of the manual. Personally, I think I did a great job because neither one of them quit! lol
But more importantly, wouldn't you rather have reps that understood the holes in the manual rather than having them find out by making a stupid mistake or not comprehending that paragraph or sentence? I know that if someone would have done this for me years ago and I was still making the same mistakes, then I'd have to face facts and agree that I'm an idiot.
Mistakes are made by all of us, there's just too much to learn, and of course not enough time to learn it before you make that first sale, however, spending some time coaching, and educating these newbies can go along way with developing a long term sales team. Personally, I enjoy coaching these newbies!
Hey, maybe once a month sales managers can review one page of the sales manual right, then after 3 years you would have it down. 
-=Good Selling=-
Comments (2)