Tag Archives: Peak ROI

Crazy Sales Productivity – Dynamic Incentive Based Compensation

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How do you go about driving sales? If you’re like most firms, the focus tends to be solely on making a budget and/or hitting a number, versus truly building your business. Driving sales in the moment is a vastly different mindset than a sales process that serves a far more global vision for your firm.

Is this you?

In the former, the sales process can make you feel like the proverbial rat forever stuck on a wheel that never seems to end. Work becomes all about perpetually running the race versus building a better wheel, the kind of wheel that will lighten your load without sacrificing results. Put another way, your sales process at its core should be a set of well polished gears that serve your business machine as a whole. I call those gears “automatic sales triggers”. And one of the biggest sales triggers out there, is your compensation plan. Is it vanilla or is it Rogue?

Sales Trigger: Dynamic Incentive Based Compensation
It would take ten or more blog posts to properly cover this very powerful concept. The fundamental thing to understand is that human beings, regardless of what they tell you, are driven by a deep need for purpose and accomplishment. Your compensation plan should play to this truth in an honoring, ethical way that benefits all parties involved. Sadly, most compensation plans are incredibly generic and lack any manner of imagination. As well, most only focus on superficial measurements, such as hitting a sales goal and typically, are offered only to sales and management personnel. If you want to explode as a business then you absolutely must Go Rogue when it comes to your compensation plans. I highly recommend the following case study on SAS, a software company well known for it ability to think outside the box when it comes to company culture.

CLICK: SAS Case Study Link

Key Elements To Creating A Dynamic Comp Plan

  • Everyone should be on some form of incentive based compensation, regardless of their position within your firm.
  • Layer your measurement of performance to be both quantitative (hitting a specific number, for example) and qualitative (accomplishing a specific thing, like launching a community outreach program or getting a professional certification of some sort).
  • Layer your measurement of performance by levels of performance such as Unacceptable, Below Average, Average, Above Average and Exceptional.
  • Compensate based on an employee/manager’s level of accomplishment in three core areas of your firm: accomplishment levels that relate to their job responsibilities, accomplishment levels that relate to them advancing the firm’s values, mission and vision; accomplishment levels that relate to their professional growth in areas that add value to the firm in some way.
  • Insure your incentives offer the greatest rewards for broad based accomplishments  like sustaining high level performance over several quarters, excellence in all of the three areas being measures and for accomplishments that go way above and beyond what their job requires.
  • Mix up your rewards. Little things like gift cards for small accomplishments, can go a very long ways. Public recognition, awarding extra time off, paid travel perks, covering childcare expenses are but a few examples of the many ways you can compensate strong performance.
  • Reward above average to exceptional performance in powerful, meaningful ways that genuinely have impact while offering only cost of living increases to consistently average performance.
  • Always pay your team slightly above the industry average, rapidly removing team members who consistently deliver below expectations.

The idea of giving people a great deal of incentive to perform at high levels is such a simple concept and yet, most companies will never take the leap. Ironically, those very same companies will spend huge amounts of money on trying to create and keep revenue, totally ignoring the fact that treating people well is the most cost efficient way there is, to make money. The result? Penny wise and yet pound foolish.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

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Business Development Mastery

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Business owners LOVE the idea of being able to lead from their raw, untamed and according to them, shockingly accurate instincts.  The very idea of being able to understand their business, customers and market without the need for conscious reasoning, feeds their inner Gordon Gekko. IE: The need to feel like a business rock star. Sadly, such beliefs are nothing more than an illusion, rarely translating into a business model that will take the world by storm. Greed, as it turns out, is not  so good after all (click on the photo to link to this famous line from the movie, “Wall Street”).

Michael Douglas from the movie, "Wall Street"

“Wait a minute, Im not a greedy person!” Im not speaking of “greed” in the traditional sense. The kind of greed I’m talking about is far more insidious and hidden. Its the kind of greed that craves instant results and quick fixes, absent any kind of accountability. Its a greed for “getting more” without truly doing the Due Diligence that “more” requires. Exceptional business development is born from an already strong business model that takes courageous and yet well thought out steps, to go to the Next Level. A good grocery store is just a good grocery store. But a good grocery store that changes the rules of the game, transposing a mundane task into something utterly fun and engaging, that would be (CLICK)– Central Market.

 

Step #1: Break Down Your Business Into Profit Centers
Every business of any size is typically driven by several if not many, “Profit Centers”. A Profit Center, simply stated for our purposes, is source of revenue. For example, a hotel may break down their revenue streams into room rentals, food/concession, meeting rooms and conventions/group profit centers. In reality, they probably would have a far more complex profit center scheme, but that should give you an idea of the concept.

Step #2: Seek To Understand Every Aspect Of Your Business Model
Know your numbers, know your customers, know your sales patterns, know your revenue trends, know your expense trends, know EVERYTHING there is to know about your business in great detail from A-Z. The better you factually understand your business, the better equipped you will be to build a rock solid business foundation from which you can then take to the Next Level.

Step #3: Transform The Status Quo Into Setting The Standard
A well built, properly managed business model that is on solid ground and thus craving new opportunities is the position you want to be in. List the five things that almost everyone in your industry offers. List the five things that almost no one in your industry offers but that you strongly suspect your customers would greatly appreciate and/or enjoy. List the five strategies that your industry typically uses to keep and wow customers. Now list five ways that you could use to wow and keep customers that is at least TWICE AS ENGAGING as what the industry typically delivers.

Once you have some idea of how you want to take your business to the next level, do so as effectively as possible. Click here to learn how. But in the meantime, please understand that exceptional business development is born from strength, not pipe dreams. Know your business inside-out. Solidify your business model as stable and credible. Then and only then, will you be prepared to effectively transform the status quo into something much more.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

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Chief Executive 101: Get In – Respond – Get Out

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As the Chief Executive, your most precious asset is time and thus your most valuable skill set, the effective use of that time. Your greatest vulnerability? Wasting tons of time trying to solve problems you have no business getting involved in. Typically, executives fall into three categories as problem solvers:

The Black & White Boss who will only make decisions when it is absolutely clear that the choice being made is the right choice. The good news is that this type tends to make some very good choices. As well, this type can be an anchor of stability for a firm. The bad news is this type doesn’t make nearly enough decisions and can hold an organization back, by being far too cautious and overly logical.

The Charismatic Driver who is big on making things happen at any cost, heavy on results but also heavy on chaos. Often highly successfully in the area of deliverables, their downside is that the people around them can feel very dominated and steamrolled. Typically, these types make for great pioneers and drivers, but struggle with sustaining strategies over the long haul.

The Zen Master Rogue who embraces a far more balanced approach to building a business. Patient yet passionate, these types tend to be able to muster a high degree of focus and effectiveness at any given moment. They seem to always be aware of and selling the Big Picture and yet, they also excel at making things happen in the day-to-day. The primary asset of this type is the fact that they are able to facilitate exceptional success through others.

The Secret Formula of The Zen Master Rogue

GET IN
There is no time to waste. You’re not emotional nor are you overly logical. It’s almost like you’re watching the situation play out in front of you, as if it’s slowly floating past you on a river. You make a rapid but quality assessment, getting just enough information as to be able to effectively proceed.

RESPOND 
Your primary mission at this point is to bring calm to the storm. You accomplish this by briefly coming in close to the situation at hand, getting the correct resources in play followed by providing some level of focus for those resources, delegating outcomes and then…

GET OUT
Once you have a strategy and team in place around an issue, your job becomes checking in on progress from afar. You are not looking for perfect compliance nor are you accepting of mediocrity, your only concern: is the issue authentically getting resolved? If yes, check back in every now and then. If not, Get In – Respond and Get Out.

Effective leaders are executives who have mastered the ability to rapidly and effectively resolve issues in a way that does not steal away more time then is absolutely necessary.

Food For Thought-
Bob Olmstead

PS: Spread the Word!!!  How, you ask? Just click one of those buttons below, which will connect you to Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Digg- there’s even one for emailing this blog to your network. Also by subscribing, each new post lands directly in your email inbox. Many thanks!