Change can strain relationships even in good times. When the market is under pressure, changes to comp plans and quota can be especially tricky. Care must be taken to acknowledge past performance and provide some achievable goals for the next year. Keeping top performers means setting up changed compensation plans reflecting aspirational sales – not suicide assignments.
Even top performers will be looking at deals delayed or cancelled. Deals and relationships took years to set up are at risk as the economy changes. Creating unlikely results and demanding performance will destroy sales attainment. Internal and external pressures will cause changes to budgets, headcount, and objectives. Management must recognize short term losses as such and not act killing long term successes.
Sales managers rely on top performers to fill out results when stretch objectives are going to be met. Rewards motivating top performers will be hard to give out when overall objectives aren’t met. Compensation plans reflecting “high year” performances may need to surrender to “better than really expected” if a secular decline occurs across whole industries (like energy, huge construction projects, or high-street retail).
Sales managers are expected to meet and exceed financial objectives. Why would a financial group select unreachable objectives to set groups up to fail? Enterprises thrive when reality starts customer-facing and drives real transformational changes into an enterprise.
The next post will continue the thread concerning retaining and properly using top talent.
EkaLore helps executives with tough messages to deliver up the chain – www.ekalore.com/contact
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