Compensating New Sales Roles: How to Design Rewards That Work in Today's Selling Environment

Setting Performance Objectives: What to Do and How to Do It

Selecting the right performance measures is one side of a coin. Equally important, and often the downfall of many sales organizations, is the flip side: performance objectives. Performance objectives are the goals the company assigns to salespeople. Sales goals—often called quotas— are quite helpful in planning and managing the sales effort. Many companies use sales quotas as the basis for evaluating performance and, in turn, for paying sales incentive compensation. Top managers and sales-people share a keen interest, therefore, in ensuring that quotas are realistic—neither so high that they are unreachable nor so low that the business suffers—so that they motivate salespeople to achieve ...