CHAPTER 7
Motivating Salespeople: What Really Works
by Thomas Steenburgh and Michael Ahearne
Sales executives are always looking for ingenious ways to motivate their teams. They stage grand kickoff meetings to announce new bonus programs. They promise exotic trips to rainmakers. When business is slow, they hold sales contests. If sales targets are missed, they blame the sales compensation plan and start from square one.
The finance organization, meanwhile, views the comp plan as an expense to manage. That’s not surprising: Sales force compensation represents the single largest marketing investment for most B2B companies. In aggregate, U.S. companies alone spend more than $800 billion on it each year—three times more than they spend on advertising. ...
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