A 360-degree approach to sales compensation in seller operations planning

A truly proactive sales operations and planning (S&OP) strategy is critical to your company's success. Yet assigning quotas, establishing sales territories, segmenting accounts, and determining sales channels is a balancing act. As more of the revenue mix of tech companies moves toward recurring revenue and services, sales compensation plans need to adapt to encourage the desired sales behavior. And a linchpin of sales planning entails keeping sales agents in the loop every step of the way to earn their trust, buy-in, and ongoing engagement.

Managing the sales compensation component of S&OP can be a tall order, with all these elements at play. That's especially the case if compensation isn't fully incorporated into your entire S&OP procedure. Yet many companies are still held back by isolated systems in different departments that produce conflicting metrics affecting quota changes, territory alignment and other factors that impact agents. What's more, leaders have no way of making sense of the rich data hidden in each function to better inform their business decisions.

At Genpact, we know that a superior seller operations strategy takes more than just software and technology. It also demands a comprehensive fine-tuning of all the procedures and techniques that touch the seller operations process. And we have unparalleled experience producing tangible seller operations results for our clients by harmonizing people, processes, and technologies (such as Anaplan, SFDC, SAP CallidusCloud) to create a symphony of efficiency.

Our methodology takes a 360-degree approach to sales compensation in seller operations planning. We develop a sales experience center from which you can monitor the end-to-end sales experience, oversee various process and systems changes, and manage the experience of various personas (such as managers, sellers, and executive leadership) throughout the required changes.

Here's what that looks like in action:

• Go-to-market planning, in which we deploy a cost-to-serve feature, measure profitability against productivity, model for untapped markets, and more
• Sales territory and headcount planning that right-sizes your sales team, defines territory rules, adjusts territories as they change, and manages account hierarchies
• Sales account segmentation that analyzes how each account contributes to your existing revenue and identifies high-, medium-, and low-priority customers
• A bookings, restatement, and finance interlock feature that adjusts and corrects in real time and that meshes with all relevant business units for a clear view of performance
• A sales compensation and accruals feature that achieves the right balance between budget and retention and assists with sales compensation planning
• Territory goal and quota planning that uses the latest analytics and models to predict changing territory sales and inform how you establish quotas
• A sales coverage strategy that identifies the best use of sales channels based on target customer segmentation
• Crediting and compensation tools with crediting-as-a-service and compensation-as-a-service features, among many others
• A sales analysis and insights hub that pulls together all of this information for authoritative calls to action

We offer a full spectrum of services designed to ensure you get the most out of these features.

Our planning services improve the accuracy of your goaling. During this phase, we conduct regular assessments to determine if you're ready to reach your goals. We make your planning data, contract values, upsell, and renewal calculations easily visible, traceable, and more accurate in their predictions. And we ensure that your technology and platforms are scalable and flexible.

In the implementation phase, we improve the sales agent experience with bookings-based planning, goaling, credit, and compensation and by providing business-rules-based actionable steps to help them sell. Also, we encourage and monitor collaboration among sales agents, renewal managers, and service staff to improve sales all around. Additionally, we develop metrics for better data quality across systems.

And in the operations and support phase, we reduce costs with industry-leading back-office services for crediting, calculations, and payouts. We also provide data management and analytics services for real-time sales effectiveness, KPIs, and metrics. And we offer sales representatives level-one and level-two support for disputes and inquiries.

Here's what we've accomplished for some of our clients.

Sales strategy transformation and planning

• Day-one readiness
• Acceptance of goals by agents in just one month
• A 20% increase in sales operations productivity
• A 76% improvement in sales coverage over one period

Transforming sales territory and quota planning

• 2x faster quota planning
• A 50% improvement in sales operations productivity through eliminated manual effort
• Real-time monitoring of quota attainment
• 2x more territory coverage
• Collaboration in real time with online sign-off

Automating incentive compensation and crediting

• 98% forecast accuracy
• Reduction in dispute resolution
• Thousands of spreadsheets eliminated
• 99.8% accuracy in compensation payment
• Effective what-if scenario analyses

Our teams have the right sets of skills to launch your seller operations revamp quickly, efficiently, and effectively. And we're extremely familiar with all the software solutions – such as SAP, Anaplan, and others – that can help make the transition a smooth one. What's more, we have well-recognized high-tech expertise in the fields of sales ecosystems, enterprise architecture, and connected data, as well as a robust understanding of end-to-end architecture.

We're at the forefront of platform evolution and innovation. For example, Enquero's PowerMe platform can provide audits for data quality, policies, and processes on easy-to-access dashboards.

We know the industry's issues and technology landscape and have a distinctive value proposition. Let us show you how we can help.