Escape From Manual Commissions Spreadsheets

If you're still processing sales commissions in manual spreadsheets, it's time for a change!

CloudComp Commission Anything processes your sales commissions calculations automatically using your existing Salesforce data.

Processing sales commissions via manual spreadsheets exposes you to a variety of issues including:

• Calculation errors
• Untimely results
• Poor visibility for sales reps
• Security / access control risks

When you run your sales commissions with CloudComp in Salesforce, you'll have: 

• Automated, precise calculations
• Commissions and quota attainment continuously updated automatically
• Visibility for sales reps in reports and dashboards, right inside of Salesforce where they work.
• Salesforce security and access controls

CloudComp is Certified 100% Salesforce Native. So your valuable customer sales data and your sales commissions will be processed in your Salesforce org and nowhere else. CloudComp uses the same Salesforce security and access controls that you trust to keep your data secure. So you can be sure that sales commissions are kept private between sales reps, even if your Opportunities are shared between reps in your Salesforce org.

Contact Surfwriter today to learn more about how we can help you do commissions right in Salesforce or to see a demo of our CloudComp Commission Anything App in action. 

5 Mistakes to Avoid in Sales Commissions Management

Whether you're updating your compensation plans in your existing cloud-based system or implementing a new sales commissions management application; for best results, avoid these five common mistakes that (otherwise) smart people often make in sales commissions management projects. 

1. Definitions of Sales Data not Documented 

Most sales organizations these days are maintaining their sales data in Salesforce or other similar cloud-based SFA systems, and of course, they have their compensation plans documented, but have you every noticed that documentation of the specific sales data in Salesforce or other SFA is totally missing from almost all compensation plan documents today? In my experience, very few organizations are maintaining a technical document to define the sales data that constitutes the basis for quotas and commissions. Hard to believe, given the business-critical nature of the sales data and the huge amount of money expended on sales commissions, right? 

To avoid this all-to-common pitfall, create and maintain organizational documentation of the sales data (API names of objects, fields, etc) that constitutes the basis for quotas and sales commissions with sufficient detail that a Salesforce (or other system) report can be created from the description. For example. if there are different commission rates for "New Logo" vs "Renewal", document the API names of the fields and values that map to those rules in the compensation plan. Create non-controversial reports that represent the basis for quota and commissions and socialize them throughout the sales organization. 

2. Overly Complicated Compensation Plans 

All too often we find that very few people in a sales organization actually understand the commission rules well enough to communicate them and demonstrate the math. This creates tremendous friction at multiple levels of the organization. Salespeople cannot be incentivized by formulas or math equations that they don't understand, Sales Operations has difficulty reconciling the results generated by automated systems and new changes in rules or rates are difficult to implement due to the sheer complexity of the rules. In short, the disadvantages clearly outweigh the advantages. 

To avoid this mistake, just apply the old KISS principal. Keep it Simple Salespeople! Reps can only be incentivized by what they can easily understand. If almost nobody in the sales organization knows how to do the math for the commissions you're doing it wrong. Just saying... : ) 

3. Complex Work-arounds for Discounts and Variable Margins 

We've seen a wide array of bizarre commission formulas over the years that were intended to deal with the reality that margins often differ between sales deals. These often seemed to frustrate both Sales Ops and Sales people not to mention the inflexibility and cumbersome technical overhead they create. 

In my experience, the best way to handle variable sales commissions for sales channels where discounting is a factor, is to commission on sales margins rather than gross sales. Yes, this means that you need to establish the ability to maintain data on costs in your SFA, but in my view, this is a worthwhile effort that will enhance your business intelligence and render a variety of welcome benefits above and beyond sales commissions management. 

4. Insufficient or Untimely Visibility of Results 

Poor visibility comes in a variety of forms, including non-timely results, lack of granularity, difficulty with reconciliation, hidden math equations etc. The bottom line is this: If you want your salesperson to be incentivized by sales commissions, she needs to be able to see and understand her results in a timely manner. She needs the ability to reconcile the results herself and feel confident that her commissions are accurate. 

So, if you haven't gotten out of manual spreadsheets into and automated sales commissions management system yet, or you're in a system that isn't rendering timely visibility of quota attainment and commissions for your team, it's time to make your move. 

5. Compensation Plans Misaligned with Desired Performance 

To put it in plain english: Some sales organizations have bad compensation plans. We could give these bad comp plans the benefit of the doubt and say they've been outgrown by their organizations... But really, some just seem to have never been a particularly good idea to begin with... I've seen some comp plans that I figured must have started out their life as a few notes scrawled on a cocktail napkin by a VP in Cabo San Lucas after 3 pitchers of Margaritas 10 years ago... Then they got stretched, morphed, extended and subverted by teams of otherwise well-meaning Executives and Sales Ops folks and somehow never got thrown in the proverbial recycle bin out of some kind of organizational inertia.  If your organization has compensation plans like these, it's time to move on and make a fresh start! Compensation plans and systems should be designed for a win-win of organization and sales people featuring timely visibility of results driven by rules that are easy to understand, goals that are both reasonably attainable and in alignment with the objectives of the organization. It really is that simple.

Contact Surfwriter today to learn more about how we can help you do commissions right in Salesforce or to see a demo of our CloudComp Commission Anything App in action. 

How to build Tiers and Accelerators in CloudComp for Salesforce

When designed properly, sales accelerators encourage sellers to hit and exceed their goals, and they help boost payouts for high performers while limiting pay for low performers. 

The results of well-designed Tiers and Accelerators are individual pay outcomes and overall sales compensation expenses that are competitive with the market.

Without accelerators in place, goals or quotas can have far less financial impact on sales reps than intended, meaning your company runs the risk of underpaying high performers and overpaying low performers. 

Tiers and Accelerators are are quick and easy to build and manage in CloudComp Commission Anything! And best of all, if you know how to use CloudComp, you can do it yourself on your own time, right in your own Salesforce Org!

In CloudComp Compensation Plans, each row is called a "Compensation Plan Tier". The Plan Tiers take a number of arguments including "Attainment Base" and "Attainment Top" which enable setting percentages of Quota Target to define Attainment-based Tiers or Accelerators, "Quota Type" which enables associating the CloudComp Quota records that will deliver the Attainment Percentages and "Revenue Type" which controls the records that can qualify for the Plan Tier.

The Compensation Plan below is a "Team-based" Plan using monthly targets, meaning that a manager who is assigned to the compensation plan will receive her base and accelerator commissions according to the production of her sales team against her Quota Target during each month. Any Plan Tier in CloudComp can be Individual or Team-based according to the Quota Type declared for the Tier. So you can easily mix and match Individual and Team-based Tiers and Accelerators on the same CloudComp Compensation Plan.

When CloudComp generates commissions for our manager Stacy, it uses the Attainment Percentage from her Quota (of the Quota Type declared for the Plan Tier) to process the Attainment-based Tiers. This enables any number of Sales Reps to be assigned to the same Compensation Plan with different sales targets for the same fiscal period (month quarter or year). This also enables you to set different targets by fiscal period for the same user, thereby supporting ramping, seasonal differences in sales volume, etc.

Because each Plan Tier is processed individually by CloudComp, only the sales that meet the exact criteria for each Tier are qualified for commissions. Note in the screenshot below, that though Stacy Owen's Team exceeded 100% of her Quota Target for the month of October, thereby activating the Accelerators for the App Subscriptions and Support products, the Training product sales did not qualify for the >100% Attainment Accelerator. 

Why did the training product sales not qualify for the >100% Attainment Accelerator? It is because the Accelerator Tiers on this Compensation Plan are activated via date-time sequence. Though the overall Team-based Quota Attainment exceeded 100% of target during the month, the Training product sales occurred prior to the date-time of 100% achievement of Target. A Period-based calculation method is also supported as an alternative to date-time sequence and Plan Tiers can be set to be Retroactive as well so that they pay out commissions on existing records when the Attainment Base of the Plan Tier is achieved.

Please feel free to Contact Surfwriter today if you have questions about how CloudComp Commission Anything can automate your Tiers and Accelerators or you would like to see a demo of CloudComp in action. 

Good luck with your commissions automation project!

How to Automate Sales Commissions in Salesforce: Start with good Sales Data!

Do you want to automate your sales commissions in Salesforce? 

In our experience, the most overlooked aspect of sales commission automation projects, is the sales data that constitutes the "basis for commissions". What do we mean by the "basis for commissions"? 

Consider these 3 key components of sales commissions:

1. Sales data
2. Commission rules
3. Commission results

The process of calculating commissions goes like this: For each instance of a row of  commissionable sales data (#1),  one or many commission rules (#2), will be applied to produce commission results (#3).

So the sales data (#1), is obviously the foundation of the commissions calculation process right? It is literally impossible to process commission rules (#2) and generate commission results (#3) without the correct sales data (#1).

OK, then why is it that so many companies seem to begin commissions automation projects without getting their sales data right for the project first? Perhaps it's just because many people haven't ever managed a sales commissions automation project before. 

So how can you avoid this pitfall and get your sales data right for your sales commissions project before you try to automate it? 

Think about it this way:  Start by imagining a simple commission example. Let's say that for each closed/won Opportunity (#1 basis), our sales rep, Julie, earns a 10% commission on the amount at close date of opportunities she owns (#2 rules), So if Julie is the owner, the Opportunity amount is $10k and the close date is 2/18/22, then Julie will earn a commission of $1,000.00 during the February '22 pay period which she will receive during march when February payments are made (#3 commission results). 

So if we look at #2 (commission rules), we can see precisely what we need in our sales data. We need to be able to report out closed/won opportunity amounts, by owner and close date. Simple right? Of course! Remember, this was our simple example... Now here's the problem. What if there's another little commission rule hiding behind the scenes (#2), which states that Julie only earns her commission when the closed/won Opportunity amount is actually paid by the customer?

Now if you repeat the same approach you will quickly identify that in order for your sales data (#1), to be a sufficient basis for the new commission rule (#2) requiring sales to be paid by the customer prior to generating commissions, then you can hopefully see for yourself now that each row of sales data (#1) must now represent the amount that was paid, not the amount that was closed/won. 

Another example would be a commission rule which states that Julie gets a higher commission rate on "new logo" sales over "renewal" sales. Can you see where this is going this time? It means that now every row of sales data will need to contain an attribute to distinguish "new logo" from "renewal". 

So the moral of this story is this: To get your sales data right for a commissions automation project, you should confirm that each condition being called out in your commission rules such as "ARR" "closed/won", "amount paid", "margin", "new logo" etc. can be mapped to attributes that are included within your sales data. Then you'll be ready to implement a commissions automation tool such as our CloudComp Commission Anything™ for Salesforce App to process your rules against your sales data and generate your commissions and payment results.

Remember this simple 1-2-3 of sales commissions automation! If you understand these principals, then you're likely to save a lot of time and expense on your commissions automation project! 

Good luck with your project and feel free to Contact Surfwriter if you would like more information on our sales commission automation tools and implementation services for Salesforce.

CloudComp Commission Anything App for Salesforce (Video)

CloudComp Commission Anything will enable you to rapidly configure Quotas, Commissions, Accelerators and Payments using any of your standard or custom objects and fields with clicks not code.

CloudComp Commission Anything will enable you to rapidly configure Quotas, Commissions, Accelerators and Payments using any of your standard or custom objects and fields with clicks not code. All data is accessible via Standard Salesforce reports and dashboards. CloudComp is 100% compatible with Salesforce Object and Field security and is Salesforce Mobile Ready.

Configure and Run Quotas and Commissions in CloudComp (video)

This 6 minute training video demonstrates setting up Quotas, a Compensation Plan with an Accelerator and Running Commissions in CloudComp Commission Anything from start to finish.

CloudComp is a 100% Native Salesforce, Certified Enterprise Incentive Compensation App which provides click-to-configure setup for Standard and Custom Objects and Fields and supports Multi-Quota, Mult-Plan, Multi-Tier and Multi-Currency Compensation. All data is accessible via Standard Salesforce reports and dashboards. CloudComp is 100% compatible with Salesforce Object and Field security. CloudComp Payments easily export with your back office systems or Payroll Service provider.

CloudComp Commission Anything Video Demo

This video shows you how CloudComp Commission Anything will enable you to rapidly configure Incentive Compensation using any of your standard or custom objects and fields with Clicks not Code.

CloudComp is a 100% Native Salesforce, Certified Enterprise Incentive Compensation App which provides click-to-configure setup for Standard and Custom Objects and Fields and supports Multi-Quota, Mult-Plan and Multi-Tier Compensation. All data is accessible via Standard Salesforce reports and dashboards. CloudComp is 100% compatible with Salesforce Object and Field security and Salesforce1 Mobile Ready.