Why You Should Track Your Employee's Commissions

Commissions are your sales team's bread and butter. It's the most significant incentive they have to perform well, and most will work hard to beef up their commission check as much as possible.

While you might focus most of your insight on total sales data, tracking employee commissions can provide many benefits. Here are just a few reasons why you should use a commission tracker.

Gain Better Insight Into Sales Productivity

What better way to monitor overall productivity? Basic sales data only shows you so much. Commission data expands the picture and helps you create detailed reports with tons of insight.

For example, you can create easy-to-read visuals for any part of your compensation data. Look at specific regions, identify trends for individual teams, and more. Commission-tracking lets you create reports with filtered information. Segment your sales and fine-tune your view to learn about productivity as much as possible.

Informed Decision-Making

Of course, you can put all that data you collect with commission tracking to good use. Your sales market is constantly evolving, and maintaining success requires regular adjustments to your sales tactics. Use a commission tracker to make crucial decisions that impact your bottom line.

Identify trends and tap into emerging markets before the competition realizes it exists. Or, readjust your resources to prepare for swells and dips. All of that is possible with commission data.

Empower and Motivate Sales Reps

One of the best ways to use commission data is to empower your employees. Many sales reps will attempt to keep track of their earnings throughout the period. Others will leave it up to fate.

With tracking, you can provide accurate information in real-time. Provide in-the-moment commission information and provide regular updates. Knowing where they are at any given moment empowers your team to keep pushing no matter what.

Tapping Into the Power of Data

Commission tracking software is a must for any sales-focused business. The data you collect is multi-faceted. Use it to make decisions, motivate your team, and monitor overall success from one easy-to-use platform.

Read a similar article about commission tracking here at this page.

3 Benefits of Practicing Transparency With Your Sales Team

Even when it’s hard to swallow, the truth is always better than a lie. This goes for just about everything in life, but it’s especially true in business.

No one wants to be lied to or misled, particularly when matters of pay are at stake. As a result, it’s generally best to be transparent with your team about issues like commissions.

Although the basic moral decency of telling the truth is the biggest reason to not keep things from your sales force, below are three more benefits of practicing transparency with your sales staff:

1. Transparency Builds Teams

When it comes to team-building, transparency goes a long way in strengthening bonds. When you’re transparent with people, you build trust. When team members can trust you, the company, and each other, they are more likely to work together as a unit.

When there’s no transparency, your employees will likely adopt an every-man-for-himself mentality. This can be hugely detrimental to the success of your company and the satisfaction of its customers.

2. Setting Goals Becomes Easier

Transparency also tends to bring about more realistic goals. When you’re mired in half-truths, no one knows what’s going on. As a result, goals may be set that are totally unrealistic because they were based on lies.

3. There Are No Questions About Pay

If you aren’t transparent about pay, you’re bound to run into trouble. For example, the mortgage industry often relies on a commission structure to incentivize performance. If your sales team only has your word to buy instead of actual numbers using mortgage commission software, the potential exists for some degree of cloudiness in what is communicated about what a sales professional has earned or is expected to earn.

In this situation, tools like mortgage commission software would have made the situation easier for everyone as they would have added transparency to the process. Your sales team could view their commission totals, the numbers are clear for your sales staff to see and employees can view reports from previous quarters to compare numbers for accuracy.

Read a similar article about commission statement layout here at this page.

What is BigQuery Integration?

Let's face it: Commission tracking can be a nightmare. It doesn't matter if you have a small team or have thousands of sales professionals. There are tons of data points to analyze, and many things can go wrong.

The last thing you want is to have payout inaccuracies. Luckily, BigQuery integration for commission tracking is available to make that worry a thing of the past.

What Exactly is BigQuery?

BigQuery first launched as V2 in 2011. It's a web service developed by Google to process massive amounts of read-only data sets.

Initially, the technology was part of Google's query service software Dremel. It was an externalized version of Dremel that evolved into a powerful tool for data analysis.

Dremel has been a big part of Google's success. Internally, the software tracked installation data, crash information, and more. It even analyzed spam! As you can imagine, the technology is impressively robust.

BigQuery is a service that's available to the masses. It works the same way as Dremel, opening up a world of data analysis possibilities.

How BigQuery Works

This service works by employing columnar data storage. That allows it to scan data rapidly before dispatching queries into a tree architecture. From there, it can aggregate the data across computer clusters to look for inaccuracies and other defined data points.

BigQuery uses SQL-like syntax and runs on Google Cloud Storage. As a result, it's convenient and accessible for many applications.

How Does It Help with Commission Tracking?

When you use BigQuery integration for commission tracking, you're working to keep your data updated and error-free. BigQuery constantly looks for issues and updates in real-time. That eliminates small errors that can lead to incorrect commission checks and a slew of headaches.

BigQuery is also scalable and cost-effective. It's a must-have for compensation management.

Using BigQuery to Your Advantage

BigQuery is a technology that can help you avoid issues and keep your team happy. When choosing a commission management platform, look for BigQuery integration for peace of mind.

Read a similar article about accurate commission forecasting here at this page.

How to Tailor Your Resume for Sales Positions

If you're trying to get a job in sales, your resume is crucial! It's the first thing potential employers see, and it's responsible for painting a picture about your skills and sales capabilities. Your resume isn't something to gloss over.

In this blog, we'll give you some tips on tailoring your resume for sales positions.

Highlight Sales-Focused Skills

One of the most important aspects of any resume is how it showcases your abilities. Your job history will tell potential employers a lot about your experience. But a list of past positions doesn't provide the entire story.

Don't be afraid to highlight what you can do. Of course, make sure to tailor your list of abilities to the position you're trying to get. You can mention product knowledge, your ability to acquire or retain customers, how you approach closing sales, and more.

Those finer details make all the difference, so don't hesitate to brag a little!

Provide the Proof

The proof is in the pudding! When you're crafting your resume, provide a list of achievements. That could include awards from your previous bosses. But if you want the most impact, use a compensation management tool to get the hard figures.

Most tools can often provide in-depth analytics about your performance. That means getting sales figures and other crucial metrics a new employer will want to see.

Highlight moments when you exceeded sales quotas, talk about average annual sales, and provide figures that highlight growth or ongoing improvement.

Treat It Like a Sales Pitch

Finally, treat your resume as if you're trying to sell yourself to an employer. Ultimately, that's what a resume should do, so why not use the techniques you already know?

Your resume should tell a story about who you are and what you can bring to the table. In addition to the basics, provide a brief statement about your sales experience. Feature the information you get from your compensation management tool and use it to show new employers how you can benefit their bottom line!

Read a similar article about sales sentiment analysis here at this page.

What is a Long-Term Incentive Plan?

Businesses need incentives to attract and retain talent. A paycheck is one obvious type of incentive, but at the end of the day, any workplace can provide a paycheck. The real challenge for business owners is finding incentives that offer real value outside of simply allowing an employee to earn money for hours put in.

For many business owners, the solution to this problem is found by providing commission-based incentives. These are payments made for achieving certain items like closed deals. A commission-based strategy is often used as part of an overall long-term incentive plan, and it adds value because it pays extra for achieving goals rather than just clocking in for the day. In a nutshell, it incentivizes employees to work harder to receive bigger rewards.

Designing Commission Plans for Sales Development Representatives

One issue that you may face as a business owner is how to develop commission plans for different roles in your company. Specifically, the delineation must be made between sales representatives and account executives who close deals and sales development representatives (SDR) who qualify leads.

While creating a commission plan for account executives and traditional sales representatives is fairly straightforward, designing a good SDR commission plan is a bit more complicated. Because SDRs are typically tasked with finding and qualifying leads as opposed to finalizing deals, should they receive an equal split of a sales commission? Should their commission be separate entirely? Should they receive a lower commission compared to the closer? All of these questions and more need to be asked when designing a good SDR commission plan.

Every Business is Different

There’s really no right or wrong answer to the questions posed above as every business is different. In the end, your goal needs to be focused on incentivizing the achievement of goals based on role and capacity. How you lay out your long-term incentives using commission payments is up to you, but you want each employee to have a reason to work harder based on the reward that is available.

Read a similar article about commission management here at this page.

Best Social Media Sites for Job Searching

Networking is one of the most important components of job searching, and it's one of the top ways job seekers can get hired. Whether it's networking in-person or online, or using social media to grow your career, there are many ways social networking can help you get hired read more

How Artificial Intelligence is Impacting the Sales World

Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics in business these days. What was once something that was only discussed in science fiction novels and computer science labs is now vaunted in the consumer sector? Everything from self-driving vehicle technologies to Big Data involves the use of artificial intelligence, and it seems like the sky's the limit.

When it comes to the sales industry, artificial intelligence is also having a huge impact. Artificial intelligence for sales utilizes prescriptive and predictive data analysis to anticipate changing trends that results in the potential for more leads and more opportunities. Additionally, artificial intelligence for sales can look back at past campaigns to analyze performance faster and with greater efficiency.

Taking the Guesswork Out of Pricing

Even seasoned sales veterans still face challenges when it comes to pricing. Every situation is unique, and closing the deal may require a lot of thought put into pricing to get things done. Using artificial intelligence, sales professionals can rely on a detailed analysis completed by an algorithm to take much of the guesswork and time out of the process while still preparing a great deal.

Setting Goals Becomes More Efficient

Speaking of guesswork, there’s plenty of guesswork that goes into sales forecasting. While experienced sales professionals often have an easier time predicting trends, there are still a lot of variables involved in the forecasting process that can hinder success.

Using artificial intelligence, forecasting can become easier since this technology can quickly analyze past performance, factor in current conditions and predict with great accuracy where things are likely to end up. Using this knowledge, sales professionals can craft strategies for both short- and long-term success.

Revealing New Opportunities for Upselling

Upselling is a fantastic way to add value to a sale and increase profits, but targeting opportunities for upselling can be complex. Through the use of artificial intelligence, sales professionals have the ability to be presented with a range of upsell opportunities by allowing this technology to analyze connections between a lead prospect and the current deal being offered.

Read a similar article about supporting your remote sales team here at this page.