Well
the cop out answer is no and yes. They
certainly can be if they are not well planned in the first place. And more importantly if you don’t account for
the metrics of the different departments involved, how they are measured for
performance and how they are compensated, you could be headed for a calamity.
Here’s
a simple example:
A
sales force is challenged to sell more of their base product, let’s say a
sophisticated and expensive software system.
The VP Sales offers an incentive to the sales force for incremental
sales especially to new customers.
However to make the sale, the sales force must bring in service
technicians because the system requires expensive implementations. In addition engineering needs to be involved to
make sure it is a proper fit and includes the proper features to do the
job. In this example lets’ assume that
the sales force is responsible for managing the team.
As
tradeoffs between product features and other services can exist, the sales
force opts to defer features that they feel (right or wrong) can be managed by
the service team, or re engineered by IT.
Sales also rely on service and engineering to ensure proposals are
realistic and on budget. Teamwork is
essential.
But
it may never happen. What if the sales
team is incented on gross revenue and the service team is compensated on profit
margin? And then add to the complexity
that engineering earns a bonus based on project accuracy and timeliness and
that bonus can grow based on overall department profitability.
In
team selling, much friction can arise and has the potential to cause a loss in
sales and customers, lower customer satisfaction scores and can even effect
employee retention and morale.
Before
you plan and implement a sales incentive activity you need to gather the
department heads involved and hash out all these contingencies. Look at the metrics across all the
functioning teams and make sure your teams are incented to work together. When all the puzzle pieces fit, you will have
less likelihood of program that can fail or do great harm and ultimately be
very successful.
For
more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net
