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Sales managers often dedicate a tremendous amount of time to tracking sales performance data and motivating their team. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with keeping score and providing encouragement. But these activities may not be as valuable as sales managers think they are.

What’s the best sales incentive structure to use? What is it that makes sales incentive projects successful, beyond calculating compensation numbers and ensuring payment accuracy? It’s a difficult question to answer. Mark Roberg, HubSpot Chief Revenue Officer (“The Right Way to Use Compensation”), correctly mentions that “the ideal plan is contextual — tailored to both the type of business and the [company’s] stage of growth.”

Even well-planned sales compensation projects can go astray. It’s not only the technology scope and multiple stakeholders that can complicate things, but also the need to cooperate and work closely with an outside vendor.

Between September and October 2015, Aberdeen surveyed 254 end-user organizations to understand their sales compensation and overall sales performance management best practices.

Understanding data and data quality is one of the most critical, yet most overlooked tasks when preparing to implement a new Sales Performance Management system.

Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions have proven extremely valuable. A solid solution will reduce payment errors, cut processing times and significantly improve the efficiency of your sales operations.