Impactful Sales Performance Reporting Relies on Four Keys, According to Hassan Mahmood, Partner with Compensation Analytics

MINNEAPOLIS, Jan. 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- "Delivering robust, timely and accurate sales performance reports is critical to helping organizations hit their sales goals," says Hassan Mahmood, Partner with Compensation Analytics.

Like a radio beam guiding airplanes through the clouds to find a runway, performance feedback helps sales reps find their targets. Unfortunately, the majority of sales reporting projects fail to deliver value, although they do manage to spend their budgets -- and then some.

"It's amazing how paralyzing technology decisions can be on some projects. I have seen six month delays caused by back-to-back tool selections before anything of value was delivered to sales reps," says Mahmood. To deliver meaningful feedback and maximize sales compensation effectiveness, companies need to address four key areas: have a business intelligence game plan, totally engage the sales organization, design intuitive, accessible, and interactive reports and start small but deliver early and often.

A Business Intelligence (BI) game plan outlines how technical infrastructure and reporting applications will evolve over time to meet the requirements of your sales organization. Without a game plan, many programs paint themselves into a corner, become trapped and end up being one of those expensive do-overs you hear about. A game plan should be guided by a list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) prioritized by sales management.

"I have engaged with clients that began their BI journey with low-level commission data, and then wished to see sales against rep tenure, product categories or year-over-year trends. Unfortunately, this is very difficult to do after the fact. Had the KPI approach been utilized, data structures could have been designed to provide sales management with a multi-dimensional view into the key factors influencing sales performance," says Mahmood.

When the Soviet Union was under communist control, they were not known for being very customer focused and the result was poor quality products that nobody wanted - remember the Lada? You might not think this approach would be popular today; however, far too often sales reports are designed in a vacuum by the home office, and are received about as well as the Lada.

A much better approach is through iterative design sessions with sales advisory groups made up of reps and management from all channels and tenure levels. By doing so, not only have you got the field's fingerprints on the product, you also have a core and diverse group of enthusiasts that can help roll out the new reports and management processes.

"Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, yet it is amazing how often inadequate solutions are implemented with lightweight reports buried under layers of menus, with separate logons and discordant user interfaces. Good designs are rich in information, well organized and include interactivity such as drill downs and sliders for forecasting. We help our clients design and rollout reports that will get high marks with the sales force," says Mahmood.

Many large reporting projects fail under their own weight. When projects start with too large of a scope or huge infrastructure components, the excitement around delivering game changing sales reporting often evaporates quickly.

Your game plan can communicate a broad vision, but your project plan has to deliver reports frequently. "Imagine if you went to a fantastic restaurant and ordered the expensive five course tasting menu and then sat there forever waiting for the first course. Eventually, you would get up and walk out.  Too many projects want to perfect the infrastructure before delivering anything and their stakeholders lose patience," says Mahmood.

Begin by delivering reports in the high priority KPI area and then layer on additional features and reports as new data structures become available. This approach has proven to be the best compromise in the need-infrastructure-first versus need-reports-now debate.

With a top down game plan, an engaged sales team, user-friendly designs and an approach that delivers early and often, sales performance feedback can make a big difference in helping your organization achieve its sales goals.

About Compensation Analytics, LLC.

Compensation Analytics is a boutique consultancy that specializes in streamlining sales compensation through the alignment of incentives, internal business processes and technology. Visit http://www.compensationanalytics.com for more information.

SOURCE Compensation Analytics, LLC.