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Welcome, everybody, to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcasts.
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My name is Brian Neal.
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My name is Bill Kasky.
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We re here every week for your listening enjoyment.
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Glad that you joined us.
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Let s see.
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Listener at advancedsellingpodcast.com, that s the email.
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Send us a question.
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You can also send an audio question.
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Remember those days, Bill?
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Yeah, we used to do that a lot.
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Those were great.
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Yeah, send us an audio memo with your question.
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Email it to us.
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Or a problem.
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Maybe you re posing a problem.
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Like, here s my situation.
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I don t know how to get out of it.
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And we ll protect your anonymity, too, if you want.
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Unless you want to be famous, and you say your first name and last name, and then everyone will blow you up on LinkedIn.
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Like, I heard you on the Advanced Selling Podcast.
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World famous.
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All right.
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You ready?
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I m ready.
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I m ready.
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A little choppy today, huh?
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Well, it s a Monday.
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It is.
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My granddaughter, Sawyer, who s seven, has a YouTube channel.
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And we played, I think we played something here a few months ago around Christmas.
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She did a holiday thing.
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And it s funny.
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And what s funny about it is that we will come into the studio here, and she ll say, Papa, I want to do a video.
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OK, fine.
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Do you know what it s about?
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No.
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She s kind of like us in the advanced level.
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It was just hit.
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And so I ll hit record, and she ll go, is it going?
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And I said, yeah.
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And she just starts, hey, guys, welcome to Sawyer YouTube channel.
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She doesn t have any idea what she s going to talk about.
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It s just like whatever the stream of consciousness, whatever the Lord gives her to talk about, she talks about.
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Fantastic.
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But the other day, she got this thing about a food pantry.
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I think she maybe heard it at church or something.
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And she was all inquisitive about a food pantry.
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And my wife says, well, sorry, you can take things to the food pantry, but you have to make sure, A, that they re in a can, and B, they re not expired.
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Okay, typical.
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Yeah, I like it.
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So she decided to shoot a video on food pantries, which I don t think she s ever set foot in the one.
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But anyway, big audience for the food pantry podcast, which I just love.
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But this is fantastic.
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So anyway, here it is.
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Hey guys, I m Soraya.
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Today I m going to be doing stuff that you can only bring if people don t have any money in their pool.
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You can bring it to a food kitchen, but you can t do it expired.
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It can only be in a can.
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Remember, it can only go to a food kitchen and it can t be expired.
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Read it on the bottom.
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It s supposed to be on the bottom of this.
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See the blue?
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If you want to donate stuff, it cannot be expired.
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It has to be in a can.
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That s all for my video today.
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I hope you enjoyed it.
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Please bring stuff to the food kitchen to donate to those poor people.
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Remember, it can t be expired.
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It has to be in a can.
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Bye!
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Well, anyway, you get the idea that over about nine times during that video can t be expired.
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It s got to be in a can.
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It was just she was hammering that home.
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And I thought it was funny.
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I feel that she has a future and as pitch woman, right?
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Yeah, exactly.
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Dial 1-800-47 flowers.
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That s 1-800-47 flowers.
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Don t don t forget.
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Can t be expired and it s got to be in a can.
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Yeah, get your credit card out and dial this number.
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Now, I think, I m going to give Sawyer an idea here.
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I think she should start a swag store and one of her first t-shirts should say, got to be in a can, can t be expired.
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That s her brand.
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That is fantastic.
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Got to be in a can, can t be expired.
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That is so cute.
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How fun is that?
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And then about the fifth time in, she even said to the camera, I think I said this before, but anyway, it can t be in a, can t be expired.
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It s got to be like, you don t realize you didn t, you didn t hear the last five times it came out of your mouth.
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You know, it s important, important.
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It is.
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Yeah.
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You don t want to be taking in stuff without, I might, if you re comfortable with it, send me that because I have a, I actually have a client who sells to food pantries.
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I do.
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Oh, yeah.
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A long term client that sells to food.
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I bet they would get a kick out of that.
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They would.
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Yeah.
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OK, topic.
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We re going to talk about motivation today.
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We re going to talk about motivation and compensation forecasting, basically for the theme of the month, along with one of our newest partners, our friends at Exactly Corp.
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Exactly.
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have a really great platform.
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We met them through another connection at a show and they said, you know, we think we ve got some good stuff to share with your audience.
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We said, OK.
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And so they re on board for a little partnership with us.
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And we re going to Bill and I are going to do two episodes first.
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Just a little bit about motivation, what intrinsically motivates salespeople, what doesn t.
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Then we re going to talk about forecasting, forecasting your comp, your commissions, that sort of stuff.
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That s really important for people to do.
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Then we re going to bring our friends on from Xactly and talk about their viewpoints.
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Today, we re going to start that process.
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By the way, their website s exactlycorp.com.
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If you want to go check them out, exactlycorp.com.
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Um, and they re going to give us, uh, they re going to give you all as an ASP listener later in the month, um, a really cool little freebie.
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Good.
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You got to stick around, um, listen to all the episodes, but, um, this first topic they talk about and they re, they re solving a great problem is this whole idea of where commissions sit, uh, and motivation for sales teams.
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and sales individuals.
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And we want to talk a little bit, Bill and I, about our viewpoints of motivation, commission, how to think about it, what we ve seen people do that works, what doesn t work, and that sort of thing, both for sales leaders and for the sales teams themselves.
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So, you want me to start with a little statement?
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Uh, my first statement, and we may have said this in past episodes, but I think this is really important, uh, to, to realize is where does commission fit in your, um, intrinsic motivation value.
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We know from a, from a assessment that Bill and I ve used in the past that really only about half of the humans on the earth are motivated by money.
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Um, and so most sales people or sales leaders, when they re designing comp plans, think that everybody is.
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And I think that is the first fallacy of the first myth is thinking that if I toss a commission plan on someone, everyone is going to like jump out of their chairs because they can make a bazillion dollars.
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And I just have not found that to be completely true.
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There are some, obviously, half people are that way, but some are not.
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So what s your take on that?
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What do you?
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Yeah, my take is that it s always a mix.
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It s always, and even the Hogan, which we talked about earlier, it s a mix between security, what motivates you, security, predictability, adventure, money, you know, what we call social settings.
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I think it s always a mix.
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And I think the challenge is that when your company comes to you as if that s the only motivator, money, and you have to filter that through and say, OK, I appreciate that, but you need to know me.
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And you can either say this, or if you re not comfortable saying, you have to think, OK, I understand the company wants to pay me on
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on success and results.
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But there s a lot of other things that are important to me.
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And you have to keep those in mind.
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You can t expect them.
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To be honest with you, I m sorry to say this, your company doesn t care.
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They don t care what your other four motivators are.
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They don t.
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All they re interested in is you performing, and they will pay you for that.
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And part of that payment is an incentive.
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So I think it s a mix, but I think we ve got to be hyper aware and not feel shame if money just doesn t get us out of bed in the morning.
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Yeah.
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Some mornings it might, and some mornings it won t.
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And it s a fluid situation, I think.
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That s really good.
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Yeah.
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And that s funny, because I think it s almost as if some employees think you should read my mind, and you should understand.
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You should get me to a deep level where, like you said, Bill, at the core, the company is there to sustain itself, to make money for its owners and its shareholders.
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They do that on the sales team through paying an incentive compensation for performance.
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It s a performance-based deal.
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That s the deal.
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What do you think about this?
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There s another thing I see.
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So when companies, this is a loaded, loaded subject, compensation design.
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And I know exactly helps companies with this.
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It s been my take that
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companies tend to overcomplicate compensation plans.
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Absolutely.
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And when they do, they erode trust.
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Absolutely.
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Because salespeople will dive in.
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to it.
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And salespeople tend to look at where they re getting screwed, you know, on the comp plan.
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And when it gets difficult to compute, salespeople spend a lot of time on their own.
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Seeing if they got paid, I ve got a I ve got a like case in point from this guy that s a sales guy.
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And he s in this, you know, this basically negotiation with his owner over a compensation thing, you know, and I have another one that happened last year.
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where the comp plans bill, it s kind of complicated company didn t cover everything.
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Guy signs this enormous deal.
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And his commission per their commission plan was like as much as the president makes in the company.
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And I m like, sorry, company.
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Yeah, you know, but they re like, Well, no, wait, we can t pay you that much.
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I m like, Well, wait, now hang on a sec.
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So what s your take on that bill?
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Like trust complication?
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Yeah, I mean, I can t tell you how many times when I ask sales, even a sales manager, what s the comp plan?
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They just scored a snicker.
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Well, are you sitting down?
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Do you have a chart?
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Do you have one of those big drafting tables?
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Old school.
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Yeah, because I m going to tell you, and it s going to take seven hours to walk you through it.
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Yeah, I agree.
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I mean, I understand why there s gates and why, at some point, maybe you hit 100% of quota, and then the numbers go up.
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I like something that s easy to understand, so I don t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to beat the system.
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I just don t.
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There s certain profitability on certain items.
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I understand that.
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We ve got a brand new product.
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We re going to pay an extra commission today for the first $500,000.
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But if it gets over $500,000, it s going to go down to 2%.
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Can you find a way to simplify it, VPs and sales and sales leaders?
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And now, I don t know if you want to go down this path, but I think short-term incentives are good, too, where maybe this introduction of a new product is not tied to your global compensation plan, your annual, but it s a 90-day push or a 90-day blitz.
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We re going to introduce this product, and we re going to give you some tools.
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So it s not just you out there.
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We re going to give you some tools.
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We re going to give you some videos.
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We re going to walk you through it.
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We re going to help you.
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But it s a team thing.
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But there s competition between the team.
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I think competition is very healthy.
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But I think when that s all there is, then you start to have people sniping at each other and not passing leads back and forth and kind of sabotaging.
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And that s not good.
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But I think short-term incentives are good.
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I think Sawyer was onto something.
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You know, it s that simple.
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It s got to be in a can.
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It can t be expired.
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Your compensation plan should be as simple as Sawyer s declaration of what food pantries will take.
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Got to be in a can.
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It can t be expired.
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If your comp plan doesn t pass that test, sniff test of two of two, then that a seven year old, it s true though, isn t it?
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It should be able to be understood, because here s the other thing that gets in the way then.
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When it s complicated, again, if it s complicated for a salesperson who s a professional business person with usually a degree or an advanced degree and some smarts there,
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Then it s going to be complicated for the person figuring it out.
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And then now we re into this, well, no, you ve got to pay me this on that and that on this.
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And then you can t predict.
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And I know some of my clients expect, because they run the commission through their filter, and they re thinking they re going to get $8,000.
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But they get their commission check, and it s $6,200.
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Now we re in this big angsty thing.
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And what a waste of time.
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It s a waste of time.
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Such a waste of time.
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And you re right.
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you know, just create trust issues.
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It s like, okay, I m giving all I can.
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And again, I m taking the individual s path here, but I also know there s the company side too.
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So there s those two sides, but man, if you re in a place of leadership and your people are spending too much time with their calculator on the comp plan, it s not right.
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It s just not right.
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And,
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We also can t forget about the customer in all of this.
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You know, we always say that, well, we want to serve our customers, but we will only serve our customers if it s good for us.
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Yes.
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And so once that comp plan gets in the way of us helping our customers, selling them, solving problems with them, getting them to their vision, then I think now you ve now we ve kind of forgotten about the whole reason we re here.
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That s a whole other thing, isn t it?
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Yeah.
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Let s talk about that.
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That s a really good subtopic here around compensation and compensation plans.
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How do we coach salespeople to carry good intention when they know that a certain product that they sell has a higher commission level to it or that sort of thing?
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That s a real slippery slope.
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What s your take on that?
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If you go into a new client, they show you the commission plan.
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Now, Bill, we pay 10% on this stuff.
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But if our team sells this, we wanted to sell this thing over here.
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They get 20% commission on that.
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What do you think, Bill?
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And they re proud of it.
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Hey, good one here, huh?
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Yeah, that s a tough one, because it gets into, well, what s my integrity?
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Am I holding integrity through the thing?
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Because I have no problem selling something that pays me more commission if it s, in fact, better for the customer, or it s a longer-term solution, or it does this one thing better, and this one thing is what they re going to do.
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I have no problem with that.
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I think that s fine.
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But yeah, when you cross the line between, well, it s really not better for the customer.
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It s just more money.
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then it s like, OK, well, I don t know.
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It just feels like a little bit of potential for loss of integrity.
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Yes.
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I had a situation like that where I was being sold to, and I was being proposed a product, and I just didn t feel right to me.
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I m like, for this?
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I m like, this doesn t feel right.
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So I have a couple of other friends who are in this particular industry, and I asked them.
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I said, hey, this person proposed this product to me.
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It doesn t feel right to me.
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both of the other people.
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So I asked two other people that are personal friends of mine that are in this industry.
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They said that that product they re trying to sell you is like 10 X commission over normal products.
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Both of them said that like, it s like, no.
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And I just felt that just like, and then all the trust, you know, I mean, it s not totally gone, but it s like, dang it.
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You know,
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Yeah, really, really careful with that when we re, and I think this starts with the company of, you know, you re setting your people up for this to occur by by engaging in this, you know, heavy compensation on certain clients and things like that.
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Yeah, plus I think companies are always looking for products that expand their footprint too.
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So I ve got product A, and if I add some features and turn it into product B, and I can charge 3x for product B, and we still have product A,
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Now I m going to have a dilemma in the sales team, because some sales people are going to say, well, I m going to sell product B, because I get paid a lot more on a higher commission.
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So some of that has to do with product development and product selection, and say, well, maybe we should just discontinue product.
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Right, exactly.
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Let s pay a higher commission.
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That s the only product.
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You know, how many times have you gone into a company?
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And I m guilty of this, too.
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We just have too many products.
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I mean, I ve got too many services, too many purchases.
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It s because we re always adding.
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We re adding.
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It s like adding an addition to a house, and another part of the house, and another part.
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And then you look at the house, you re like, what the hell?
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Who designed that?
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Well, seven people designed that because we kept adding to it.
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And so if you re a CEO, and you ve got a lot of products, and they start to overlap, and there s a potential loss of integrity, maybe
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you just shell some of those products.
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It s a great thing to do.
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Simplify.
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Got to be in a camp.
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Okay, check out our friends at exactly exactly corp x a c t l y x x a c t l y corp c r c o r p.com.
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We re gonna have one of their leaders on the show
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at the end of the month here, but really want you to check them out because they solve these problems for people.
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And he ll tell us how we re wrong on every count.
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Totally.
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He s going to listen to the first three episodes of the month ago.
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Yeah, you guys kind of missed it.
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You were way off.
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Anyway, so that s it.
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We ll talk next time a little bit about forecasting.
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See you next time.
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Bye.