How Sales Compensation Automation Boosts Profits

Today’s sales cycles aren’t for the faint of heart.

They’re complex, often employ the input of cross-functional teams, and can't be addressed by the same old compensation models and tools. For salespeople to succeed, they need to feel persuaded to sell effectively for a company's go-to-market strategy—not just "told what to do."

Sales compensation automation can help organizations create smarter incentive plans that keep reps motivated throughout the sales cycles and drive profitability.

We’re not talking about simply automating payouts. Every day, we build new workflows to help large enterprises automate their entire sales compensation process: everything from presales incentives and calculating commission splits to complete plan rearchitecting.

Sales compensation has evolved. Here are a few ways incentive compensation automation can help you boost profits in the face of increasing complexity.

1. More efficient payroll processes

If you haven’t adopted sales compensation automation yet, your sales ops team is probably spending 90% of their time just trying to make payroll.

That leaves just 10% of their time spent on value-adding activities, like performance analysis, territory alignment, and incentive optimization.

Sales compensation analysts are highly valuable resources. Don’t waste their time (or yours) on the payroll treadmill.

Don’t be fooled by vendors claiming automation, but expect your team to babysit the system to ensure it doesn’t break.

True sales compensation automation will take on the brunt of admin work, so your skilled sales compensation team can help you drive performance and profits.

2. Lower error rates and sales commission disputes

You can’t put a price on your best reps. Then why do we settle for systems prone to human error?  Your top reps need to be selling, not resolving disputes about their commission.

Related article: 5 Reasons to Reduce Sales Commission Disputes

Commission errors are much more than a minor annoyance. Consistent errors can lead your top reps to lose confidence in the organization and make them feel less valued. Contrary to popular belief, salespeople are human, too.

Don’t settle for error-prone spreadsheets or clunky legacy SPM solutions that only marginally decrease error rates. Sales compensation software, when built the right way, will eliminate nearly all commission errors.

Of course, errors can occur with sales compensation automation given an inaccurate input from a data source.  That’s why top vendors take on the responsibility of commission accuracy rather than passing this arduous task on to incentive compensation management.

When your vendor takes on the task of payroll accuracy, your reps can bring the dispute directly to the vendor, rectify the error, and get paid fast.

3. Increased sales productivity

When your reps aren't worried about the accuracy of their payouts or spending hours chasing down finance, they have more time to drive growth for your organization. Reps will feel less inclined to do any shadow accounting and have one less worry. It almost eliminates this bottom-line activity leaving more time and energy to focus on activities that impact your top-line.

Don’t discount the power of a seamless sales compensation experience. Automation can eliminate a significant portion of the headaches that come with incentive compensation, increasing employee morale and satisfaction.

4. Improved data integrity

Adopting sales compensation automation allows you to bring disparate data sources together and promotes accuracy across your entire sales data stack.

Your CRM, BI, ERP, HR, extensive data systems all come together to calculate accurate payouts and populate performance dashboards.

Related article: 3 Questions You Need to Ask Before You Buy Sales Compensation Software

When your data is clean and presented in context, your sales team can track quota attainment and performance with confidence. When sales reps know precisely what needs to be sold and which deal needs to be closed to maximize their commission, they are naturally more motivated.

At year's end, you’ll be thankful that you’ve aligned your systems and maintained data integrity. Staying compliant will be a breeze, and access to transparent audit trails will give you more time to focus on next year’s goals.

5. Better ability to analyze and forecast

Advanced sales compensation automation can do far more than accelerate your payroll process.  

Vendors like Forma AI give their customers access to predictive algorithms that unearth otherwise invisible insights. Algorithms enable companies to forecast demand, calculate sales projections, and set smarter sales quotas than ever before.

Related article: The Forma AI Founding Story

By analyzing performance outcomes, predictive algorithms will only get smarter as time goes on, allowing companies to make better decisions that drive profitability.

Has your compensation plan caught up with today’s sales environment?

Today’s sales environment is more complex than ever, making it difficult for even the most motivated sales team to stay on their game.

To help you increase your profits and productivity, we have a solution that streamlines commission payments and makes compensation plan management real-time.

With Forma AI's automated sales compensation solution, you can decrease errors in payouts while significantly reducing the time spent on payroll administration. That frees you to make better decisions with our predictive analytics tools.

All this without having to spend countless hours inputting time-consuming information or worrying about the accuracy of any calculations. To learn more about how Forma AI completely automates sales compensation for Fortune 500 companies, book a call with one of our experts here.