While channel surfing recently, I found an interview with Francesco Schettino, captain of the doomed cruise ship Costa Concordia, which slammed into the Italian coast on January 13, 2012 and killed more than 30 people.

The accident occurred because the captain couldn’t see the radar. He wasn’t wearing his glasses.

That’s happens when visibility is poor—with cruise ships and with your business. At the very best, you fail to arrive at your destination. At the worst, you imperil those around you, and may even crash.

Like a good captain guides his ship, effective sales managers must guide their sales teams toward their goals.

You can use current and historical sales compensation data to increase visibility:

1. Build trust. Stop questions about errors and accuracy. When sales reps trust payment, motivation increases, and turnover decreases. They spend less time tracking how they are paid, and more time selling.
2. Increase productivity. Use crystal clear performance data to motivate top sales behavior and optimize your team’s sales potential.
3. Strengthen profits. With accurate, real-time data, you can clearly assess customer needs, and align your strategy to meet them.

As important as this data is, many organizations handle it haphazardly. You’re missing information because your data lives across multiple spreadsheets, or different systems that don’t talk to each other.

Storing sales compensation data in one place makes all the difference. Instead of struggling to find data and wondering if it’s accurate, you’ll have clear information to analyze.

Once you see what’s around you, you can make corrections that influence sales behavior and maximize productivity. You’ll steer clear of the dangerous rocks.