Monthly Archives: January 2013

3 Questions to Ask Before Building a Competitive Sales Compensation Plan

Posted by Erik Charles on January 31, 2013

One question sales professionals ask me often is, “What’s the best sales compensation plan?” The short answer is: there is no such thing. The longer answer is: don’t look for the best compensation plan. Look instead for the best compensation plan for your company. Sales compensation plans aren’t one-size-fits-most. What yields positive results for your [...]

Game On! 3 Ways to Motivate Intelligently with Gamification

Posted by Erik Charles on January 30, 2013

Years before Charles Coonradt — aka the “Grandfather of Gamification” — penned The Game of Work, he witnessed a basketball game that would inspire him to change the face of business. The story behind the change he influenced began when he saw a group of construction workers building a house. Their work was labor intensive, [...]

Critical Insights of First-Line Sales Managers

Posted by Erik Charles on January 29, 2013

Is it better to have a team of average salespeople report to an excellent manager, or an excellent sales team report to an average manager? According to a recent webinar hosted by Xactly partner ZS Associates, a global thought leadership firm in sales and marketing, sometimes all you need is the right tools. Do you [...]

Xactly & Salesforce Make Sales Comp a Day at the Beach

Posted by Erik Charles on January 28, 2013

A lot of our customers who previously used Excel as their main sales compensation solution say that ever since Xactly was implemented, they feel like they’re on vacation. Who knew that a solution to a slow sales compensation process could make someone feel like he were on an island in the Bahamas Joking aside, the [...]

The 5 Steps to Compensate Sales & Accelerate Performance

Posted by Erik Charles on January 24, 2013

This is Part 2 of our series on SalesOpShop’s The Future of Sales™. For Part 1, head over to “The 5 Things You Shouldn’t Be Doing With Comp” Two days ago, we pinpointed the five major problems in sales compensation. Now we’re here to tell you how to unlock the sales process and accelerate performance [...]

When Xactly Plays, We Play to Win

Posted by Erik Charles on January 23, 2013

A few weeks ago we read a Venture Beat article about gamification: “Play to Win: 7 Steps to Making Gamification Work in Enterprise.” Gamification operates by incorporating “game” principles to motivate people to complete certain tasks. Why? Because the human brain would rather do something fun than boring. For example, when used in an enterprise, [...]

The 5 Things You Shouldn’t Be Doing With Comp

Posted by Erik Charles on January 22, 2013

It may not always be easy to pinpoint exactly how or why your comp plans haven’t worked. But it is easy to spot the negative results: Clients become unhappy, sales costs skyrocket, and your profits plummet. Luckily, we know how you can do better. Xactly recently teamed up with SalesOpShop to help create an episode [...]

Xactly Enables Excellence in Compensation Management for Carestream Health

Posted by Jon Ann Lindsey on January 17, 2013

Xactly Incent helps to motivate and manage global sales processes LONDON, January 16, 2013 — Carestream Health, a worldwide provider of dental and medical imaging systems and healthcare IT solutions, is better able to manage its global sales compensation processes thanks to Xactly Corporation’s incentive compensation and sales performance management solutions. After a competitive review, [...]

Paying the Prospector and Getting the Most Out of Your Leads

Posted by Erik Charles on January 17, 2013

Where, oh, where would your Hunters be if it weren’t for Prospectors? Part of the reason why you need a whole team of them is that it simply isn’t sustainable for one sales rep to find leads, generate pipeline, and close deals. Prospectors allow closers to focus on their strengths while keeping the pipeline full. [...]