The Distributor Channel

Spring Cleaning Your Compensation Plan: As we inch closer to summer, let’s discuss cleaning up your compensation plan. Huh? What does my organization’s compensation plan have to do with spring cleaning? The ritual of reviewing and editing your stuff, cleaning everything thoroughly, ensuring your lawnmower is ready to go, and starting fresh with the season makes sense. It keeps our homes and garages in good working order and feels good when it’s done. We should bring the same discipline to our compensation plans. Our human resource strategy and execution demand it. How you retain and recruit ideally aligns with your overall organizational strategy. Much of how your strategy adapts with the times, so should your compensation plan.  Why now? You have likely finished communicating goals, and your bonus plans to your teams. It’s not yet time for a mid-year review, so dust off your most recent comp plan, and get started. It’s important that you know how your pay scale aligns with the market

Check out Frank’s latest column in Industrial Supply Magazine Frank has questions and so should salespeople.  In his recent book, "The New Sales Guy Project," he dedicates significant time to the questions salespeople should be able to answer.  His most recent column talks about developing foolproof questions so no one is left asking the "dumb" ones! Read the article HERE. .

Frank’s work has been featured on the Distribution Strategy Group website.  Here’s what they are saying:  Distributors who once relied on poaching new sellers from the competition have discovered that option has dried up. Frank Hurtte recently embarked on a mission to learn what the life of a new seller looks like today – and how distributors can better support them.     Delve into it  HERE . .

The competition is trying to poach one of your top players. Another superstar is threatening to leave. Your top two are wrangling over territories and making the John Cena gesture at each other in sales meetings. It’s as bad as the recent NCAA drama. What’s a leader supposed to do? Well, there’s a lot you should be doing. Ensure your assigned territories make sense. ( See my previous blog post .) Align your compensation with your strategy and market. (That’s a future blog post.) Lead by example and behave professionally. (Hmm, let’s put a pin in that, too.) Enough of the shameless self-promotion, let’s tackle another aspect of leading salespeople to championship performance: Incentives and Bonuses. Salespeople are coin-operated. Not that other aspects of their role don’t motivate them, but money really motivates them. So does customer satisfaction, the thrill of the chase, and beating the competition out of an order. However, for now, let’s focus on Sales Incentives and best pr