Analytics and smart compensation: Expanding the sales manager’s toolkit

23rd April 2017 |   Christina Kemper

The old saw states that a poor workman blames his tools. These days, it could also be said that a successful sales manager credits his tools for guiding his success, but to use the tools available to them, sales managers need help.

Manual systems for managing commissions and other sales processes don’t capture data in a form that allows fast analysis. These systems act as repositories of historical data about sales. This gives sales managers unprecedented visibility into sales behaviours; combining that data with next-generation analytics results in the tools that can make sales managers more successful through improved motivation techniques, comp plans more focused on business priorities, and more precise and effective coaching.

Analytics is helping to identify sales behaviours that help close deals today and set the stage for additional sales in the future, giving sales managers more levers to pull to make their teams more successful. Next-generation analytics platforms are making it easier for managers to do this analysis themselves through simplified interfaces, and to correlate data sets from various sales systems beyond compensation management, including configure price quote (CPQ), sales enablement, contract lifecycle management and training solutions. Access to these data – and to tools that enable managers to find insight in them – can fundamentally change the way sales teams are incentivised and managed.

Christina Kemper

Senior Vice President of Sales, EMEA at CallidusCloud

As Senior Vice President of Sales, EMEA at CallidusCloud, Christina Kemper brings over 15 years of sales, business, and corporate development experience. She joined CallidusCloud in 2008 and has held a variety of sales and sales leadership positions, including starting and growing the first commercial sales organisation in North America. Prior to joining CallidusCloud, Christina ran sales for several telecoms in the United States, worked in media and completed her MBA at Columbia Business School.