The introduction of any software in a small business is a big task. And they have their own valid reasons as they often struggle to manage the challenges as they have to operate within tight budgets, lack of resources, and massive competition. At the same time, the success of sales operations is imperative for any small business. Be it the product or the service, the sales team can bring all the stability and financial strength to any small business. A solid sales compensation process is crucial to nourish and retain sales reps and build an excellent sales team. Due to the lack of resources and budget constraints, small businesses struggle to manage sales compensation programs. But a smartly designed compensation planning managed through robust sales compensation management solutions can help them achieve excellent sales results. In this blog, we will look at the ways sales compensation software can help small businesses. Let’s go-

1) Automating all the sales compensation processes:

Traditional sales compensation managed by excel and manual efforts is a big misfit for any SMBs. According to the 2018 Sales Comp Administration Survey,

• 50% of homegrown or spreadsheet calculation mechanisms take four weeks or longer to payout
• Organizations spend up to 5 hours per month compiling and analyzing sales commission data from spreadsheets.

We have already discussed how small businesses are trying their best to overcome the challenges of resource and budget constraints. Investing in sales compensation software can help them in 3 major ways-

• They do not need to hire multiple resources or compensation professionals to manage sales compensation. Everything can be managed by the sales leader or the manager with the help of sales compensation management tools.

• Manually managed sales compensation plans often invite manual errors and complexities in payouts. Sales commission software automates every sales commission works and helps to keep all the commission activities on time and perfect. Commission automation will save time and bring much-needed peace to the sales commission process.

• Organizations who are automating their sales incentives with powerful sales incentive management software are bringing sanity and peace of mind to their sales process. According to the reports, 95% of companies who use Sales compensation technology have payouts completed in less than 6 weeks, with the majority under 3 weeks.

2) Quick turn-around time:

Due to the budget and resource constraints, the small business owners don’t have the luxury to invest longer training time to understand and onboard any new software or process. They want to hit the ground quickly and reap all the benefits. Today’s modern sales compensation software is a big help for them where they can quickly learn and set up different sales compensation models within the commission management tools to manage everything from one dashboard, from the sales performance management to tracking and releasing the payouts. They get the suite of data import tools, wizard-based target and compensation plan, and commission setting tools to n get up and running in a matter of minutes.

3) Flexibility to execute diverse sales compensation plans:

Small business owners are hungry for quick results and growth. To manage their dynamic sales efforts and motivate their sales teams, they often try out of the box and unique sales compensation strategies. A sales compensation software is a big boost for such endeavors. It not only automates the sales commission payouts but helps you to create exciting sales commission strategies. Powerful sales compensation software helps you to meet all your commission needs, no matter how complicated or innovative they are. With the robust sales commission software, you can create revenue or product-based commissions, flat or tiered commissions, recurring commissions, split commissions, step up and step down commissions, and even matrix commissions. You can also customize special compensation plans based on your needs or execute complex compensation plans to boost your sales strategy.

4) Creating a hassle-free process:

Speed is an important metric for any small business. They have to be agile and nimble. Sales commission could be a big pain if not managed by powerful sales compensation software. With the spreadsheet, manual efforts, and traditional approaches, organizations are often stuck in creating multiple processes for a sales compensation plan which creates hindrance in making everything smooth and hassle-free. A sales compensation software helps to automate all the processes which we have discussed before. It radically improves the commission processing time and speeds up the processes around commissions. Along with that, it also helps in ideating new sales compensation and editing ongoing plans in just a few clicks. Plus, with the seamless integration with other applications, your sales compensation software provides an excellent sales eco-system for outstanding results and maximum growth.

According to the reports, 95% of companies who use Sales compensation software have payouts completed in less than 6 weeks, with the majority under 3 weeks.

5) Easy to manage and get the things done:

Small businesses have no option but to keep their sales compensation simple and effective. Anything complicated, hair-off-the-fire can bring unrequited challenges ruining all their productivity. User-friendly sales compensation software helps you to keep your compensation activities aligned to business goals, streamlined and nimble without making it complex. Though you can manage complex sales compensation with the incentive compensation management software, the powerful dashboard and neat and clean reporting will help you to manage everything without making everything messed up. When required, the company leadership will be able to easily see which teams and plans are working and how to course-correct along with the visibility into individual commissions. Sales managers and sales leaders can finally focus on other business objectives without spending weeks processing commissions.

6) Retain and mentor your best talents:

Resource hunting and retaining is one of the biggest challenges of any small business. The introduction of sales commission software helps the business to motivate the sales team to do more. 43% of sales reps say they would be willing to leave their organization for just a 10% salary increase. 56% of employees that leave their current job say inadequate pay was the motivating factor. 58% of people say that they would feel more engaged if leaders gave recognition to the job they were doing. Inability to introduce the best incentive Program practices and incompetency of enabling the right compensation strategy and pay-decision structure led to poor compensation management and complexities in hiring and retention. Sales commission software helps to manage commission without any mistake and complements the hard work done by the sales reps. When their targets are met, salespeople receive their commission on time, they stay in the organization for a longer time. Organizations can retain the best of sales talents and create an excellent sales team if all the commission methods are followed. Also, the increased visibility of the sales commission management helps sales management to understand the performance of the sales reps and enable required coaching. Sales managers are also able to leverage the capabilities of the sales commission software to monitor outliers and poor sales practices to reduce conduct risk. Experts estimate that sales personnel spend from 8 to 24 hours per month ensuring that their commission payments are accurate due to a distrust of the commission calculation. If you can give them confidence and earn their trust with a steady and on-time commission rollout, you can easily build up a fantastic sales team for excellent growth and ROI.

7) No more budget guessing and take better business decisions:

This is massively important. Ineffective compensation management can feed you with wrong data or might provide no insights. A small business will be in jeopardy with the wrong data. A competent sales compensation software will help you take the guesswork out of payroll and budgeting. Without current and reliable data, it’s tough to improve sales performance. On top of that, most small businesses are subjected to sudden changes in the sales process, territory management, quote management, and compensation structure. The sudden adjustments, ad-hoc changes can disrupt your incentive compensation management system without comprehensive data and insights. Guesswork will not yield great results. Introducing sales compensation software will help you make data-driven decisions and improve compensation management planning. The inbuilt sales performance management software provides all the detailed reports and real-time insights with sales leadership to make crucial decisions. With better reporting, you will have complete control over your sales team and their incentive payout. The faster it gets completed, the better is your team’s performance, and the higher is your ROI.

Take a decision today

When used right, the sales compensation software has brought excellent results for small businesses. SMBs are known for their growth mindset, innovation, agility, and dynamism. The sales compensation software helps them in building sales teams, creating rewarding incentive management, and bringing much-needed rigor and automation in their process. If you are owning a small business and have doubts about the effectiveness of the sales compensation software, please let us know. We would love to give you a demo of our sales compensation software and help you understand how it can give you leverage.