Coming soon · Book Profile
Sales Incentive Plans for Special Business Objectives_ The Sales Compensation Series for the Small Business Owner
A practical guide for small business owners on designing sales incentive plans that direct, motivate, and reward sellers to achieve three special growth objectives: fast starts, new product sales, and new account wins.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Written for time-pressed small business owners wrestling with profitable growth, this concise e-book from sales compensation experts Colletti and Fiss builds on foundational commission and bonus design to tackle specialized incentive challenges. It shows how to structure a fast start incentive to capitalize on early-year sales momentum, how to compensate new product sales without under-rewarding difficult selling effort, how to reward new account acquisition while protecting current customer revenue, and when to deploy short-term SPIFFs instead of restructuring the whole plan. Grounded in the authors' consulting research and client results, it offers actionable rules of thumb—funding sources, incentive sizing, qualifying periods, and technique choices (bonus vs. commission vs. accelerator)—so owners can confidently tweak pay plans to support their growth strategy.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A small business owner who wants consistent, profitable top-line growth and needs sales people motivated to achieve it.
- The problem
- Existing sales compensation plans don't effectively drive special growth objectives like fast starts, new product sales, and new account acquisition. The owner feels uncertain and loses sleep over how to tweak pay plans without overspending or cannibalizing existing sales.
- The plan
- Decide which growth objective (fast start, new product, new account) matters most.
- Answer the key design questions: eligibility, opportunity size, measure, funding, and timing.
- Choose an incentive technique that fits your current plan and the frequency of the objective.
- Define qualifying rules such as 'new' duration, minimum sales, and activation periods.
- Consider a SPIFF instead of a structural change for temporary or single-result goals.
- The payoff
- Sellers get off to a fast start and are twice as likely to hit the annual growth plan. · New products gain a market foothold and new accounts replace churned revenue. · The compensation plan reinforces strategy without overspending or double-paying.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
- Designing Global Sales Incentive Plans_ Step-By-Step Guide →
- Show Me the Money_ A Statistical Analysis of Commission-Based Compensation Models →
- Rewarding Excellence: Pay Strategies for the New Economy →
- Strategic Pay: Aligning Organizational Strategies and Pay Systems →
- The WorldatWork Handbook of Compensation, Benefits and Total Rewards →
Additional reading
- Sales Compensation Surveys (Appendix B) · Various Third-Party Providers
The book recommends using external survey data to set competitive pay levels. Appendix B provides a list of survey sources for readers to conduct their own market research.
- Software Vendors—Sales Compensation Administration Software (Appendix C) · Various Third-Party Vendors
The book emphasizes the need for automation in administering complex plans. Appendix C lists vendors that provide these solutions for further investigation by the reader.
- The Sales Growth Imperative · David J. Cichelli
Written by the same author, this book likely provides a broader strategic context on revenue growth, within which sales compensation is a key lever.
- Sales Compensation Almanac · The Alexander Group (David J. Cichelli's firm)
This annual publication provides updated data, trends, and benchmarks in sales compensation, serving as a contemporary supplement to the book's foundational principles.
- Organization Design for Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
This book is relevant because 'Design' is the second dimension of organizational effectiveness discussed in Step 1. It provides a deeper framework for structuring departments and companies, which directly impacts the sales function's effectiveness.
- Designing Salary Structures: A Step-By-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
Directly complements the main book by detailing how to create the base salary structures upon which the incentive portion of total cash compensation is built.
- Predictive HR Analytics: A Step-by-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
Relevant for more advanced practitioners who want to use data analysis (as mentioned in Step 9) to test hypotheses about plan effectiveness and predict which factors drive sales success.
- The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation · Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer
The book recommends this text as a comprehensive reference for readers who want more detail on specific approaches and analytics discussed in 'Sales Compensation Solutions'.
- The Future of Sales Compensation · Chad Albrecht and Steve Marley
The book points to this as a forward-looking resource to help readers think differently about how to design and implement sales compensation programs for the future.
- Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices · Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
Referenced in Chapter 5 as providing a foundational framework on the four innate human drives (acquire, bond, learn, defend) that can be used to understand and segment sales force motivation.