Confessions of a Credit Manager Part 1

Are your company’s sales incentive programs “out to lunch”?  

Incentives matter.  For the sales team, they usually come in the form of bonuses and commissions.  And those incentives tell employees, particularly sales teams, what a company wants them to do. 

What do your company’s incentives tell your employees to do?

If the incentive is open-ended, sales teams will keep on selling all year.  If the bonus or commission are capped at a maximum yearly value, then don’t be surprised if the sales team starts to move sales into next year, if they can.  And if the incentives reward selling, even when the resulting invoices go unpaid, should you be surprised when the sales team keeps on selling to high-risk customers, no matter what?  

Because that is what your company’s incentives are telling them to do.

You get what you measure, and you get what you pay for.

What behaviours do your incentive programs encourage and discourage?  And are the results what your company wants? 

If the results are not what your company wants, and you make no changes to your incentives, should your company be surprised at continuing to get those unwanted results?  After all, “if you do what you have always done, you will get what you have always got”.

What if there are ways to get more of the results that your company wants and less of the results that it doesn’t want?  What if those kinds of changes wouldn’t break your budget and would help retain staff?

What if a few changes could make a big difference?

…Asking for a friend…

#Betterway

#Betterresults

#TheRightStuff

#CreditManagement

@CreditInstituteofCanada

@CreditCollections

@BradLohner

@GeoffLast

@StephanieFlierjans

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