Challenges
Blackthorn leaned on Salesforce formulas to calculate commissions early on. A fine solution, until it wasn’t. As the sales organization expanded to include sales development, customer success, and partnership teams, the complexities in commission structures outgrew Salesforce formula capabilities.
- Every change to quota required a new formula
- For a scaling startup with lots of frequent changes, it became a “formula frenzy”
- Additionally, Blackthorn loves monthly kickers and end-of-year accelerators to drive performance that also triggered formulaic adjustments
“Formulas could not handle the complexity and scale as we expanded our teams and departments.”
Joe St Germain, VP of Sales
Solution
An “out-of-the-box” platform
Joe has become an evangelist of QuotaPath across his sales team, however, it wasn’t Joe who initially introduced Blackthorn to our platform. Instead it was CEO and Co-founder Chris Federspiel. Chris said he checked out a handful of commission tracking software and sales performance management providers before landing on QuotaPath.
“QuotaPath had the best ability to configure criteria without having to write SQL queries or run big data exports,” Chris said. “It was a click-through path that gave us what we needed with little training.”
Sold on speed
During the sales process, QuotaPath had promised Chris fast onboarding, implementation, and time to value. To both his and Joe’s delight, our onboarding team got Blackthorn up and running in less than two weeks.
That includes the total time it took to sync Blackthorn’s Salesforce CRM, set up every plan or “Path” for reps, and map out commissions. Training for the entire team came in later weeks but within the first 30 days.
“We figured onboarding would be quick based on what QuotaPath told Chris, yet we were still happily surprised that it worked out the way it was sold,” Joe said.
Saving 5-10 hours per formula
Before QuotaPath, if Joe had to add a new quota, which was happening every two to three months, he’d assemble a small task force. For example, when Blackthorn added a partnerships team last year, Joe corralled sales, the Salesforce admin, and a department leader to set up the new quota.
Not anymore.
“Now I can do it myself and directly in QuotaPath without having to create a formula,” Joe said. “It’s saving us five to 10 hours of work for every new quota.”
Driven by visibility
While Joe began to relish in the time back he received from no longer having to mess with formulas, his reps began to see the benefits from new visibility into their quota attainments.
“Our reps realized they could run scenarios and see how much they could earn from our monthly kickers,” Joe said.
This led to big pushes from reps as they moved to fully maximize the accelerators set by Joe. QuotaPath’s ability for reps to run “what if” scenarios also broke down how much they would need to book monthly to lock in an extra 2 percent per deal toward the end of the year.
Impact
Record sales the past 3 months
Sure, there’s a number of factors that can lead to record-breaking sales months, but Joe was quick to credit QuotaPath.
“Our team has had record sales months the past three months,” Joe said. “QuotaPath’s visibility has given our reps a little extra boost to go out and get as much as they can.”
Blackthorn and QuotaPath Win Recap:
- Fully onboarded in less than 2 weeks
- Saved 5 to 10 hours of work with every new quota introduced
- Tracked 3 months of record-breaking sales following implementation
See how Quotapath cleans up the commissions process for Blackthorn
