I have a confession. I’m a sales nerd.
Which is why I got excited about QuotaPath’s new Multi-Plan feature that has helped surface important milestones in my sales career. Like my $83,065.25 in commissions. Or how I hit 116% of my quarterly quota and was promoted from an AE (Account Executive) to an SAE (Senior Account Executive) while at Thomson Reuters.
With the ability to filter and aggregate data across my company changes and promotions, I’m able to see how my career and earnings have progressed over time.
I’m also able to track the various comp structures for all of my historical plans and extract valuable insights – like knowing that the reason I earned so much in December 2012 was from hitting a major accelerator.
It’s a consolidated view of the most impressive earnings and attainment stats that I’ve achieved in each role and organization throughout my career.
A look into my history in sales
When I first started working in SaaS sales in 2011, I asked my boss a simple question, “How do I track my quota attainment and commission?” I was told that there wasn’t anything in place and that I just had to hope my paychecks were right.
So I did what any sales nerd would do in this situation… I fired up a spreadsheet and started entering my deals into it. After about a week though, I was craving more information. I wanted to see exactly how much I was earning from these deals.
So I built a formula to help me with that, complete with some nested if-statements.
This worked for a couple of months, but then I found myself wanting to know historical information – how much more would I make if my big deal came in? I wanted to see charts! The more I knew, the more motivated I was to close more deals to increase my earnings.
This worked for about six months until my company was acquired. As part of the acquisition, I got a new comp plan. New plan, new formulas.
Five months later, I was promoted to a senior role… another change to my commission structure. New plan, new formulas.
Six months later, my division was sold off to a different company. New plan, new formulas.
All of this information ended up looking like this (this is my actual data):
Not very pretty, I know. But it was the best I had.
It was difficult to keep all of it straight, but I knew how important it was to track. Any time I was up for a promotion, I had my quota attainment data for 2+ years. When I interviewed for my next job, I was able to rattle off exactly what percent of my annual quota I hit. I knew which months I historically sold the most so I could plan for big expenses.
Does any of this sound familiar? If so, you may consider yourself a sales nerd, too. You might have a document that lays all of this out already, full of sums and nested ifs. If not, QuotaPath’s Multi-Plan feature makes it easy to join the club.
Let’s take a peek at what it looks like in QuotaPath when I track my earnings dating all the way back to my very first sales job.
Much nicer, yeah?
You know the whole ‘New plan, new formulas?’ QuotaPath captures all of it for me in a beautiful way, complete with the charts, graphs, and insights that make my inner sales nerd beam with satisfaction! It’s everything I wished my manager provided for me back when I was just getting started in sales.
If you haven’t checked out QuotaPath, it’s completely free to use!
Head to quotapath.com to create a free account or email me at graham@quotapath.com if you want to talk more about how QuotaPath can help your sales career flourish.
