The power of an intentional compensation strategy goes a long way. That, paired with a streamlined, automated sales compensation process can stretch success even further. At least that was the case for OSG (now EverView) after they consolidated 35 comp plans into one and adopted QuotaPath’s Salesforce commission tracking integration.
We’ll get into how OSG’s sales team had the best sales year in company history in a moment. But first, some history.
In August 2020, each member of OSG’s 80-person sales team followed one of 35 sales comp plans. Some of these plans included as many as 12 components. And all of these plans leaders and reps tracked by hand.
Enter Dennis Dube, who joined OSG around this time as SVP of Commercial Operations. Upon his arrival, he helped lead an internal survey to gauge seller satisfaction with OSG’s sales compensation management methodology.
‘Mo comp plans, ‘mo problems
The survey revealed that OSG sellers spent two hours per week manually calculating commissions. Additionally, half of the reps admitted to not understanding their comp plans and how they get paid.
“At the time, sellers didn’t know how much their paychecks would be until they received those checks,” Dennis added.
That’s what we call in the biz a significant problem. Because, as sales leaders, how can you motivate positive sales behaviors if your reps don’t understand the benefit of doing so? Still, it took one more “final straw” moment for Dennis to ignite change in OSG’s sales commission reporting process.
While traveling with his son on a Saturday afternoon, the operations leader received a panic-stricken message from a coworker.
“The text said that if I didn’t approve a commission calculation within the next hour, then our sellers wouldn’t get paid on time,” Dennis said.
“It was then that I knew it was time to get a better system in place.”
First up, Dennis and his leadership team restructured OSG’s compensation plans to align with a more strategic selling model. Then, once OSG dropped from 35 plans to eight, Dennis introduced QuotaPath’s Salesforce commission tracking integration to remove manual entry.
The outcome?
The best sales year in OSG history with 70 percent of the team meeting quota and 20 percent meeting 90 percent of quota.
More on OSG’s successes below.
About OSG
OSG delivers customer engagement and payment solutions through modernized processes and frictionless experiences. Launched in 1992, the company supports customers from education, hospitality, utility, and more. OSG has grown rapidly over the past three years through 20 acquisitions.
Integrated Salesforce commission tracking
Dennis hoped to find an integrated Salesforce commission tracking solution that could support their projected growth. Their ideal solution would be easy to navigate and user-friendly for sellers.
Furthermore, he and his team wanted a frictionless solution that their Ops department could quickly organize, implement, and update. AKA: scalability. Both Ops and Sales also requested a commission tracking platform that would save time preparing and facilitating sales commission payments.
After exploring a couple of options, Dennis moved forward with QuotaPath in September 2020.
“The ease to get up and running with QuotaPath was a big plus — that and QuotaPath’s real-time Salesforce integration,” Dennis said.
Compensation plan strategy
Comp plans should motivate sales reps and attract the best talent.
If reps don’t understand their comp plan, it becomes a huge roadblock. Instead of driving selling behaviors and rewarding performance, convoluted comp plans slow down teams and discourage reps. This ultimately leads to frustrations across the sales function and eroding trust between reps and leadership.
So, to address OSG’s confusing comp plan modeling, OSG leadership condensed the plans. They reduced them to eight in 2021 and to one in 2022.
Upon consolidating the plans, Dennis and his leadership team seamlessly added them into Quotapath. By doing so, they provided reps with immediate visibility into their earnings, forecasted commissions, and attainment.
“Our comp plan was easily measured and viewed by our sellers in QuotaPath, which drove positive selling behaviors,” said Ron Morgan, OSG’s Director of Commercial Operations.
(Did you know we offer comp plan strategy consultations? Book a time with Graham here.)
Top-down communication
Another driving force behind OSG’s recent successes involved its top-down communication.
In the months after Dennis started at OSG, leadership focused on establishing a sales culture of accountability and leaned on QuotaPath to help.
QuotaPath enables sellers to visualize their objectives. Reps can see when they reach 100 percent, how close they are to the next accelerator, and the impact of the next deal. That’s in addition to tracking real-time commissions and forecasted earnings.
As such, leaders over-communicated the comp plans and the areas the team should focus their efforts. Then they directed reps to QuotaPath to answer their commission questions.
When reps had compensation questions on specific deals, Ron said leadership would ask, “Have you checked QuotaPath yet?”
Empowering reps to seek out their commission questions while giving them a tool to visualize their success led to a 95 percent daily adoption rate amongst OSG’s 80-person sales team.
Conclusion
OSG completed a comp plan makeover, increased compensation visibility through QuotaPath, and created a new targeted sales structure. In doing so, OSG achieved its highest sales year to date. If you’re ready to re-think sales compensation and automate commission tracking in a way that actually inspires changed selling behaviors, let’s chat!
