The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

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The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

Perfect your Pay Plan

July 27, 2023 • Scott Scully, Jeff Winters, Eric Watkins • Season 2 • Episode 33

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It's time to upgrade your bonus structure. Employees should be bonused on their most crucial activity but their leading actions should determine how much of that bonus they take home. At the end of the day, while you should set up dashboards and progressive discipline tracks, incorporating bonus qualifiers based on both leading and lagging indicators has helped us ensure consistent performance. Also, this approach provides an additional avenue than simply firing employees for underperforming in certain activities.

Thanks for listening!

Unknown: 0:00

All these years, it says

Scott Scully: 0:10

nothing could stop me. Welcome back to the gross show. Scott, you're with Eric and Jeff, your hosts. Hopefully we're making it a little easier for you on your journey to bigger and better things with your business. Today we're going to do something new, it's going to be bite size. Here's our attempt to do this show in 15 minutes or less. With that said, we're heading over to to Tucson alive LinkedIn. Jeff, what do you got?

Jeff Winters: 0:37

We got some truths and lies. We have to continue to monitor LinkedIn and share with you the best and the worst. So let's start with the best. Our truth today, I believe a leader should be the chief cheerleader or end chief storyteller. And their definition of success should be make each person in their organization the success they deserve to be loved. I think this is an important message. Because I think a lot of leaders get hung up on numbers which are important. But at the end of the day, my job is to make you the person that your mother thought you were capable of or your parents thought you were capable of. That's my definition of success for myself as a leader.

Unknown: 1:17

True. Good. Good point.

Jeff Winters: 1:19

That's it in the mini edition that says

Eric Watkins: 1:21

it's true. If it really strikes us we'll get in there but this is the fastest 15 minutes in sports right here. Okay.

Jeff Winters: 1:30

Truth. Dr. Karthik Gendron ready to challenge the status quo. Today, let's talk about embracing controversy as a catalyst for thought leadership growth. While it may seem risky, it can actually elevate your impact and spark meaningful conversations. I can say without any question that the the controversial posts that have gotten that we've created on LinkedIn that have gotten the most responses have been the most controversial. Scott years are almost always cut. We know this is true.

Eric Watkins: 2:04

Is that what they're saying here just like to market your company be involved in controversy

Jeff Winters: 2:10

to Yeah, to like, increase your impact through thought leadership, like you can be controversial and like people are out there and are like saying good things from a marketing perspective. They're just boring. Like, how many more benchmark reports do I need to read? Right? There's something interesting. Yeah, I agree. Totally agree. Yep. Okay, I'm gonna tell you this mini episode, this makes me move really quickly.

Eric Watkins: 2:35

You're kind of a slow mover, usually.

Unknown: 2:39

We'll get through the LinkedIn portion we could get to the meat of this thing.

Jeff Winters: 2:44

Aaron, with a lie, I think the lies in the middle job hopping isn't always bad loyalty to one company isn't a thing anymore. Aaron goes on from their loyalty to one company can be a thing. Stop it. Stop saying that. Just because you don't think it's a thing. Just because certain groups of people say it's not a thing doesn't mean it's not a thing. And it doesn't mean it's not a thing that companies should aspire to. You can be at a company your whole career, it can happen. Stop saying it's not a thing. It's a thing for some people. It's not a thing for you.

Scott Scully: 3:16

Yeah, this is a lie. I felt I was out to dinner with a friend. And she was celebrating her 25th year at Purina and a really high job. And she's like, this is embarrassing, you know, but I'm celebrating my 25th year she's like, I know people don't do that anymore. And I just felt bad that that was even a thing that she would feel embarrassed about being somewhere for so long, where she was clearly having a ridiculous amount of success and playing at a very high level. I believe in loyalty. And I think that you can, you know, not have to rebuild equity and be so much more powerful if you stay put and keep growing.

Eric Watkins: 3:57

Yeah, I wanted to look something up because I wanted to confirm it. But

Jeff Winters: 4:02

was it your own employment that you've been here your whole career? Yeah, well,

Eric Watkins: 4:05

I'm tired of not looking. I'm tired of using myself as an example. But Tim Cook. How long do you think he's been an apple? Oh, TC. TC. Since 1998. You think he would have benefited but benefited by job hopping going somewhere else? I think he's, I think he's doing just fine. Like, I think it's more about the company that you pick you choose to be loyal to, like don't be blindly loyal to any company. But I think Tim Cook's doing alright.

Jeff Winters: 4:36

Take it from Tim. I mean, take it from Eric. That's your two truths and a lie.

Scott Scully: 4:42

All right. As always nice job. We're in the 50 for 50. This one's going to be short and sweet. It's pay plants, pay plans, pay plans pay plans at the right moment. The right pay plan will motivate your folks. Right if you If you land it in the right way, you will get the productivity that you want. And you will get the happy person. A lot of times, though, it's here's your salary, and here's your commission for sales, it's X percent, and not enough of the time is there. Other things, other measurements in place bonus qualifiers, if you will to also make sure that other behaviors that you want to have happen happen. So a lot of times here, we'll have salary, we'll have bonus, the bonus would be on the most important result. But then we'll have qualifiers based around behaviors that we want to make sure that you continue to do so that that, like if you're an account manager, we may have four or five things that go against your retention bonus to make sure that you're doing the behaviors that are necessary to continue to have good customer retention. So analyze your pay plans, make sure that they're motivating. Ask people, ask your network, land on pay plans that you know are good for your organization, but also motivating for your people and make sure that anything that you care about happening over and over and over again, any activities, any behaviors are also wrapped into that plan, or people aren't going to do those things on a consistent basis.

Eric Watkins: 6:27

Yeah, I think that's, I think that's great, because you really have a couple of options, you know, in regards to the, you know, what we would call qualifiers to the pay plan is you could just say, Okay, well, if people don't do this activity, we'll just fire him. But no, you won't. Like, no, you will, or you will, and you'll lose some really good people along the way. So what was the middle ground, right, versus just flat out firing somebody, if they missed a percentage of this activity, you get dinged in your bonus a little bit. And it's their choice, at the end of the day, if you want the company to pay you less money, because you don't want to put the work in to do this activity, that ultimately that's on you, you know, and that activity isn't one of those that, you know, if you're at 95%, your business isn't going to fall apart, it just one of those things that we know we're going to be in a better spot, if we're at 100% of those things. I think it's genius. And I think it's one thing we do, that probably a lot of others don't do to keep consistency. And listen up

Jeff Winters: 7:25

here, folks, this is a huge differentiator, this will change the way you think about bonus compensation. Because here's what you're doing. Now, you have three or four things you care about somebody doing and you're either picking one, which is bad, or you're giving a percentage of bonus based on all four, which is also bad, because there probably is one that is the most important. And if you dilute that, that's wrong. If you only pick one, that's probably wrong. So have the one most important thing and then have the other things, the other activities inhibit your ability to get the full bonus that is a game changer. I've never seen it before. It's done here. And it works wonders.

Scott Scully: 8:11

Yep, just to wrap it up to get you think and another position. If you've got a sales position, there's salary, there's bonus. Again, most people are like, yep, they sold x, you get x percent of it. But the you know, you've got salespeople that are depleting pipelines and going up and down in production. And one thing that we've found is you could have a qualifier against that commission based on the amount of new business conversations that you have on a monthly basis to ensure that the activity is there to keep the production up. So most people are paying just on that one result, find the activities or the behaviors that you want to have happening each and every month to ensure that that result continues to happen, put them as qualifiers against the bonus. And you will find yourself in a better spot as an organization, seeing the things that you want to see consistently happen. So that's 5050, let's head over to mining for growth go

Eric Watkins: 9:10

mining for growth gold. And I was just thinking about this, as you were saying that the this is a benefit to the employees as well. Like it's another one of those things we were talking about in the last episode of sometimes you have to, for lack of better term force people to do things. We're forcing them to do the leading indicators that are going to lead to higher sales, higher retention, higher bonuses for them in the future. For today, we're talking about account management. And this is going to be a little bit I'm dipping into sales a little bit here too. I'm maybe dipping into a little bit 50 for 50. But I think it starts with what you do and account management and partner success to launch from there. That is create a path from partner Success Manager to account executive. If you look at our company, and I know this is starting to catch on a little bit, I would say we were on the front end of this thing. If you look at our outbound team right now 11, out of our 12 reps, managed accounts here at abstract, and played the account management role. And the reason that we were able to do that in the first place, is because we've never looked at that partner success role as customer service, as you're just taking orders from your customer, we looked at them as a tool to help our clients grow their business. And in order to do that, they had to be a consultant, they didn't just take orders from the client, they had to be experts in the industry experts in the product. And then ultimately, that is led to a seamless transition for those individuals to move into account executive roles. So that's the benefit. And that's kind of the culture you have to set up. But then like here are the here are the things to think about now that their account executives, number one, better product knowledge, they've seen it, like they usually have done the position, or seeing the position seeing the product service in action. Number two, better expectations, they have been on the other side, when a sales rep has agreed to something that you can't do as a business, you're going to have better expectations being set throughout the process. Number three, knowledge of the industries and niches that you work in as a business. And this is one of the ones that may go may not seem like the biggest deal, but probably is the biggest deal to be on that presentation, that sales presentation have a little bit of knowledge about the industry, I mean, that's gonna go a long way number four shorter ramp times, they don't have this learning curve, that bringing somebody from the outside would have, like these individuals are not only our top sales reps on the team, they're also they're quick, they're quick to start selling and start selling a lot. And then number five is vision. So a lot of people in the partner Success Manager role, which is a tough role, which we've talked about before, there's this ceiling of income, because you can only manage so many accounts. And when they hit that ceiling, they either have to wait for a leadership position to open up, or they have to figure something else out and they kind of feel capped. So this is an opportunity, in addition to having ways where they can sell in their current position, they can also go sell full time. From there.

Scott Scully: 12:26

I think that two things, just to in agreement, one, the account manager knows the product inside and out backwards and forwards, what can go right what can go wrong. And probably most importantly, they've dealt with hundreds of customers over a couple of years. They know exactly what people are looking for. So then they can get on and have an incredible conversation with a future prospect about the product itself, how we deliver it, and and know where they need to connect with somebody. Because they manage so many accounts, they know what the person is going to be looking for and why they'd want to buy it in the first place. And it just makes them ridiculously successful salespeople.

Jeff Winters: 13:13

I'd never thought about this never done this previous life. Big mistake, huge learning. The other reality is when you get on a call and you go, you know, give me two seconds of background on me, I was an account manager for five years. Ah, like you feel the air go out of the balloon or the prospect being resistant to another quote, salesperson. This is an account manager. And they'll tell you stories, account managers can tell stories for days clients, they've managed to have had a great day one,

Scott Scully: 13:42

we should raise a really good point. And we should make sure that our people say that, like in our new sales presentations, we should make sure everybody brings that up. I think that it would drop the shoulders. I love it. Yeah. All right. What do we got from tails from sale.

Jeff Winters: 14:00

If you're selling you're losing, that's the reality you're losing 90% of the time 80% of the time, sometimes 95% of the time. It's fun, you know, you lose in a variety of different ways. You don't always lose the same way but a common way people lose deals is what the kids call ghosting, meaning they just stopped responding to you and this could be at the beginning of the sales cycle in the middle of the sales cycle but let me tell you where it's painful at the end of the sales cycle you've been working with somebody you build some rapport you maybe you've entered a relationship you know where their favorite vacation places and they just literally go off the face of the earth Anya I've seen a few reps unfortunately. Do what I would say is my tale from sales today. Don't burn a bridge with prospects that ghost you don't do it. It's so easy to flippantly send kind of a nasty text not a like an overtly like go to hell but just something that's a little too much as i Oh Oh, I'm never coming back. I'm never doing business with this company. Don't forget today's loss prospects are tomorrow's what, Eric?

Eric Watkins: 15:07

future prospects? new clients? Yes.

Jeff Winters: 15:12

Today's loss prospects are tomorrow's nuclear, you

Eric Watkins: 15:14

still have to sell them.

Jeff Winters: 15:16

Let's do this. Why don't you stick on your section? I call on you raise your hand. Don't burn bridges with prospects that goes to you. It's not personal. They might just have something going on. Leave the door open. Today's ghosted prospects are tomorrow's new Eric. Clients.

Scott Scully: 15:38

That's good. And you pointed at him. And then he taught me that he'd fouled what directions like a DOM is amazing.

Eric Watkins: 15:44

Was I wrong? That was right now you had the right second time.

Scott Scully: 15:48

I love that and be creative. Like there's things going on in people's lives just like do things in a creative way to, you know, to get them to respond to you send them videos and funny texts and success stories and things like that, to keep them thinking about you. And if you are consistent with that, my guess is that they will be that new client. So we find ourselves heading into to do or not to do

Eric Watkins: 16:20

to do or not to do on the add a note on Jeff's thing. I think the the other part, don't burn the bridge, but don't get ghosted in the first place. By asking to your point on the last show, if you think it say if you feel it, say, and having those tough conversations, and then having follow up meetings scheduled tied to the calls, I think that prevents that majority of the time to do or not to do. So. For today's session, we're going to talk about something that's really near and dear to my heart. And I have a special love for this thing. But it's too hard working ambitious people who don't get much sleep, it might not be very near and dear to your hearts. napping. Should you? Is it acceptable? To take a little nap on the weekends to take a nap or not to take a nap on the weekends? Scott?

Scott Scully: 17:22

I think it's acceptable and I would engage in napping a lot. If I was an individual that when I laid down to take a nap wasn't the same guy that woke up eight hours later. Like if there is a time that I could sleep, it would be then and then I would not get back up. I would be out for the rest of the day. And

Eric Watkins: 17:46

what about alarm like alarm clock won't wake you up? You'll just be out? No, I'd

Scott Scully: 17:50

see to me like for some people. It's refreshing like mid day maybe they take 1015 minutes lay their head down. For me. It just it makes me want to go to let's go back to it's not refreshed. I can't get like a recharge out of 1015 20 minute nap. I wish I could and if I could I'd do it. Absolutely.

Jeff Winters: 18:11

For me to go to bed at night. Or to go to bed in general. It's so many things have to happen. For me. I got a I got a mask. I got a little private I got a mask I gotta wear I got to have the I black on I got I went my air pods.

Eric Watkins: 18:28

Were you cover your eyes? Oh yeah. Do you cover your eyes asleep? No,

Jeff Winters: 18:31

I got the air pods in I gotta sleep on air pods. 70 milligrams Tonin. I'm telling you I have a whole thing I got to do. There's people out there doing the same shit I'm doing. I don't just lay down and go to bed. I just I and to sleep through the night. I know we're talking about napping to sleep through the night. I've never slept through the night. I never go to bed and then I wake up. I got 42 times I'm going away. So I can't do it. I'd like for me to go to sleep as like a tornado that the conditions have to be perfect.

Eric Watkins: 19:08

I used to be like that. That I got a dog. And he's right there. He's a nice little warm and pill. What does that have to do with anything? He's just right there just like a little bit of a little bit of heat. Like a like a hot pillow next year? In a good way. Yeah, in a good way. It's nice.

Scott Scully: 19:27

My dog knows. No, I bet yeah. My dog will jump on my bed start walking up towards me. Look at me. Turn right, turn right back around, go down to the very edge of the bed where it's not touching me. We have an understanding. All right, well, that was a bite sized edition. Hopefully we gave you some juice, some gas, put in the car and go forward, be a little bit more successful a little faster and your growth as always, always be growing.

Jeff Winters: 19:58

Let's grow. Let's grow up. Let's grow

Unknown: 20:01

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