As a consultant, I'm often asked to help companies refine their sales force compensation plans. I believe in having a well-designed, effectively managed compensation plan as a fundamental part of any productive sales system. But it's a mistake to think that your compensation plan is the entire solution; it's only a part.

When companies call us to help with their compensation plans, a deeper issue is often at stake. Their sales are flat, or even declining. They are casting about to find a solution to their lack of sales effectiveness and have arrived at compensation as the culprit.

Compensation may be contributing to the general malaise, but it's rarely the only issue.

Sales is a sophisticated profession where the skill set of the highest performers is significantly greater than that of the mediocre. And the unfortunate, ugly truth is that most B2B salespeople don't know how to do their jobs well. They have never been instructed in the best practices of the best salespeople. They have struggled to learn on their own, on the job, through trial and error. Some of them have arrived at successful routines, but most have not.

You can change the compensation plan all you want, but if you don't show your salespeople how to do what you're paying them to do, your results will be considerably less than spectacular.

Here's an example: Let's say you want to gain new customers. So you change your compensation plan to pay a premium for new accounts. That's good, and some salespeople will, as a result, put more effort to acquiring new customers.

But that doesn't mean any of them know how to do this well. Some will be attracted to the income, but the lack of comfort associated with how to do it will be a far greater force holding them back.

However, if you pay your salespeople a premium to create new customers and then train them specifically in how to do that, your change in sales force compensation will make a dramatic improvement in their behavior.

The same can be said for any behavior you want to encourage through a revised sales compensation plan. It won't do you much good to emphasize key account penetration, key product line sales, etc., unless you take the time to show them how to do what you want them to do.

The practices and routines of sales managers can have a great impact on the sales staff's performance. For example, if you change your compensation plan to emphasize acquiring new accounts and your sales manager never measures the number of new accounts acquired, never measures the various steps in that process, never asks the salesperson about it or holds him accountable in any way, your change in sales force compensation will be ineffective.

Sales managers need to measure progress on every performance indicator encouraged by the compensation plan. They need to have regular meetings with each salesperson, focusing on specific progress on each performance indicator and specific plans to achieve greater numbers.

Sales structure is the set of written and unspoken policies, procedures and expectations that surround the salesperson's job. I like to characterize it as everything left in the sales department after you remove all the people. It is larger and more specific than “culture” because it is often codified and institutionalized. Some elements of the structure include:

• Sales compensation plans;
• Job descriptions;
• Territory definitions;
• CRM or lack thereof;
• Call reports, planning itineraries or lack thereof;
• Pricing guidelines;
• Sales process definitions.

This is just a small sampling of the list that makes up the “rules”—the way things are done in your company.

The key rule is that your structure must support the behaviors you're reinforcing in your compensation plan. For example, if you emphasize the acquisition of new accounts, but several of your salespeople have mature territories with few prospects left, your structure stands in the way of the compensation plan.

Most components of sales structure are vestiges of days gone by. Typically, they were created in response to a crisis some time ago and became codified. Most companies aren't even aware of many elements of their structure because they have been so imbedded into their corporate routines that they don't notice them anymore.

It's not unusual to find elements of a sales structure that present obstacles to attaining compensation behaviors.

When you change your sales force compensation plan, look at every behavior you want to encourage and ask yourself, “Is there anything in the way we do sales in this company that presents an obstacle to the salesperson performing on this issue?” Be open-minded. You could even ask for some outside input. Remember, many of the elements of your structure are so deeply embedded into your routines that no one notices them.

When you identify structural elements that are obstacles to sales success, work to eliminate them.

It's an unfortunate truth that many salespeople, maybe as much as 40 percent of your sales force, should not be in their jobs. Though they may have all the product knowledge in the world, they're simply not suited to deal effectively with the challenges of the job: Constant rejection, the need to create positive relationships with everyone, the responsibility to effectively manage their time and the need to continually learn more about every customer.

The sales profession grows more sophisticated and challenging every day. Many of today's salespeople, who were adequate in terms of their aptitude and attitudes in the past, are not up to the rigorous demands of the job today.

You can have the greatest compensation plan in the world, but if your people are not capable of performing, the plan will be a waste of time.

Compensation is only one part of the picture. If you really want to improve your sales efforts, you need to address the issues discussed here as well.