Incentives at the Speed of Lightpath
Managing sales compensation—especially for a geographically dispersed workforce—can be tedious. For Optimum Lightpath, rewarding its salespeople involved Excel spreadsheets, time, and often human errors. To remedy the problem, Optimum opted for Xactly Incent, from sales performance and compensation management provider Xactly, to help provide higher incentives for landing more-qualified leads.
“Commissions-processing time has been cut by one-third and continues to decrease,” says Matt Grover, vice president of sales operations at Optimum Lightpath, the business telecommunications services division of Cablevision Systems, a provider of cable, Internet, and telephone services to the New York metro area. “Error and time-to-remediate rates are also declining dramatically, leading to further productivity advances—both in the back office and in the field—as reps and operations personnel are freed from engaging in disputes and chasing down mistakes.”
A proper incentive program not only motivates reps to sell and to close deals more quickly, but also provides visibility for management, cutting the number of days required for processing payroll. With Salesforce.com integration, salespeople can see information about the leads that will bring the most compensation. They can also see a record of past performance and the number of deals it’ll take to advance sales levels.
“Not only can sales reps quickly see where they stand, but management can see at any time how each rep is being compensated, without waiting for ad-hoc reports,” Grover says. “The real-time visibility…helps senior management get closer to the business. Top managers don’t have to wait for rolled-up numbers, but can log in whenever they want, and dive down as deep and as far back as they want. As a result, new kinds of questions are being asked—the ones that further enhance sales performance.”
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