Page 85 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

enabled the sales team to have a deep understanding of why the final structure
was chosen. They understood why some of their ideas hadn't been included,
since even the rejected ideas had been discussed in the “town meeting” or on the
wiki thread.

Promotion Tiers: Removing the Subjectivity
from Promotions and Compensation
Adjustments

Besides the commission plan, there was another important element of the sales
compensation structure: a formalized career growth plan. Some salespeople want
to develop their leadership skills. Some want to grow their ownership over
entrepreneurial aspects of their job. Some salespeople have no desire to become
managers or change products; they just want to grow as individual contributors
and hone their craft. A common career goal for salespeople involves the
movement from inside sales to outside sales. However, in the first few years of
HubSpot, we did not have any outside opportunities. We were purposely focused
on the large, untapped SMB market, and felt the best way to reach our future
customers was by focusing exclusively on building an inside sales team. I
needed an alternative solution to provide a career track for our salespeople.

Most organizations relied on an annual review and traditional 2 to 4 percent
increase in salary based on performance. That approach felt too subjective to me.
The performance of a salesperson is so measurable; I felt I could come up with
something more quantifiable and more motivating.

I came up with the concept of promotional tiers. Figure 8.1 shows an example
set of these tiers. I have altered these metrics from actual HubSpot data, but the
figure illustrates the point.