Wesley Iversen· HR Business Partner, Northwind Logistics
Posted in Sales Compensation ·
I work in reward for a general insurer in Australia with about 300 people in broker-facing sales. We ran 14 SPIFs last financial year, mostly gift cards or a few hundred dollars for selling a particular product in a particular month.
I finally compared sales of the targeted product in SPIF months against the months either side. For 11 of the 14 there was no measurable lift. For two there was a lift followed by an equal dip, so we paid to move sales forward by three weeks. One worked, for a genuinely new product.
My view now is that SPIFs are a habit sales leaders have, more than a tool. We have cut to a maximum of three a year, each needing a stated baseline before it starts. Has anyone else measured theirs?
2 helpful · 3 insightful · 3 agree · 5 replies · 140 views · 2 following
HR Business Partner, Beacon Retail Group
Same exercise, same result, at a telecoms reseller in the UK. Ours were worse: the sellers had worked out that there was always a SPIF coming, so they held orders for the product they expected to be next. We were training people to wait.
Compensation Manager, Pinehurst Foods
I would not write them off. They fail when they are used to patch a core plan that points the wrong way. If the main plan pays the same rate on every product and you want a new one sold, a 500 dollar SPIF is fighting the whole plan. We put a 1.3x product multiplier in the plan for strategic lines and now run one or two short contests a year, mostly for fun.
Benefits Analyst, Lumen Biosciences
Requiring a baseline before launch is the single most useful rule. We added a second: the sponsoring sales leader presents the result to the compensation committee afterwards. Requests fell from around 20 a year to 5 as soon as people knew they would have to stand up and show the numbers.
Mateo MoreauCRP
Benefits Manager, Tidewater Utilities
A dissenting note from the field side, since I spent ten years carrying a bag before moving into operations. A SPIF is sometimes the only way a regional manager can say thank you or create a bit of energy in a flat quarter. Measured purely on sales lift it fails. I would give managers a small recognition budget and stop calling it an incentive.
Benefits Manager, Copperfield Mining
That distinction between recognition and incentive is fair and I had not separated them. Two of our fourteen were really team recognition with a product name attached. I will propose a small discretionary pot for managers, outside the three-a-year limit and outside the plan.
