Regardless of the economic climate, top sales talent is always in demand. That reality requires companies to regularly evaluate the compensation levels for its sales jobs. We believe that using a defined process to accomplish that goal produces results that can be presented to top management with confidence. With that background in mind, earlier this year, we worked with WorldatWork (WAW) to update its "Pricing Sales Jobs" course.
The updated course was previewed before a group of HR/compensation practitioners at WAW's May, 2011 Total Rewards Conference in San Diego.¹ Our experience as well as the participants' comments shared with us during the course session reaffirmed our view that companies experience three problems when pricing sales jobs: 1) how to validate sales job content; 2) which surveys to select and use; and, 3) how to weight survey values and adjust survey data to reflect differences in job matches. The purpose of this Short is to suggest actions HR/compensation professionals can take to resolve these problems.²
VALIDATE SALES JOB CONTENT
In many companies, rapid change in go-to-market strategies (e.g., new target markets, new or restructured sales channels, and new sales models) makes it difficult to keep sales job descriptions up to date. Additionally, in some companies, it is not uncommon for the (apparently) same sales job to be deployed quite differently by local sales management. The success of market pricing a job, in our opinion, rests largely an accurate, up to date description of each sales job.
¹ For information about the availability of this course - either on-site at your company or through on-line learning - contact Susan Marty at WAW (susan.marty@worldatwork.org; (480) 951-9191)
² A discussion of the complete process put forth in the "Pricing Sales Jobs" course is beyond the scope of the two Shorts. Parts 1 and 2, however, draw upon principles and tools laid out in three of the five process steps taught in the course.
To resolve the problem of having in- hand current information about a particular sales job, the factors to considered, what to validate and who to involve in the process are summarized in the table below:
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