Supply Chain Sales

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This is the world of the big warehouses that offer multi-year contracts to their customers to manage some or all aspects of their supply chain on their behalf, from storage to movement to providing labor, inventory control, customer fulfillment, reverse logistics (returns) and pretty much everything in between.   The contracts are long (typically 3-5 years) and can be millions of dollars.  There is a traditional outside sales force that is paid quite well (usually well into the six figures) and tend to be long-tenured industry veterans. 

Complex Compensation

There is often considerable bickering among design team members about whether the proper metric is revenue, margin or net income, with some CFO’s even pushing as far as for EBITDA as the determinate of sales commissions (if it can be measured by account).  These are complex incentive plans because it can be months from the time a contract is sold until the time the revenue starts flowing, and then more months before the account is profitable because of accounting methods that deal with expensing start up costs.  Paying sales reps in this world is VERY COMPLICATED and you are dealing with big dollars.  This part of the Transportation & Logistics world is like nothing else out there.  The pay levels are higher than trucking sales, closer to freight forwarder sales, but not transaction based.  Most often there is some kind of up front component for getting the deal signed and then a 2-3 year commission based on actualized results.  Then there is the whole “renewal” debate.  And the answer on what the right compensation method is, of course, it depends. 

We Know We Can Help

In addition to numerous smaller players, Prosperio has worked with three of the five top players in this space to help them sort out the answers to these thorny questions.  We have helped them through mergers and acquisitions and helped them align disparate plans to get the sales forces working together.  We can bring this knowledge to your supply chain sales problems.  In addition, we have also worked with several of these companies to develop annual incentive plans for ALL of the exempt staff to ensure the entire company is aligned with company strategic and profit objectives. Thus, not only do we understand the selling roles, but we also have experience with MANY of the operational roles in these types of organizations as well.

Frequently Designed Supply Chain Compensation Plans

Express Project

When your needs span several roles but you have only a few people and will not have much of an issue with change management, our Express Project is for you. We’ll spend time with you and your senior leaders getting to understand your business and working with you to develop your plans as quickly as possible. We’ve successfully executed a number of engagements for small to medium-sized organizations (5 to 20 people) just like yours.

An Express Incentive Project includes:
• Strategy and structure review/refinement
Compensation plan design for up to 5 roles (salary bands and incentives)
• Market benchmarking of pay levels for the 5 roles
• Plan documentation
• Pro-forma economic modeling (minimal historical testing)
• Roll-out training
• Development of simple Excel calculator
• 3 months of post-project support
• Turnaround is approximately 4-6 weeks

1P1P Project: One plan, one role

A 1P1P Project is great for start-ups and small companies, and those with an immediate need for a compensation plan for one person in one role. The 1P1P Project is a virtually delivered program that’s a fast, affordable alternative to big software firm fees.

The 1P1P Project includes:
• All plan design details
• Basic market pricing
• Economic testing
• Incentive plan documentation
• Outlining of goals and expectations
• Review of business goals and impact of this role on those goals
• Role clarification
• 3 months of post-project support
• Turnaround is approximately 2-3 weeks

Full Service Sales Compensation Project

When you need more in-depth assistance in clarifying business objectives, streamlining your organization structure, improving accountabilities and role definition, and are developing incentive plans for several interconnected roles for a large staff, we recommend a Full Service Sales Compensation Project. This solution features several virtual meetings with our developers and your design team, and is often selected by medium-sized to larger companies, or small companies undergoing significant transition.

A Full Service Sales Compensation Project includes:
• Business goal clarification
• Compensation plan design for all roles in scope (salary bands and incentives)
• Development of career levels for highly populated roles
• Employee change management
• Extensive pro-forma and historical economic modeling
• Goal-setting guidance
• Market benchmarking of pay levels for all roles in scope
• Detailed and more automated Excel calculator for use by your staff for doing plan calculations
• Roll-out support and training
• Organization redesign and role change/definition
• 12 months post-project support
• Turnaround time is at least 90 days, but may take longer depending on size of organization and magnitude of change