One for all and all for one! Team cohesion will ensure your success. Our advice for your variable incentive compensation plan also contributes to it.
"The strength of the wolf is the clan and the strength of the clan is the wolf." This maxim from Kipling's Jungle Book illustrates one of the wisdoms of the jungle, used to ensure the unity and team cohesion.
Applied to business world, it can also have the force of law. It teaches us that the achievement of results by each individual employee ensures the performance of the company as a whole. That the increase of the turnover of a company is connected naturally to the results of the efforts made by each one. And that if your salespeople can join together to follow the same strategy, they will be able to deploy individually, the maximum of their potential.
Gossip, discussions between people at the same position level ... in many companies, employees exchange and want to ensure that their skills and performance are well recognized and have not been underestimated, financially speaking. To avoid that differences in compensation, pollute team cohesion, a single word: transparency.
Working effectively as a team means clearly exposing the company's strategy to your employees, communicating in a similar way with everyone, without distinction, on your overall compensation plan.
Successful team cohesion requires a real transparency in a good environment of trust. Two factors to explain this imperative:
• Respect for fairness: the essential criterion for the motivation and team cohesion of your sales representatives. In the same job, same salary. It's obvious. But large differences in income related to different performance (and rewarded by incentive compensation) may exist. This point is also an essential lever for the motivation of your teams.
• Understanding of the variable pay system: communicate well to better motivate. This broadened communication aims in particular to present to employees the benefit of getting variable compensation. It aims to improve their performance and encourage them to overcome. Clearly establish the levers that allow them to benefit from this compensation system by clearly explaining the quantitative and qualitative objectives.
In order to clarify the objectivity of the remuneration, choose clear, precise, measurable and quantifiable objectives for the granting of your bonuses. When a goal is difficult to figure out, try to develop a set of measurable and identifiable micro-tasks by a response that leaves no room for interpretation (answer: yes or no). This is the best way to prioritize quality in an intelligent way.
A concrete example: the assessment of the cleanliness of a public place varies considerably according to the sensitivity of the individuals. Think about the solution adopted in the collective catering. It consists of developing a list of quantitative criteria to identify if the place is potentially clean. Another criterion: customers will simply answer positively or negatively.
The variable part remains largely indexed to individual criteria. However, team building is the key to success ... and bonuses. To balance individual performance and cooperation for overall success, consider some collective criteria in the assessments. Leave plenty of room for the collective game, foster the mutual help and the information sharing. For example, give extra bonus when a team member brings some business to a colleague.
To ensure successful team cohesion through variable compensation, also follow our advices in our 10 golden rules white paper on incentive compensation