Sales Performance Reporting: Simple KPIs, Complex Data, and the Future of SCMS

When it comes to setting performance targets for your team, it’s important to set realistic yet challenging goals, measure performance each step of the way, and iterate your plan to achieve maximum results. 

While your goals should be customized to meet the unique needs of your business, there are some generally agreed-upon best practices to follow: 

Goal Alignment: Ensure your sales performance goals are aligned with the overall objectives of your organization. This helps your sales performance reporting efforts stay focused on what really matters to the business.

Use SMART Goals: Use SMART goals when setting sales performance goals. SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This will help ensure that your goals are clear, actionable, and achievable. 

Sales Visibility: Make sure you have a clear method for tracking progress towards any goals. In addition to helping you assess the success of your sales efforts, it also grants  your team access to the information they need when they need it. 

Set Realistic Expectations: Your sales performance goals should be clear, realistic, and achievable. Setting unrealistic goals can be demotivating and can harm employee engagement, so make sure that your goals are challenging, but achievable.

Regularly Review Progress: Regularly review progress towards your sales performance goals and make adjustments as needed. This will help ensure that your goals remain relevant and aligned with changing business needs.

Engage Your Team: Engage your sales team in the goal-setting process and make sure that they understand the importance of the goals and how they are being measured. This will help ensure that your sales team is motivated and focused on meeting their sales performance goals.

Secure Your Data: Implement strong data security measures to protect sensitive sales information and ensure the data you are tracking is reliable and accurate. This will help keep your sales data confidential and secure, which is essential for maintaining the trust of your customers and partners.

Regular Forecasting: Regularly forecast future sales performance based on current trends and historical data. This will help ensure that your sales team has an accurate view of future performance, which is essential for making informed decisions and setting realistic goals.

Encourage Collaboration: Collaboration and communication between sales, marketing, and other departments are essential to monitoring, hitting, and exceeding your goals. This will help ensure that your sales performance reporting efforts are integrated and aligned with the overall goals and objectives of the business.

Utilize an SCMS: Utilize technology, like a Sales Compensation Management Solution, to streamline sales performance reporting processes, reduce manual inputs and the resulting errors, and improve data accuracy across the board. This will help ensure that your sales performance reporting efforts are efficient, effective, and can be trusted.

A quality SCMS is essential to improving sales performance, as well as the reporting that surrounds it. Features might include calculating & distributing sales commissions, bonuses, and other incentives, as well as conducting advanced forecasting, tracking progress toward company- or department-wide objectives, and identifying opportunities for improvement.

SCMS can help businesses achieve greater transparency, alignment, and productivity across the organization. By streamlining workflows and automating commission adjustments, businesses can make changes at the speed of their business decisions and improve control over the month-end close and expense sheets. 

Other benefits can include: 

• Real-time data and insights on sales performance
• Automation of commission calculations and payments
• Improved accuracy and control over sales compensation
• Increased transparency and alignment across the organization
• Streamlined workflows and improved efficiency
• Better data protection and governance
• Better control over month-end close and expense sheets
• Resolution tools for keeping sales and accounting in sync with commission changes

Keep in mind, not all solutions are created equally. When evaluating SCMS providers, businesses should look for key features such as flexibility, scalability, and integration with leading sales and CRM tools. 

No one has a crystal ball to predict the future, but advancements in technology, data analysis, and automation will likely continue to bring about massive changes in the world of performance reporting and data. 

As businesses continue to gather more data about their efforts, the need for advanced tools and techniques to make sense of that data will also rise. This is especially true of AI & Machine Learning, tools we rely heavily on at SalesVista.

Fortunately, we’re also predicting a continued call for customer experience. As businesses focus more on building long-term relationships with customers, metrics such as customer lifetime value and customer satisfaction will become increasingly important indicators of sales performance.

While we can’t predict the future, there is at least one thing we can be certain of: SalesVista will have your back no matter what life throws your way. 

We’re the leading SCMS on the market  — and we have the proof to back it up. Our 4.9 Capterra score reflects our advanced features, intuitive design, and best-in-class support. 

With SalesVista, you can easily:

• Implement compensation plans and data in weeks, not months
• Motivate sales teams with accurate commission payouts
• Use rules-based checkpoints to improve finance and accounting controls
• Improve budgeting and forecasting with measurable and reliable insights
• Automate commission adjustments for greater agility
• Streamline workflows for optimal transparency
• Exert better control over month-end close and expense sheets
• Maintain a continuously high level of data protection
• Make changes at the speed of your business decisions. Automation provides the agility to easily make, track, and report commission adjustments.
• Streamline workflows for greater transparency—improve alignment and productivity across the organization.
• Exert better control over your month-end close and expense sheets. Resolution tools keep sales and accounting in sync with commission changes.
• Maintain a continuously high level of data protection assuring the right person has access to the right information - every time.
• Calculate Variable Base Salary, Custom-Defined Periodic Bonus, Variable Payout Schedule, Annual Eligible Commission, Category-Based Commissions, Custom Event-Driven Commission, Product-Based Commissions, Attainment-Base Accelerators, Category-Based Accelerators, and more! 
• AI-based analytics provide a rich data repository that sets the stage to optimize how sales, accounting, budgeting and forecasting, audit, and tax teams operate.

If you’d like to discover how SalesVista has changed the world of Sales Compensation Management — and Performance Reporting — forever, send us an email or schedule a demo today!