Navigating Career Progression in Sales Compensation: Insights from the Future of Sales Compensation Think Tank

We recently had the opportunity to discuss Career Progression with those in our SalesGlobe Future of Sales Compensation Think Tank community, including our guest speaker Leo Rocha from CHG Healthcare.  Each quarter, we discuss several topics that we find are of interest amongst the compensation, sales performance management, and revenue/sales operations ecosystems; ranging from utilizing AI in our roles and what good quota setting looks like, to name a few.    

Career Progression reigned as a hot topic this time as, where we were able to discuss notable challenges faced by compensation professionals, discuss the impact of AI, and how to grow your career in the field.  As the sales compensation profession does not have common entry points such as college majors, is being changed by AI on what seems like a daily basis, and can sometimes feel like a small error or mistake is catastrophic, it was enjoyable hearing different viewpoints from the community. 

As a follow up, we wanted to share some questions that were fielded during the call and offer our viewpoints:

1. How do you successfully transition from a specialized Sales Compensation role into broader Compensation within an organization?  

A: There are many ways to think through this, particularly as every organization can be unique as it relates to Total Rewards.  Based on that, I’ll share my specific advice for someone in a large public organization looking to broaden their skillset: 

• Build internal networks:

  If you are currently a sales compensation administrator at a large public organization, reach out to form mentorships with those currently in broad based compensation such as your VP of Total Rewards or HR Leadership.  While this can sometimes feel a bit daunting, you’ll likely be surprised to learn that they likely got into their current role by broadening their skillset via mentorship, and now they want to help the next person along.  Let them know about how you would like to broaden your skillset and put an action plan together to get there.  Aside from building my career utilizing strong mentors, I’ve gained some great friendships along the way. 

• Build your credentials and education:

  While on-the-job work is always ideal (Ex. You get asked to help with a salary survey from Total Rewards, giving you some exposure to a new area), that may not always be possible.  I would recommend joining a local Compensation group or attending one of the larger national conventions.  Many host in-person functions and speakers, while others are more geared towards Zoom discussions and job networking.  While some organizations will offer credentials that come with a cost, there are many smaller local/state organizations who offer free networking and skill building events.  Doing this helped broaden my network and introduced me to new areas that I did not have experience in prior or simply wanted to dip my toes in the water on. 

• Get out there and do it:

   It is likely a more natural path to slowly build out your skills at your current firm compared to trying to find a company that will hire you to do a compensation role where you have no previous experience.  A benefit of larger firm will be that they may have specialized roles or teams for stock, executive, and salary compensation that you can partner with to learn while not fully owning the function.  Identify areas where you can pitch in to help with the work, understand the strategy, and assist with implementing that strategy tactically will broaden your skillset.  Often times there may be turnover within staffing at your current firm, which presents an opportunity for you to raise your hand in helping out while a new hires is recruited and hired (or better yet, prove you can do the role effectively to grow your career).  When setting your goals for the year with your manager, it is a great time to communicate your desire to expand your knowledge and skillset to see if a plan can be put in place to work in broader compensation over the coming months and year. 

2. Is there a logical function that you commonly see sales comp professionals pivot into? Is there a natural fit?

A:  I would note that often times people may leave a compensation role for something entirely different, such as Sales, Accounting, or to go back for an advanced degree.  Several common functions that we see a sales comp administrator pivot into are: 

• Compensation Design & Strategy:

   After gaining experience calculating payouts, performing accruals, and assessing performance management, a natural next move is to take those skills from administration and pivot into design and strategy.  If you want to start small, recommending SPIFs or one-time contests is a good way to gain experience.  Even if your SPIF idea is not implemented, this gives you some experience working alongside decision makers and will give you a better understanding of decision criteria and process around core compensation plans. 

One aspect that I liked about making the shift from an administrator to design/strategy is that it got me thinking longer term and working with new people, whereas in administration it was easy to get in a set monthly cadence.   

• SPM implementations and ongoing maintenance: 

  These are the roles that help initially setup the SPM and/or manage the SPM on an ongoing basis.  There is often demand for this internally at companies, as the number of incentive plans, data sources, and calculations becomes large.  While external implementation partners are almost always used for the initial implementation, there is normally internal pressure to handle it on your own given cost and often times, complexity of the plans themselves. 

Some aspects that I liked about gaining exposure to SPM implementations are that it assisted in giving me a larger sense of ownership around my function, gave me great exposure to IT project management, and forced me to work outside my comfort zone.   

• Sales/Revenue Operations: 

  If you want to pivot out of calculations, sales and revenue operations roles are often a natural fit.  For many organizations, Sales Compensation reports to Sales Operations or Revenue Operations, which is an added benefit as you can continue to work with the same individuals and concepts. 

If you have been a sales compensation administrator for a while, this can give you a huge advantage to shift into sales/revenue operations.  As you build relationships with the sales field, understand your companies CRM and SPM, and your understanding of the incentive plans will carry a lot of tribal knowledge in a sales/revenue operations role.  

• Broad Based Compensation (Stock, salary, executive): 

  This can be a trickier pivot as Broad Based Compensation may often report to an entirely different leader than Sales Compensation, particularly at larger firms.  For making this shift, we highly recommend building your internal network within the Total Rewards function at your organization, building your credentials and education, as well as jumping at opportunities to help when they present themselves.  

3. My biggest challenge still is getting people out of the“we’ve always done it this way” or “the salespeople will be upset if we change it” mindset. Any suggestions how to change that mindset? 

A: Here is a link to help you understand how we think through Change Management: Change Management – SalesGlobe 

Change management can be complex and situational, I would recommend addressing this in a few steps when thinking of compensation plan changes.  While a straightforward and simple method, I often recommend the “Balance Sheet For Change” approach, which can be summarized as: 

• Make a list of all the positives and negatives of your proposed changes through the lens of both the impacted population (sales field) and the business (often financially related to costs, revenue, or profit).   

• If you have more positives than negatives, you’re off to a good start and should discuss with others to ensure you have all viewpoints. 

• If you have more negatives than positives, it will often become a roadblock and you’ll likely want to rethink your approach.  Can something be amended to remove a negative or add an additional positive? 

To add a bit more granularity, each single positive does not always outweigh each single negative, particularly around perception.  Try “scoring” each with its own weighting of importance, working with other stakeholders to gain various viewpoints. 

While somewhat straightforward, we’ve seen this approach often work well.  People can still create the challenge of “we’ve always done it this way”, but if you can increase revenue or profits, or decrease cost, without much downside – it can be a catalyst for accepting change. 

SalesGlobe is a leading sales effectiveness and data-driven creative problem-solving firm. We specialize in helping Global 1000 companies solve their toughest growth challenges and helping them think in new ways to develop more effective solutions in the areas of sales strategy, sales organization, sales process, sales compensation, and quotas. We wrote the books on sales innovation with The Innovative Sale, What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation, and Quotas! Design Thinking to Solve Your Biggest Sales Challenge.

Matt Cayer

Sales & Revenue Operations Consulting at SalesGlobe