Compensation for sales varies silo-style — for different roles, regions, or business units. That all in time creates a complicated network of KPIs that are challenging to measure, compare, and administer. Variety of KPIs makes incentives easier to tailor, but what companies fail to realize is the power of grouping together similar KPIs across plans. Standardization of the basic metrics results in better control, visibility and effectiveness.

Why Consolidate Common KPIs?

Makes Plan Execution Easy & Guides Sales Teams to Collaborate

Suppose you’ve got an company where you can calculate Account Executives based on “New Revenue”, Customer Success Managers based on “Customer Retention,” and Partner Sales based on “Deal Size”. These are all job-specific KPIs, but all contribute towards the business’ revenue development plan. Rather than dealing with them individually, having them all rolled into a “Net Revenue Growth” KPI keeps everyone on the same page.

Enhances Visibility for Leadership

As sales teams compete with isolated KPIs, leadership doesn’t see the whole picture. By consolidating common KPIs like “Revenue Growth”, “Profitability”, “Customer Expansion”, executive can quickly understand trends, unprofitable segments, and strategize appropriately.

Minimizes Complexity & Compliance Costs — With Zero Admin Complexity & Risk.

One global SaaS company had 25+ KPIs with multiple sales teams and payouts were always being settled out of hand and Finance and Sales Ops were never aligned. With deconsolidated and redundant KPIs removed, disputes dropped by 40%, manual intervention was reduced, and incentive policies were better adhered to.

Drives Sales Behavior More Effectively

If you have different “Customer Retention” for different sales teams (churn rate, contract renewals, etc.) salespeople can work towards the numbers versus the bigger picture. Standardizing retention KPIs means everyone is thinking long-term customer value, not short-term profit.

Final Thought

The loss of agility when KPIs are consolidated is not loss of flexibility, but the ability to organize and scale sales incentive management. Organizations with common performance metrics will have better control, visibility and alignment between sales teams and the business.

Your KPIs are aligned (or pushing your teams to different places)? It is high time to pool and streamline.