James Alexander Consulting LLC
Compensation Advisory Services
#5: Freedman & Fraser—Why Small Requests Lead to Bigger Sales I dislike the phrase "best practice." To me, this phrase is synonymous with dogma. While writing Nothing Left to Take Away, I spent a lot of time digging into research—not only about incentives and human behavior but about how we make real-world decisions. I referenced... Continue Reading →
That's right, they exist - compensation, recognition, sales incentives, its all out there. Here are six of my favorites: Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) Directed by James Foley and written by David Mamet (the same guy that wrote the stage play of the same name), this is arguably the best film ever made about how to... Continue Reading →
The challenges with financial incentives that relate to problem-solving roles, and how we can truly drive innovation
2023 is likely to be a year of challenges for many companies with economic headwinds forcing leaders to regularly adjust their expectations. Most would agree, it's probably not the best time to be a salesperson, but this is also precisely the time that companies need their best sellers to stick around. Generally speaking, adjusting plans... Continue Reading →
Anyone who has watched Mad Men, will know that back in the 1920s, cigarette advertising was big business. The rival companies spent millions on advertising campaigns to persuade customers to switch to their brand. Famously (although I hadn't heard about it until Mad Men), Lucky Strike came up with the campaign slogan, "Its toasted" which... Continue Reading →
"Yeah, fugazi, fogazi. It’s a wazi, it’s a woozi. It’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist, it’s never landed, it is no matter, it’s not on the elemental charge" It may seem like fugazi but Compensation Cost of Sales (CCOS) could be the difference between sales plan success and failure. In simple terms, CCOS is the... Continue Reading →
In my experience, companies tend to struggle with managing sales programs in Europe far more than they do in North America. There is certainly no simple answer as to how to build a European sales team but acknowledging the challenges and understanding the variables will certainly make the process more straightforward. I've attempted to categorize... Continue Reading →
This is exactly what Jacob Gonik set out to achieve for IBM Brazil in the 1970s. The starting point is that if we want an effective sales plan, there needs to be some notion of expectation in the form of a goal or quota. The challenge, as most of us know, is knowing what that... Continue Reading →