為什麼業務人員要領業績獎金Why Sales People Need to be Given Incentives 為什麼業務人員要領業績獎金? 這是一個經濟學的命題。 對於B2B的商業模式來講，需要許多部門一起合作才能得到生意。既然這麼多人參與，為什麼只有業務人員可以拿業務績效獎金? 這是一個普遍又實在的問題。所以許多科技公司會提供激勵獎金給業務人員，但也有公司不提供績效獎金。如何看這個問題才是合理呢? 用專業的術語來講，這是一個「交易成本」的問題。因為公司不知道如何管理或者控制業務人員在外面的活動，所以公司需要多付出一些代價來確保業務人員在外面的言行是在維護公司的權益。 業務人員一般工作在辦公室外，管理階層不知道這個業務人員去了哪裏?找了誰? 又談了些什麼? 最重要的是公司不會知道業務人員是否會保護公司的利益，或者只照顧他個人利益。 而，如果公司要監看這些活動，這個代價是高得驚人，也可能做不到。所以公司就提供一筆錢來激勵業務人員照顧公司的利益，也避免業務人員只照顧自己利益。 再者，當生意不順利的時候，業務人員是很容易找到自己的績效不彰的藉口。即使公司知道這些藉口不太合理，也不是那麼容易的就找到另一個業務人員來代替。這種訓練新人的成本，和更換業務人員相比，訓練新人費用太高了。所以可以說，公司給於業務人員激勵獎金是誘使業務人員對公司的生意的負起責任。 就像我們說的，B2B生意模式需要很多部門一起努力工作才能做成生意，為何只給業務人員獎金呢? 因為相較於業務人員的績效，工程師的績效容易管理多了。工程師的管理一般不用太擔心工程師否照顧公司的利益，工程師的能力是看得到的。如果一個工程師不能解決一個工程問題，這是能力問題，無關於信任與否。工程師的敘薪問題，是公司或者主管要做的判斷，公司要用多少薪資來取得這個工程師的工作成果。如果公司和工程師雙方都接受這個薪資的安排，這就是公平。公司自己需要有一套方法去評估工程師的能力和績效，然後給出合理的價碼。如果事後這個工程師的表現，不如預期，公司也可以讓這個工程師走人啊。 但是評量業務人員的能力，並不是刀切兩面光的黑白分明。當業務人員不能達到應有的績效標準時，他可以有很多藉口，每一個可能都是合情合理的理由。畢竟，業務人員不見得需要逼客戶一定要買產品。 關於業務人員的激勵獎金，也有業務人員反對。因為業務人員不能拿到業績獎金，可能是公司沒有適合的產品來符合市場的需求。如果這僅是個短期現象，這問題不大，業務人員自己會容忍，換工作也是有代價的。但如果狀況持續下去，公司長期沒有符合市場需求的產品，或者看不到未來的前途。聰明、積極的業務人員就會去尋找新的機會，換公司去了。 科技公司要提供業務人員業務獎金的理由大致有：[1]公司在乎的是業務人員的工作成果，而不是業務人員花了多少時間或多少努力；[2]公司希望業務人員在乎公司的利益而不是自己個人的未來。在這種考量下，提供激勵獎金比依賴業務人員的自律是比較便宜的。(換句話說。就是公司給你錢讓你可以幫公司省錢，或者幫公司賺更多錢。) 做生意是有風險的，如果做生意一定可以賺錢，那大家都想當老闆了。風險的存在讓老闆們會更小心的使用自己的資源，如果老闆們對風險估算錯了，就要承擔風險。一樣的，公司提供了激勵獎金給業務同仁，當業務人員做了錯誤的決定時，也應該有處罰的條例來規範業務人員。 要設計一個有效的業務激勵方案並不容易。可是，不管如何，在設計業務激勵方案時一定要考慮業務人員所作的銷售預測是否正確和是否有貨款沒有回收。(某些業務人員的生意條件，不能收回貨款，最後要讓公司打消大筆的呆帳) 甚者，某些業務人員只帶進了短期的營業額，卻給公司帶來了大量的呆料庫存。這些呆帳和呆料所造成的損失，可能比公司當年要發的年終獎金還多。甚至有時造成公司毀滅性的災難。 企業有各種不同功能部門。某些工作是基於員工的能力敘薪，像對業務人員，公司就是花錢買這個業務能力的結果。有些工作是基於員工的工作時間敘薪，像許多白領、藍領的工作。業務人員的薪資可以分成兩個部分看；一部分是基本能力所獲得的底薪，另一部份是努力成果，獎賞他對公司貢獻 (一般來講，美國區的業務主管薪資是高於台灣區的，但是美國區的營業額卻常又少於台灣區。這原因就是公司需要付較高的薪資購買美國區經理人的能力)。 在這種激勵方式下，積極，績效好的業務人員可以拿到比一般水準高的薪水。而積極的業務也會歡迎這種制度(如果不喜歡這種制度的業務人員，不是沒有自信，就是業務技能不夠好)，不管是什麼理由，包括產品不夠好等等，如果業務人員的表現現不夠理想，他就應該領較低的薪水。同時，那些不喜歡業務工作，但偏好於固定薪資，或者不同意降低薪資水準的人，就不願意去從事業務的工作。如此，業務人員的激勵獎金，是公司的妥協，但目地是讓每個業務人員都能認真去表現。 Why Sales People Need to be Given Incentives為什麼業務人員要領業績獎金 Why do sales people need to be given incentives? That is an economics topic. For a B2B business, many departments need to cooperate to gain success. And all of them deserve credit when success is attained. So, why are sales people singled out to receive incentives for good performance? After all, their job is to sell, so why should they be rewarded above their normal compensation for selling if other employees in other departments are not rewarded similarly for their success? This is a common and valid question. Many IT companies give their sales people such incentives. However, not all companies provide such incentives for their sales people. So, how do we view this issue for sales people? In Economics terms, this is a “transaction cost” issue stemming from companies not knowing how to manage and/or control the activities of their salespeople on the outside. So, a company needs to pay a premium in order to ensure that its sales people protect its interests. Sales people normally work out of the office, so management doesn’t readily know where the sales people go, who the sales people are deal with, or what topics the sales people are discussing. The most important thing is a company doesn’t know whether its sales people are acting in a way to protect its benefit (as opposed to the sales people’s benefit). Unfortunately, if a company wanted to monitor or supervise these issues, the costs would be substantial. So, companies provide monetary sales incentive programs to motivate sales people to care about the company’s benefit, and also to avoid sales people acting in their own interests. But what happens when a sales person’s performance is poor. A sales person can give many excuses for sub-par sales, and a company will find it difficult to really determine whether such excuses are valid or not. And even if the company knows an excuse is not valid, it can’t easily find another salesperson to replace a poorly performing one due to training costs and lost sales opportunities waiting for a new sales person to acquire expertise. In actuality, this means that a company extending sales incentives is giving the sales people a form of ownership in the company to entice them to take personal responsibility for the company’s business. As we’ve said, the B2B business model requires many departments to work hard to do business. However, compared with sales performance, an engineer’s performance is much easier to manage. Engineering management is generally not concerned with worrying about whether its engineers are acting in the company’s benefit, as the actions of its engineers are out in the open. If an engineer can’t solve an engineering problem, that is a capability issue, not a matter of trust. In that case, the company or supervisor just needs to make a judgment to determine how many resources he or she is willing to spend on that particular engineer to get the desired results. Both the company and its engineers implicitly or tacitly accept that this arrangement is appropriate and fair. A company needs to have a way to evaluate an engineer’s capability, and if the engineer cannot perform as expected, the company should obviously fire that employee. But detecting problems with sales people is not so black-and-white because there can be many reasons why a sale person did not attain the desired level of success, not all of which are in the sales person’s control. After all, a sales person can’t force customers to buy. Regarding sales incentives, some people might object that, under an incentive program, sales people would be unable to obtain the incentive if the company doesn’t provide proper products to meet market demand. That’s not a big problem if it’s merely a short-term situation, as things will average out over the long-term. But if a company is without marketable products for a long time and/or for the foreseeable future, a wise and aggressive sales person should seek another opportunity in a different company. So, providing incentives to sales people in an IT company is done for a combination of reasons: [1] a company cares about a sales people’s results, not about how much time or effort sales people spend; and [2] the company wants to ensure that each sale person is working in the company’s interests rather than trying to set up the sales person’s next career, wherein paying incentives is often cheaper than depending on the sales people’s self-discipline. In other words, we give money in incentives in order to save money and/or make more money. Doing business involves taking risks. If all businesses could make money and no risks were involved, everyone one would be a boss. The risks that exist push bosses to use resources carefully, that is to take what are called “calculated risks,” as they will experience loss if they are wrong. Similarly, when companies provide incentive programs for sales people, management should also specify penalties for wrong decisions made by sales people. It is not so easy to design an effective incentive program to drive sales people. The situation is similar to that for business at large. In particular, when we design an incentive program, we also need to consider whether sales people’s sales forecasts are correct or not and whether there might be any bad debt arising from sales deals (some sales agreements end up causing a company to write off outstanding debts from customers that can’t or don’t pay). Additionally, sales people sometimes succeed in bringing in short-term revenue but make bad long-term forecasts that result in dead stock accumulating that must ultimately be discarded, causing huge losses. The losses stemming from such dead stock may easily exceed, for example, what a company pays out in year-end bonuses. And such dead stock can even bring a company to ruin in the worst case. In business, different kinds of jobs exist. Some jobs are based on ability, wherein companies spend money to obtain specific results, such as sales. Other jobs are based more on time, such as various white and blue collar positions. A sales salary ideally includes two components: a base salary for basic ability and a bonus incentive to encourage the hard work that brings sales results. (Generally, the US regional sales leader’s salary is higher than Taiwan’s, even though the US regions’ revenue is usually less than Taiwan’s. The reason why this situation exists is because the company needs to pay a higher base salary to compensate the US regional manager’s ability.) In this way, an aggressive, good-performing sales person can gain an above-average salary under the incentive program. Such an aggressive sales person will generally welcome such a compensation program (and if not, such a person likely doesn’t have the confidence or skill to succeed). And if for whatever reason such a sales person fails to perform, he or she will be able to accept lower pay. Meanwhile, those that don’t work in sales generally prefer a fixed compensation and would not likely agree to receive a lower base salary. So, such a compensation program for sales employees seems to be the best compromise for keeping everyone happy while still incentivizing the critical sales people to perform.
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 01:27:28 +0000
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