A well-designed compensation plan is one of the most effective ways organizations can drive their sales forces towards their sales and revenue targets. However, many organizations cannot predict how their new plans will perform or assess the impact of changes to existing plans because most software systems lack easy-to-use modeling tools. A lack of robust reporting and analytics tools similarly hinders the quality interpretation of modeled results.

Sales organizations without the ability to effectively build plan models and interpret results are unable to:

• test changes to compensation plans, data inputs, organizational hierarchies, team definitions, territory alignments, and many other important factors

• compare results from multiple plan models before making changes to compensation plans

• track, monitor, and audit changes to compensation plans over time

• understand how proposed changes to compensation plans will impact pay across the sales force

• predict compensation expenses both in absolute amounts and in percentage of sales

Failure to model, validate, and analyze the impact of new plans or plan changes before they are rolled out to the sales force exposes companies to unknown budget risks, unanticipated commission costs, and excessive mid-cycle plan modifications.

With these challenges in mind, Synygy recently enhanced the already-proven plan modeling capabilities of its sales performance management software. Now, it’s even easier for sales organizations to model the impact of proposed plan changes in response to changing market conditions, corporate strategies, data inputs, and sales force structures. Click here to learn more  about how modeling can eliminate the unexpected.

This year, the April 20-21 Synygy Sales Performance Conference is being held at the CHF Conference Center in Philadelphia’s most historic neighborhood, just minutes from Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center and one block from the Omni Hotel.

Now in its 14^th year, the conference once again boasts a robust educational program focused on the latest tools, techniques, and insights for driving sales force effectiveness. Helping lay the foundation for the event will be an opening keynote by Jim Dickie of CSO Insights, presenting the findings of the latest research into the challenges impacting sales performance and revealing how organizations are leveraging people, processes, and technology to overcome today’s sales obstacles.

Following that will be a full program of expert-led hands on workshops, informative breakouts, and interactive roundtables. Covering a broad range of topics from sales compensation, quota setting, and resource deployment, to dashboards, workflow, report design, and more, you’ll discover proven solutions, learn best practices, and uncover the latest trends for increasing efficiency and productivity in your sales operations.

If your position is involved with increasing the effectiveness of your sales organization, consider taking a break from your usual responsibilities to join us this spring at the Synygy Sales Performance Conference in common pursuit of the means to operational excellence.  I look forward to welcoming you to Philadelphia!

Mark Stiffler, CEO

Last year’s Synygy Executive Education Series of webinars were a resounding success and we’re gearing up for another great series in 2010. To ensure that the sessions continue to address your sales compensation and other sales performance management challenges, we invite you to help shape this year’s webinars. Simply click here to submit your suggestions for topics you’d like to see covered and we’ll do our best to include them.

P.S. As a thank-you, we’ll send along a presentation kit with all of the 2009 webcasts, just in case you missed any!