It is no secret that sales leaders aim to grow revenue for their organization while simultaneously driving up the productivity of their sales team. However, what is unrecognized as part of day-to-day Sales Performance Management (SPM) is a need to continually reassess, innovate, and adapt the processes in place. Alarmingly, this need falls short for many sales leaders because of a distinct lack of adoption of the right digital tools.  

Outdated processes and inefficient sales tools create issues in sales divisions everywhere and contribute to significant losses in revenue. For example, sales leaders still maintain reliability on Excel-led planning. While spreadsheets may have their uses, they lack the flexible capabilities for intelligent operations in the modern setting while also requiring manual data entry (often becoming error-prone as a result). 

SPM platforms – replete with valuable capabilities, planning visualizations, and a quick adoption rate – exist to help overcome these issues, achieving company-wide growth as a critical outcome. However, many focus on just one or several specific areas that fall under the SPM umbrella (e.g. territory planning, quota planning, or incentive compensation).  

Board moves beyond this limiting approach, delivering a solution that pulls data together to work in harmony with other sales solutions, such as the CRM, and realize exponential value for the organization. Below are three key reasons why Board is the #1 Decision-Making Platform on the market. 

Reason #1: Streamlined decision making 

Undertaking various processes as part of a sales strategy requires speed and flexibility. Quota planning, territory planning, and incentives & compensation planning are critical factors to this strategic approach. However, it is nearly impossible for a sales leader to manage all these vital areas without a platform that not only collects and visualizes data but also delivers quotas, territories, and compensation in a single process.  

An integrated approach is needed, collating essential performance and activity data from HR, finance, and marketing to drive more comprehensive visibility and streamline decision-making. With Board – with Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics functionality inherent within the platform – data is aggregated quickly to: 

• provide transparency across the sales team so individual/team goals can be constantly reviewed and worked towards 

• leverage predictive forecasting models in real-time, using historical performance data and comparing predictive models against subjective forecasts (from sales leaders) 
• analyze all demographic, firmographic, and revenue related information on a single platform to effectively build equitable territories – overcoming key challenges associated with territory planning 
• generate complex sales capacity models that adapt automatically when HR and finance make changes (e.g. if the annual target increases or predicted employee attrition numbers increase/decrease).  

This integrated approach is the differentiator for sales teams looking to enhance their decisions as a core business department. It also incorporates the ability to recognize and answer the potential impact sales may have on other wider business areas – ultimately creating an organization-wide plan that benefits everyone. 

Reason #2: Compensation and incentives transparency 

Compensation and incentives are critical in incentivizing an organization’s sales team to go out there and sell. However, this can create a problem for the company when looking at the variables in managing the cost of sales, ensuring it does not become unmanageable. For example, if a company has a vast number of sales reps and is overpaying commission rates, the impact on the bottom line can be incredibly high.  

A balance between the CRO (looking to get the most out of his team with the right incentives) and the CFO (hoping to maintain a healthy bottom line) is needed. With Board, different scenarios are modeled to test metrics and understand how the variables will ultimately impact the business from a financial perspective.  

On the other side, Board gives real-time transparency for sales leaders to see progress towards goals, team performance, and individual quota attainment at any given moment. The effectiveness of sales incentives can be examined in greater detail, adding an adaptable approach to incentives management and keeping the team on target to hit targets. Sales leaders can go as granular as individual rep performance, adding further flexibility to address potential issues where necessary. 

Sales teams can likewise utilize Board to review plans in the one standardized platform. Incentives are automatically calculated to see their sales plans in action and view earned commissions in real-time.  

In summary, Board enables sales leaders to account for variable pay, calculate incentives to better plan for employee compensation (while keeping a healthy bottom line), and monitor sales team performance right down to individual reps (to keep everyone on target). 

Reason #3: A single source of truth for sales-related data 

Board’s SPM platform enables sales professionals to undertake all their planning and control, reporting, simulation, BI, and advanced analytics activities in a single platform by centralizing all data. When data sources, including CRM, incentives, and workforce, are all in one place, everyone is accessing the same information in real-time to leave zero doubt about the reliability of what they are reviewing and utilizing. 

Siloed data sources are perhaps one of the most significant setbacks of Excel-led planning and disparate systems. Data is moved from system to system in manual processes, entered onto spreadsheets manually (heightening the risk of human error), unable to be reviewed and edited by more than one person simultaneously, and incredibly difficult to properly analyze. Board helps organizations centralize their data through automation and aggregation, so teams across the business (not just sales) can stay better aligned. 

In addition, standardized data creates a simplified process for performance analysis and decision-making (as explored in Reason #1 above) by providing a holistic view of the strategies that drive revenue for the organization.​  

Microsoft & Board: Better together 

What if you could consolidate the data from your CRM and any other tools your sales team may utilize into one platform? Augmenting the power of your CRM, alongside operational data from across the business, creates agility in your revenue operations and ultimately allows your sales leaders and reps to drive revenue more efficiently.  

Learn, in our upcoming webinar with Microsoft, how Board achieves this integrated approach to automate, enhance, manage, plan, and analyze SPM processes across the organization.