CHAPTER 9

The Role of the C-Level: Getting Involved in the Right Way

LATE LAST YEAR, we met with a couple of the senior sales leaders of a leading high-tech hardware organization at a local coffee shop in Dallas. It was a great off-site retreat for them and a good occasion to discuss some ideas about sales compensation. However, the sales team wasn’t at the beginning of their design process. They were actually at the end, almost literally, and they were looking for ideas to propose to the executive steering committee, which included the CEO.

Their problems really began 10 months earlier when the sales leaders embarked on their annual sales compensation review and design cycle. They went through the rounds of interviews and surveys with the sales ...

Get What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.