A change of plan...

One of the CRM vendors recently changed the way it paid commissions to its sales-people. Instead of paying commission for the whole system, they decided to pay commissions on the software alone - presumably to encourage the salesperson to focus on the element of a system that makes the vendors the most money. Commission was no longer paid on professional services – the bit that’s really important to their customers to enable them to implement good systems. Not surprisingly the net effect was that sales people sold more software and the professional services people suddenly found they were kicking their heels because no-one sold professional services anymore.

Kind of a nice example of getting the behavior that you reward, but don’t necessarily want - for more on this topic see the following piece from the inimitable Joel Spolsky. Nice that is right up to the point you think about things from the customer’s perspective - trusting the salesperson to help them buy what they need, but unaware the salesperson is going to ‘sell’ them what makes them the most money. No wonder perhaps the profusion of CRM shelf-ware and failed projects.