Rethinking sales compensation models for cloud services
In my previous blog posts I’ve talked about the importance of thinking differently about your approach to sales in terms of building a volume engine to drive packaged and targeted offerings and considering the different conversations your sales team need to have outside the IT organisation. This can mean hiring different skills into your organisation as you bring on board new sales team members. It’s also critical to ensure you are incentivising and compensating your sales team effectively to motivate them to drive your cloud offerings.
Recently Jen Sieger, Senior Business Strategy Analyst in the Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft posted an article focused on 4 key considerations when you think about bringing on board new sales team members. Not only thinking about the structure of your team, particularly if you have an existing on premises business and are expanding to include cloud offerings, but also the skills and even the location of your new hires.
Taking this another step, it’s also critical to ensure you are incentivising and compensating your sales team effectively. Again, this is particularly important to get right if you’re transitioning your organisation from selling and deploying on premises solutions and now moving toward subscription payments and building annuity streams through managed services offerings. Brent Combest, Worldwide Lead for Partner Profitability & Compete at Microsoft recently posted an article talking specifically about building these compensation models based on research his team have been doing around the financials and P&L impact for cloud Partners and best practices he is seeing globally. I highly recommend taking time to read Brent’s post which provides 4 key focus areas when considering compensation models for cloud.
Locally in Australia we are running a series of workshops to help our Partners making changes in their business to grow profitability particularly with cloud services. These sessions span change management, sales and the financial implications to your P&L. I have included an overview of each below. There is a charge of $75 per seat for each session.
Rethinking your approach to sales – we’ve teamed up with Luke Debono from Incredible Results to deliver this one day workshop focused on the different sales methodologies and strategies to consider as you grow your cloud offerings. Register here.
- Monday 25th May - Brisbane
- Thursday 28th May - Sydney
- Wednesday 3rd June - Melbourne
Leading change in your organisation – we’ve teamed up with Fiona Hathaway, APAC HR Director for Services at Microsoft to deliver this half-day workshop focused on arming you with skills to influence and lead change within your organisation as you build your cloud business. Register here.
- Wednesday 29th April – Melbourne (half day morning session)
- Friday 1st May – Sydney (half day morning session)
The impact of cloud services on your P&L – we’ve teamed up with Hui Cheng Tan, Financial Controller at Microsoft Australia to bring you this half day workshop covering the financial impact of moving to cloud services. Including walking through modelling tools you can take back to your business. Register here.
- Thursday 30th April – Melbourne (half day morning session)
- Friday 1st May – Sydney (half day afternoon session)
You will need your Microsoft Partner Network login to access the details and sign up. If you’re not yet an MPN member take a look at Jack Pilon’s blog post on MPN 101 which highlights the benefits and how to sign up. If you need further assistance registering please email partnerau@microsoft.com.