Incentives are a core tenet of any high-functioning sales organization. Variable compensation enables sales reps to quantify success and align activities to company goals. Yet, the majority of sales organizations rely on Excel or stodgy purpose-built tools to structure commissions. Even in the largest organizations, only a handful of experts oversee these unwieldy spreadsheets because granting limitless access puts their brittle frameworks at risk of errors.
If you ask any sales leader whether sales plans have become more complex over the years, you’ll hear an unequivocal yes. It’s not uncommon for upwards of seven individuals to receive commissions on any given deal. Individual payouts can vary by contract terms, lead source, region, or customer profile, all further compounded by optimization mechanisms like accelerators and ad-hoc bonuses. A geometric rise in payout variability is often reflected by a paragraph-long formula in one cell of that spreadsheet.
A commissions system that’s hard for administrators to manage is even harder for reps to consume. As a result, finance teams keep commission structures inside their proverbial black box. Reps only learn their variable commissions at the moment of payout, and in turn separately project in-period earnings in their own makeshift spreadsheets. Rep projections often differ from actual payouts given complex sales commission formulas, causing mistrust between sales and finance and diluting the entire purpose of incentives.
Legacy vendors aren’t much better. Incumbent solutions were built in an era when commission structures changed once a year rather than once a month. The DNA of those companies was naturally centered around professional services, because product flexibility doesn’t matter as much in a rigid sales structure.
This leads us to Lightspeed’s Series B investment in Spiff.
Spiff revolutionizes one of the few remaining back office functions yet to be pulled out of Excel — commissions management. While the past generation of sales commission tools sat siloed within either sales ops or finance, Spiff brings all constituents into one platform that sits between finance, sales ops, reps, and executives. In Spiff, sales ops admins get supercharged spreadsheet functionality, meaning intuitive syntax, version control, and deep ecosystem integrations. Sales reps receive a detailed understanding of their in-period earnings, scenario planning with powerful what-if analysis to conceptualize potential payouts, and conflict resolution workflows for inevitable disputes around payouts. Finally, executives can consume analytics and digestible dashboards to dissect trends over time by rep or team and understand the likely commissions liability.
Spiff’s utility is proven through its daily usage rates, which more closely resemble that of consumer internet companies than what we’re used to seeing in traditional enterprise software. Engagement across ranks has earned Spiff the right to extend its product upstream into quota planning, territory mapping, and commissions benchmarking, and downstream into enhanced rep engagement products like leaderboards, gamification features, and same-day payouts.
Beyond daily usage and a best-in-class NPS, what was unique about Spiff as we evaluated new and legacy tools was their ability to sell to customers across the spectrum. Their customers range from high growth startups to enterprise companies with thousands of reps, across tech, manufacturing, life sciences, and financial services. That broad based applicability coupled with a world class team has enabled them to become the fastest growing company in the category.
We’re honored to join forces with Jeron Paul, an exceptionally humble and driven leader, as well as the entire team at Spiff as they redefine commissions management.
P.S. — Spiff is hiring across all departments.
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