RevOps Co-op Weekly #115 - How to Compensate Success Teams to Maximize Revenue
It’s that time of year again! Read on for a recap from a star-studded round table to learn tips and tricks on creating next year’s Success compensation plans.
RevOps Co-op provides resources, content and community for those who ❤️ revenue operations. This weekly newsletter features collected tweets, posts and thoughts on a variety of RevOps topics. We also have a private Slack community with > 6500+ RevOps pro’s from companies like Slack, Lyft, Clari, Miro and more 👉🏻 click here to join.
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How to Compensate Success Teams to Maximize Revenue
Have you ever heard “us vs. them” talk when it comes to compensation plans? Chances are, it was probably sales on one side and success teams on the other. With success team members playing a key role when it comes to revenue generation, it’s crucial that they get properly rewarded.
In this roundtable discussion, we talked to experts about ways to modify plans to reward the desired behavior of the often-overlooked success team members. Hear from Apoorv Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Elevate HQ, our partner of this session; Mark Truman, Chief Revenue Officer with EdgePetrol; and Simona Burbacki, Director, Account Management from Help Scout.
With the end of the year quickly approaching, what your success teams really want going into 2023 is to be included in a comp plan that comes from RevOps. To help them (and your entire org) out, we’ve brought together a roundtable of experts that includes Apporv Singh from Elevate HQ, Mark Truman of EdgePetrol and Simona Burbacki from Help Scout to help guide you through the process.
Sometimes size does matter
At Help Scout, Simona says there’s a need to respect all sizes of customers while continuing to understand what enterprise-level clients should be receiving in terms of customer experience and engagement. They are evaluating if it still works to have customers of 10 seats or less contacting Customer Success, with larger customers contacting their Account Management team.
“Account Management and Customer Success, because of the quantity of customers and the level of engagement that we afford to give customers in those two different scenarios, are compensated differently,” she says.
Any changes going forward will need to ensure levels of engagement, handling escalations appropriately while keeping proactivity high.
“Really aligning our new features and product fit to our customers,” she says. “Our customer success and support and account management will have their own appropriate compensation plans based on those varying needs.”
That should keep both the bean-counters AND the success teams happy. Because this strategy is about customer happiness. Not getting that micro-drone you wanted happiness, but close.
The bean-counters won’t like this next part.
Simona explains that revenue almost becomes a secondary goal. But this is only because ensuring products fit customers and create outstanding experiences is the theme across the organization.
Same but different
Mark explains that with EdgePetrol, the similarity to Help Scout is the desire to create the right behavior within the team. His organization sells to gas stations, which is typically a different type of sale from Help Scout, but driving desired behaviors is the most important part of the comp plan.
“Our ideal customer profile is a small to medium business,” he says. “Probably a family-owned generational gas station business that hasn’t really had access to the sort of data that we are able to provide.”
The difference between EdgePetrol’s approach and Help Scout’s is that once that customer is on board, Customer Success takes over, which can take a considerable amount of effort.
“There is an implementation process involved,” he says. “Getting them ramped up, setting objectives with them, building strategies with them and how they can actually get a return on investment.”
“There needs to be a high-touch approach in what we do because it’s not a plug-and-play product.”
Customer Success and Support both report into the VP of Customer Success. Both teams work together and are responsible for the renewal, but are incentivized differently in ways to drive the desired behaviors.
“That’s really the key in how we’ve been able to come to the structures that we have put in place,” says Mark. “To say, what actually is our Customer Success team trying to do?”
They are also responsible for ensuring organic growth from customers at the end of the year. This is a challenge because EdgePetrol has gone for market expansion as a strategy rather than feature expansion.
“It’s something that will change and develop over time as we start introducing new products,” he says.
And yet, it really is the same
Apoorv has seen the same experience of having numerous comp plans, noting he’s seen the same patterns repeated.
“Whether it’s customer success, AEs or anybody else you’re looking to incentivize using variable comp,” he says. “The fundamentals don’t really change much."
…There’s more! Read full Blog here 👉 How to Compensate Success Teams to Maximize Revenue
🔦 Partner Spotlight 🔦
Ready or Not: Busting the Myth of Commission Automation Readiness
Automating sales compensation is a big deal. Whether you’re transitioning from a manual commission management process or a spreadsheet-based legacy system, there are a lot of time and resources on the line.
Spiff is here to walk you through the four main reasons why you're actually way more ready than you realize. Jump into this blog and get ready to take that next step towards automating your sales compensation 👉🏻 Spiff
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🚒 Weekly RevOps Meme
Thanks, Christian Coley!
RevOps Co-op provides resources, content and community for those who ❤️ revenue operations. This weekly newsletter features collected tweets, posts and thoughts on a variety of RevOps topics. We also have a private Slack community with > 6,500+ RevOps pro’s from companies like Slack, Lyft, Clari, Miro and more 👉🏻 click here to join.