2023 Sessions
Sales Comp is the premier conference for sales compensation and operations professionals who want to create and unleash powerful rewards strategies that drive spectacular sales success.
This conference is designed for you to customize your schedule based on your individual learning and connecting preferences.
Join sales comp expert David Cichelli to prep for the exam held Monday, August 21. Review the body of knowledge, ask questions, and get exam prep pointers. Register for the Sales Comp’23 and the Certified Sales Compensation Professional exam to access this complimentary Course.
For more preparation with in-depth coverage of materials needed to aid in successfully obtaining your CSCP certification, consider WorldatWork’s April or August Sales Compensation Course Series.
*Please note: To attend/register for the prep class, you must be registered for the CSCP onsite exam.
This three-hour exam covers everything relating to incentive compensation – from total cash compensation to sales compensation design. Included with your exam fee is the Certified Sales Compensation Professional Exam Prep Course, held August 21. Exam results will be available immediately.
For a more preparation and an in depth coverage of materials needed to aid in successfully obtaining your CSCP certification, consider WorldatWork’s April or August Sales Compensation Course Series.
Purchase your Certified Sales Compensation Professional Exam on the WorldatWork website.
• Identify the role of technology in sales enablement and its potential to enhance productivity.
• Evaluate the impact of implemented sales strategies and techniques on sales performance and revenue growth.
Sales growth becomes even more important as businesses struggle to maintain momentum or jockey to capitalize on new market opportunities created in times of change and uncertainty. Learn from industry experts and those who have “been there and done that” as they explore a winning operating model for sales compensation.
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Assorted Bagels with Cream Cheese
Sliced Fruits and Berries
In this session, you will learn about the challenges with running booking-based commissions and collections-based commissions. It's not theory, Jacque has 15+ years of experience processing payouts in both systems and Siva has overseen both systems and consulted 100's of Everstage's customers to adopt both approaches. Gain practical insights into the challenges and benefits of both systems, as they engage in a thought-provoking debate to finally settle the ultimate commission philosophy question.
In this express session you will learn an easy, efficient, and seamless way to incentivize your sales team with rewards they actually want and can use in real time!
Your playbook must now include the most advanced, up-to-the-minute compensation strategies for building engaged sales teams and loyal customers. Because your career depends on it.
Explore why conventional compensation management systems don't work, the expected and unexpected benefits of adopting an integrated solution, and what's involved in transitioning from a home-grown system to a state-of-the-art SPM solution designed for operational efficiency and scale. Translating theory into practice, we will dive into a real-world case study with Ravago Americas, an InnoVyne client.
In today's rapidly evolving Sales Performance Management (SPM) landscape, it is crucial for companies to align their business models with an ever-changing landscape. Join our session to gain valuable insights to create a robust SPM deployment strategy that delivers optimal results within your budget and timeline. Don't miss out on this opportunity to revolutionize your sales performance.
Despite the Federal Reserve's rigorous efforts to apply brakes to the fast-moving economy, the U.S. labor market continues to show remarkable strength. But behind this seeming resilience are severe labor shortages that continue to restrict productivity and progress for many organizations.
To untangle the contradictions and provide an outlook for the 2023 labor market landscape, WorldatWork welcomes Dr. Selcuk Eren, Senior Economist at The Conference Board, for the Opening Session keynote, followed by an intimate fireside chat.
Dr. Eren will offer an in-depth, up-to-the-minute analysis of both the overt and covert influences contributing to persistent labor shortages, such as demographic shifts, industry-specific dynamics, technological advancements, and post-pandemic workforce priorities. He will explore the implications for corporations, especially concerning workforce planning, talent strategies and HR leadership, and will highlight potential areas of opportunity and challenge for businesses of all sizes and sectors. Following his remarks, the audience will be invited to pose their own questions.
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Tortilla Soup - Roasted Corn & Poblano, Blue Corn Tortilla Strips
Ensalata - Gotham Greens, Black Beans, Grilled Corn, Tomato, Pickled Jalapeno, Queso Fresco, Cilantro & Agave Vinaigrette
Adobo Marinated Flank Steak - Roasted Jalapeno, Grilled Scallion
El Milagro Flour & Corn Tortillas
Arroz Casero - Peas & Carrots
Vegetable Empanadas - Salsa Verde, Pickled Carrot & Radish
House Corn Tortilla Chips - Salsa Verde, Pico de Gallo, Guacamole, Queso Fresco, Cabbage & Cilantro Slaw, Borracho Black Beans
Canela Dusted Churros - Caramel Sauce
Pan de Queso con Mango - Tajin Toasted Almonds
Assorted Pepsi-Cola Soft Drinks
Freshly Brewed Illy Coffee & Hot Teas
• Apply best practices and learnings within your own SPM implementation or as an enhancement to current SPM implementation.
• Analyze and understand SPM implementations and how the best practices presented can create greater value and benefits.
Sales performance management (SPM) is not for the faint of heart. It’s one of the most complex system implementations, requiring alignment of disparate data sources from Sales, HR and Finance to conduct calculations at 99.9% accuracy. In this session, you’ll learn from key experiences gleaned over more than a decade by leaders at the Frito-Lay division of PepsiCo. You’ll leave empowered to replicate PepsiCo’s success, while avoiding mistakes that often cause delays or implementation failure.
Engagement matters. Discover how to keep your top talent, how to do more with less and a review of research and trends with spiffs. Join Tango’s, VP of Sales, Tip Moore, to learn and master the art of comp, sales, spiffs and retention in a digital world aligned with instant gratification.
• Examine the incentive design considerations for sales adjacent roles with the pros and cons of making such roles incentive eligible from the lens of each consideration.
• Weigh the downsides of leveraging short-term incentives for the wrong roles and situations.
Short-term incentives can be powerful tools for motivating and rewarding people in your organization. They can be leveraged to motivate sales-adjacent roles too – who have historically not been eligible for a metrics-based incentive plan. However, not everyone should be eligible for them —and not everyone wants to be! Join this session to learn optimal criteria for designing incentives for employees in various sales-adjacent roles and situations. Go beyond the basics of “customer facing or not” to make better decisions around incentives eligibility and design for your organization!
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Assorted Fresh Juice Shots
Vegetable Crudité Cups with Buttermilk Dressing
In this panel discussion, Erik, Maria, Lindsay and Grant will sit down to talk about how the world of incentive compensation keeps changing, what new challenges are arising and how old issues still lurk - but under a different name. Workiva has continued to evolve their revenue operations to embrace new technology to solve ever changing issues. Instead of death by slides, the conversation will be open, engaging and questions will be encouraged.
• Demonstrate an effective compensation framework.
• Apply your sales compensation and operations knowledge to share and gain insights on selecting and managing key performance indicators.
If your organization has ever overspent on sales commissions or underperformed on quotas, this session is for you. Learn how sales compensation leaders at Dell addressed their sales issues by improving their compensation operations and analytics, creating shared responsibilities and developing integrated quota management that combined artificial intelligence and human expertise. Participants can share their own experiences through an interactive discussion, and you’ll walk away with new solution options for your unique challenges.
• Examine a question-based approach to addressing sales compensation and quota issues.
• Validate and refine your organization’s problem-statement around sales compensation.
Knowing the facts about sales comp is not the same as understanding how to apply the right methodology for solving specific problems. To become truly impactful in your role, you must be able to do both skillfully. In this engaging session, you’ll gain access to a robust toolkit of methodologies and learn to apply problem-solving logic and analytics that will take you to the next level of sales comp success. You’ll come away knowing how to diagnose problems and create logic-driven solutions for success.
Are you ready to let the good times roll?
Come and join us for food, drinks, bowling, and conversation that will surely strike your fancy in a laid-back environment perfect for having fun with your sales comp colleagues.
There's no time left to spare – this event is included in your registration fee. Visit the table at registration to learn more and reserve your spot on the lanes.
Sponsored by Varicent and Blue Horizons Group
Address:
10Pin Bowling Lounge
330 N. State Street,
Chicago, IL 60654
Menu
Sliced Seasonal Fruits & Berries
Selection of Assorted Breakfast Pastries - Whipped Butter, House Made Strawberry Jam, House Made Orange Marmalade
Steel Cut Oats - Brown Sugar, Golden Raisins, Walnuts
Scrambled All-Natural Eggs
Turkey Sausage
Potatoes
Yogurt & Granola
Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
Freshly Brewed Illy Coffee & Teas
• Identify criteria for designing the audit checklist and learn why it’s important to have one
• Determine prerequisites for auditing your SCP.
Regularly reviewing your sales compensation plan (SCP) can improve performance, deliver better sales results and drive desirable sales behaviors. Join us for a hands-on session about how to perform an effective SCP audit, including assessing the link between sales performance and payout. Through real-time polling and audience engagement the presenter will guide assessing criteria you can use to drive better results for your organization. You won’t get this kind of on-the-spot analysis anywhere else!
• Understand how to formulate changes that will reduce risk and bias across your sales compensation programs and processes.
• Utilize an evaluation checklist to appraise your current program for fairness.
Whether overt or unconscious, our biases can have real effects that damage employees’ morale, spur inequities and introduce legal risks. Join the discussion and get tools you need to ensure your sales-comp program is designed fairly. In this interactive session, you’ll appraise your program across the aspects of target setting, territorial opportunity, plan design, pay practices, job documentation and governance. You’ll be thinking through your assessment during the session and engage with other participants to help each other learn from experiences shared.
• Identify issues which may affect engagement and performance due to changes in job responsibilities or incentive effectiveness.
• Design improved sales incentive plans that account for what we’ve learned about human behavior and reward motivation in the last five years.
The human body has its own system for providing “Rewards,” namely in the form of releasing the chemical dopamine to create satisfaction after we achieve something. Many salespeople get a dose of it from connecting with customers or receiving commission checks. But researchers at the National Institutes of Health recently concluded that the pandemic rewired people’s brains to respond to rewards differently. Engage in this fascinating discussion about how we might change sales incentive to adapt to this new reality.
• Analyze historical patterns of performance and interpret this as an input to designing smart sales incentive plan mechanics, parameters and rules of engagement.
• Evaluate and implement the right mix of sales-incentive design features to fit with the specific roles, processes and environments within which you operate.
You’ve meticulously mapped out your sales strategies, set your goals and developed a precise sales-comp formula to drive outcomes. What could go wrong? In one word, everything. Sales compensation is unpredictable because sales are unpredictable—because the world is unpredictable. While we can’t prevent supply chain issues, a pandemic or global financial crises, we can adopt a smart, flexible mindset to mitigate the risks they create. Everyone will benefit from this interactive, insightful session about how to “future-proof” your sales strategy for success.
• Assess options to motivate and focus sellers in consumption-only and in blended models.
• Examine what has worked best from the perspective of sales comp leaders.
Consumption-based pricing, which allows customers to pay only for what they use, is on the rise in many sectors. Under this model, a contract is a commitment to a rate, possibly with minimum volumes. But you can’t discern what was “sold” until usage scales—or doesn’t. So how do you decide when salespeople get paid, and for what? In this participative session, consultant and practitioner facilitators will share their experiences and engage the audience about what currently works, what doesn’t work and possibly uncover new paths forward. Join the conversation and leave invigorated with innovative ideas!
• Assess the fairness and accuracy of the model using historical data before using it to set quotas for the coming period.
• Construct models to improve accuracy and fairness.
Accurate quotas are important tools for maintaining the integrity of your sales compensation plans. But to be effective, they must also be fair. That means setting lower quotas for territories with less sales potential, for example. This practical session will show you how to incorporate third-party data to create quotas that are equitable and credible. You’ll learn to use historical data to test your model and adjust the parameters before setting quotas.
• Analyze practical examples from the sales compensation world.
• Transform your visual communications by engaging in an “edutaining” learning experience.
You've got the software. You’ve got the sales analytics. You’ve even got some snazzy visuals. But you may be missing one critical thing: impact! Too often, our data analysis fails to adequately convey a problem or highlight a solution. It’s time to put your data to work for you! Join us in this practical session, where you’ll learn how to create data visualizations that drive decision-making and elevate outcomes for optimal impact.
• Describe the limits of sales compensation.
• Explain how sales comp fits into your sales performance platform.
If you believe the stereotype that all salespeople are “coin operated,” your sales performance strategy may be falling short. While compensation sometimes improves productivity, in other instances the answer calls for additional tools. In this session, you’ll learn a more nuanced—and effective—approach to managing your sales performance platform, along with tips for educating stakeholders on the optimal application of sales compensation. You’ll leave with a better sense of how to approach this complex issue in your own organization.
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Tom Kha Soup - Thai Coconut Soup, Kaffir Line, Lemon Grass, Straw Mushrooms, Thai Chili Pepper
Soba Noodle Salad - Buckwheat Noodles, Kimchi, Crispy Tofu, Scallions, Toasted Sesame, Sweet Chili Vinaigrette
Crispy Wonton Salad - Napa & Red Cabbage, Red Pepper, Bean Sprouts, Snap Peas, Carrots, Scallions, Toasted Almonds, Sesame Ginger Vinaigrette
Vegetable Egg Roll - Cilantro Orange Chile Sauce
Steamed Rice
Filipino Chicken Adobo - Braised Chicken Thighs, Garlic, Soy-Vinegar Reduction, Black Peppercorn, Bay Leaf
Galbi - Korean BBQ Short Ribs, Gochugaru, Soy, Sesame, Garlic, Scallion
Stir-Fried Broccoli - Broccoli, Gai Lan, Romanesco, Oyster-Flavored Sauce
Almond Cookies
Fortune Cookie Brownies
Pepsi-Cola Soft Drinks
Freshly Brewed Illy Coffee & Hot Teas
Do you find yourself constantly redoing plans and infrastructure hoping for better insights, plan alignment, and an engaged sales team? But it never seems enough? Many companies continue to throw technology and resources at the problem with little ROI. In reality, they should be examining the inadequate foundations their SPM operations were built upon. Learn how a Fortune 50 company did exactly that and achieved spectacular outcomes for their bottom line.
• Familiarize with the concepts of predictive analytics and artificial intelligence.
• Formulate ways to embed prediction into your important sales compensation decisions.
To succeed with analytics, you don’t need technical knowledge so much as you need to understand how to ask the right questions. With fun stories, examples and a well-told joke or two, these presenters provide the framework you need to solve important problems using data analytics and artificial intelligence. You’ll learn the value of an “evidence-driven” approach and how to apply predictive analytics to make better sales decisions.
• Implement your own fast incentive approach to rewards design.
• Examine and address the barriers and challenges of implementation.
The workplace is changing at lightning speed, but sales incentives haven’t kept pace. Most organizations overengineer their incentive design, leading to costly approaches that don’t align pay and performance. Join us to learn about the “fast incentives” many sales leaders are implementing to create more agile links between performance and rewards. This session will cover the shortfalls of traditional compensation design and highlight a better—and quicker—solution, so you can hit the ground running when you return to work.
• Apply strategies to demonstrate the value of sales compensation professionals.
• Evaluate ways to up-level their career and secure a seat at the table with CXOs.
In this session, sales compensation professionals will learn how to address the pressing priorities of Executives (CEOs, CFOs, CROs, etc.) regarding sales commissions, particularly in challenging economic times. We will explore strategies to showcase the value of managing commission data and its impact on business performance. Attendees will gain insights into how to up-level their careers, secure a seat at the CXO table and drive positive outcomes for both themselves and their organizations.
The session will include sharing results of the “Sales Compensation Career Growth: 2023 Report” that will be released at the World at Work Conference based on survey of Sales Compensation Professionals.
• Identify how female salespeople respond to these disparities in terms of performance and likelihood of organizational turnover.
• Understand the long-term ramifications of gender gaps for sales organizations.
On average, women workers earn less than men—a pay gap that persists across most industries. Yet little is known about equity in sales, despite rising awareness of its importance. Take steps towards fostering a fairer salesforce by learning about research that examines gender disparities in representation and earnings.. Delve into a dataset with more than 90,000 salespeople across 228 firms from 39 countries and 16 industries. You’ll come away knowing more about the ramifications of these gaps—and how to close them.
• Determine areas where your current plan may not best support sales people on leave.
• Apply potential solutions when leave of absence considerations arise.
Companies are offering longer caregiving leave—including maternity and paternity leave—than they did in the past, and more employees are using it.It’s critical for sales comp professionals to understand how to account for these leaves of absence (LOAs) in their sales compensation plans. Join this session led by Aon for an up-to-date overview of best practices along with insights from a recent survey assessing how 500 companies structured their programs to incorporate LOAs.
Menu
Tuna Tostada - Yuzu, Avocado, Crispy Wonton
Smoked Ribeye Slider - Horseradish, Widmer Cheddar, Local Brioche
Ginger Chicken Potstickers - Chili Soy Glaze
Eggplant Caponata Tart - Dressed Parsley
Artisan Cheese and Charcuterie
Cocktails, Beer, Wine, Mocktails, Juice, Soft Drink, and Water available at bars
Menu
Sliced Seasonal Fruits & Berries
Selection of Assorted Breakfast Pastries - Whipped Butter, House Made Strawberry Jam, House Made Orange Marmalade
Steel Cut Oats - Brown Sugar, Golden Raisins, Walnuts
Scrambled All-Natural Eggs
Hickory-Smoked Bacon
Potatoes
Yogurt & Granola
Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice
Freshly Brewed Illy Coffee & Teas
Commission cost of sales is typically one of the largest expense line-items seen in the Office of the CFO and yet the most misunderstood. In the current market, it's never been more important for finance and sales leaders to track the cost of commissions and whether incentives are driving the right business outcomes. In this session, we'll look at real-world scenarios for how finance and sales teams have built programs that optimize for revenue, control costs, and allow for changes on the fly. We plan to dig into how companies predict future commission costs based on sales forecast data, not simply adjusting last year's number.
• Examine how sales analytics can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of your current reward structure.
• Apply a consumer-based statistical method to evaluate sellers’ sensitivity to changes in reward structure.
Debate the advantages of adopting a seller-centered approach to reward program evaluation as a unique method to rethink traditions that are no longer effective. By understanding how people make trade-offs we can identify ‘optimal’ rewards – a plan that delivers more value to the seller while cost neutral to the company. Facilitators will engage a mock working session to explore what sellers need under the new way of working and reimagine how sellers can be rewarded.
• Assess new ideas and concepts to enhance your SPM solution.
• Explore SPM and use cases to help you quickly deliver impact in your organization.
Only about 50% of companies report that ROI goals are met by Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions. Do you have an effective strategy to ensure return on your SPM investment? Join this panel of successful practitioners who have realized true SPM value. Together, we’ll explore internal resource management, deployment strategies, testing and solution rollout, implementation best practices and post-deployment efforts to drive enhanced SPM value and ROI. Ask questions, gain insights and receive a full copy of our 2023 SPM research report.
• Analyze your maturity level and identify how you can use CompOps to improve processes.
• Evaluate the benefits of CompOps and determine if it would be a good fit for their specific organization.
The process of sales compensation planning and execution hasn’t changed much in over 30 years. Despite new strategies and advancements in technology, most global orgs still find themselves hostage to the bottlenecks of disparate systems and stakeholders and are overly reliant on external consultants to design and deploy sales compensation plans in a timely manner.
Enter CompOps, a new holistic philosophy that reinvents how we build, test, and execute sales compensation plans and incentives. In this session, you’ll learn how the best companies are transforming sales comp from a rigid process into an agile, data science-backed approach that aims to empower operations teams with more control over the levers that drive revenue growth.
Join this workshop to hear experts discuss:
- Why traditional sales comp planning processes are impeding your growth
- The CompOps philosophy and why it’s the missing piece to true sales agility
- Real examples of data-driven sales comp planning processes and the results
- How to instill a CompOps mindset in your team in 2023 and beyond
• Apply SPIFF and MBOs in a real-world situation.
• Analyze the designs used in this case study and other strategic applications for SPIFF/MBO designs.
Standard commission and bonus-comp designs are not always effective at supporting the complex market strategies that sales teams are asked to drive. In this session, you’ll hear about a clever approach used by the Dutch information services company Wolters Kluwer, which integrated the design of immediate, short-term bonuses (or SPIFFs) with carefully crafted MBO (management by objective) goals to increase sales performance. You’ll get tips and tricks for focusing your sales team along with creative ideas for SPIFF/MBO applications.
• Adapt to thinking like an incentive gamer.
• Apply a comprehensive typology of incentive gaming to prevent and fix problems with gaming the sales incentive plan.
We’ve all encountered salespeople who game the incentive system: they find loopholes to boost their own pay while undermining their employer’s goals. In this interesting and practical session, you’ll learn to think like a gamer so you can anticipate their moves—and beat them at their own game. The presenters will provide an overview of gaming tactics derived from interviews with 40 leaders in sales and sales ops. You’ll get tips for spotting and fixing holes in your own plan. Game over!
Everything is changing around the seller except their compensation plans. The economy is more unpredictable than ever, with industries pivoting to new strategies overnight based on innovations like Generative AI. Prospecting is no longer effective with sixty-five percent of buyers relying on their own research to determine when to purchase. Buying cycle engagement is trackable, with over eighty percent of their interactions available to be captured and analyzed. It’s time for sales compensation leaders to adapt to this changing environment and use it to drive results from their compensation investment. This session will present three things every organization needs to do to make this a reality.
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Build Your Own Bowl
Brown Rice
Quinoa
Greek Chicken
Shawarma Steak
Kidney Beans
Mixed Greens
Cucumbers
Tomato
Feta Cheese
Toasted Sunflower Seeds
Garbanzo Beans
Pickled Onion
Red Wine Oregano Vinaigrette
Dill Cucumber Yogurt
To-Go containers available if you need to grab your lunch and head to the airport!