MEMBERSHIP SELLING AND
SALES MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

Creating A Win-Win Compensation Plan For Member Reps

Chambers have been forced to make tough decisions about budgets and staffing over the past several months. In our last post, we encouraged chamber leaders and sales managers to rethink the responsibilities of their reps to allow them to focus solely on the business of bringing revenue into their chambers.

We think it is a move in the right direction, but it's not going to work well if you don't have a compensation structure in place that both rewards your reps for driving that much-needed revenue, and makes sense for your chamber's bottom line.

We’ve seen a full spectrum of chamber member rep compensation plans.  And if we may be honest, a lot of them aren’t pretty.

We have seen compensation structures where the member rep doesn’t have a chance of making a good living. We’ve also seen plans where the member reps are given little incentive to perform beyond the status quo, and believe it or not, we’ve seen structures where the chamber is basically giving away the farm on commissions.

THE BASICS OF A GOOD COMPENSATION PLAN

Creating a compensation structure for a chamber rep that is both attractive for your reps and profitable for your chamber takes some thought. And though we cannot offer a “one size fits all” solution, we can provide some insight to help you get started.

Your chamber member rep compensation structure must accomplish three things.

• Meet organizational imperatives. In other words, it must drive the revenue line to keep your organization on track financially.
• Be profitable for your chamber. Just because it is driving the revenue line, doesn’t necessarily mean your compensation plan is profitable for your chamber.
• Compensate the reps well. Your reps need to be able to make a good living with incentives to excel.

If you can create compensation structure that accomplishes those three things, your chamber wins, your member rep wins, and your organization will get where it needs to be.

THE WINNING STRUCTURE

So, what’s the best way to structure your member rep compensation plan?

In most cases, we recommend a moderate salary with graduated commissions based on monthly production. Add to that some bonuses to motivate your reps to hit additional established sales targets.

Changing the existing compensation plan that your employees are working under can be tricky. That’s where we can help.

When a chamber comes to us in need of a better compensation plan, we keep those three imperatives in mind, and help them uncover a solution, so they can transition to a plan where everyone wins.

You shouldn’t feel stuck because of a mistake that was made in the past. And if COVID-19 has already forced you to make or consider some organizational changes, now would be a good time to address other things that aren't working as well as they should. 

If you are questioning the effectiveness of your current member rep compensation plan, remember, we’re easy to talk to. Feel free to reach out with questions.

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