Most strong sales employees maintain a stable sales performance across a period of years, according to an analysis of sales incentive data by Willis Towers Watson. The research was conducted in the context of other studies challenging the effectiveness of incentives in general, and decisions by a number of companies including GlaxoSmithKline to drop sales incentives.
The data shows that 41% of lower sales performers made improvements in 2014 to move into what the researchers call a ‘core’ performer group in 2015; however, the majority of this group remain in the lower rankings, raising questions around the role of incentives.
Willis Towers Watson conducted a quantitative analysis based on the variable sales compensation data of 5,130 sales professionals collected from 42 pharmaceutical or health sciences companies from 2014 to 2015. Incumbents studied came from four countries – UK, Germany, Russia and Romania.