I’m getting some great sales questions submitted through LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/digkatedunn/ or to my email [email protected]. You can also use the contact form at the bottom of this post to submit a question.

1) How will ai tools like ChatGPT and Jasper.ai impact selling?

This is a great question. Let’s start with what these tools are, and I will let the tool give you the answer. I used Jasper.ai to generate the following content by telling it that I wanted a description of AI tools, their uses, and their benefits in a professional voice. Here’s what Jasper handed me in less than 7 seconds.

AI Tools are software programs that use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate various digital tasks. They can understand, learn, and make decisions from information using data-driven algorithms. Automating mundane or complex processes can help organizations improve workplace efficiency, productivity, and accuracy. AI Tools can be used in various industries, from finance and healthcare to retail, manufacturing, and transportation. Benefits of using AI Tools include cost savings, reduced human effort, improved accuracy, faster decision-making abilities, and increased customer satisfaction.

Additionally, they can enable businesses to stay competitive by providing more insights into customer behavior and trends. With the help of AI Tools, companies can make more informed decisions and increase their competitive advantage.

AI Tools are increasingly becoming the future of business. These tools can help you create content for your website, social media, lead magnates, and prospecting emails.  There are templates for everything from an Amazon product post to a blog post to a company BIO. They can help you develop strong email subject lines, business or product names, Facebook Ad headlines, Google My Business Ads, etc. One of my customers used ChatGPT to write a piece of code to help him integrate a client application into one of his. He’s an intelligent owner but doesn’t write code, so he would have had to use an inside or outside resource to help, which would have taken much longer than seconds to resolve.

The most significant impact on sales productivity from these tools will be generating prospecting emails and LinkedIn posts. Most of the reps I coach struggle with writing. Some have trouble thinking about what they want to say; some can’t write coherent sentences using correct grammar; some type in all caps – it’s a myriad of problems. AI tools will make it easier for reps to write, and that will help them prospect using email and LinkedIn.

For example, I just asked Jasper.ai to write me a cold prospecting email for direct mail. Here are my inputs:

Tell Us About the Product:    Direct Mail to generate leads for small businesses.

Your Company Name/Product Name:          Kate’s Printing Company

Context to Include in Email: Small businesses need ways to generate leads cost-effectively

Voice: Witty

Here is what I got back in less than 5 seconds:

Could this copy be better? Sure. But if the choice is this or nothing, this wins all day. You won’t find new customers if they don’t know you are out there.

These tools will not replace robust marketing strategies, campaign tactics, and creativity, but they can help fill in some gaps that tend to bog companies down and keep them from getting things done and growing their companies.

From the sales side, AI tools can eliminate one big excuse I hear 100 times daily from reps: “I didn’t have time to prospect or proactively reach out to my existing customers this week.”

They had the time to hit the send button. They didn’t have time to think about what they wanted to say – or so they believe – tools like this can help reps develop something to say in 7 seconds or less.

2) What’s the best compensation plan to use with a new rep?

This is a great question, but it has no simple answer. Compensation plans are as varied as the companies who use them and the reps they are supposed to motivate.

In the print industry, most companies opt for a plan that is easy to calculate because of internal systems used to track sales and the time limitations of owners. Easy doesn’t mean better, and the printing industry has suffered the implications of its choice to make it easy for years.

Alignment between the company’s growth strategy and the sales organization is critical for the success of any plan. Successful plans help reps maximize their incomes by selling the things that help the company achieve its goals.

The most common plan used is a commission rate applied to sales generated by the rep. These are often adapted to reduce commission percentages for outside purchases or discounted deals. Plans like these can be 100% commission, where the rep is only paid for what they sell, or 100% commission with a draw used to help the rep maintain their cash flow as sales ebb and flow. The draw is subtracted from any commissions earned.

The last most common plan is a salary plus a commission on sales. The salary plus commission plans often include a threshold that the rep must meet in sales before earning additional commission, which is a way of offsetting the salary paid to the rep. Some companies pay commission from dollar one sold to help motivate the rep, but the percentage is lower until the rep reaches a sales threshold that offsets their salary.

None of these plans take into consideration the goals of the company. They are just simple to implement. Because of that, the industry deals with reps who won’t prospect, accounts that lose value, and declining sales productivity.

When you design your plan, start by thinking about what you need. Do you need more clients? Do you need to grow the revenue from your existing clients? Do you need to sell higher-value services? Do you need a combination of these?

Consider your sales talent too. The best compensation plan in the world does not motivate an unmotivated rep. It will not make a rep who is missing a critical skill magically have that skill. This is most evident when companies put a new business focus on reps who are skilled account managers rather than prospectors. Even with all kinds of compensation upside for new business, an account manager is an account manager who will not prioritize landing new accounts.

The reverse can happen with a good prospector. They will go after the new business but may need more skills to onboard that client successfully and get them into a position for consistent growth. They can be less detailed oriented, and even though they are successfully landing new accounts, there is lots of chaos around those accounts which monopolizes resources, hurts profitability, and often means the new accounts don’t grow as they should.

Taking these two situations into consideration, you may need two plans. For account managers, compensation plans should be focused on account growth. Companies typically establish the baseline revenue from the year before and then pay the rep for growth either throughout the year or in a bonus at the end of the year. If paying throughout the year, I recommend paying quarterly because it makes the reconciliation process more manageable. Reconciliation is needed because reps may have grown in one quarter and have declining revenue in other quarters. An annual bonus plan based on growth is the easiest to administer for owners but may not work for reps who need to maintain consistent cash flows. If you are offering a bonus plan for this first time, an annual bonus gives the rep an upside, reduces administrative costs, and minimizes the risk of overpaying. To keep focus throughout the year, good reporting that shows the rep where they stand, where they are projected to finish, and how much money they will earn is necessary.

For Reps expected to land new accounts, I prefer a plan that pays them for new accounts for 12 months only. This way, they cannot rest on their laurels and must continue to look for new business. This is a critical skill that only some reps have; the last thing you want to do is dull the skill by removing the need to use it. Unintended consequences are common in plans like these, so clearly define what constitutes an ideal customer so you aren’t churning accounts. I like to set a threshold in sales that the account must reach to be considered a new account. Suppose your Ideal Customer does at least $10K with you annually. In that case, the rep earns a lower commission on the account until it reaches $10K and then retroactively gets the higher new account commission once the threshold is achieved. It’s a little more administration but prevents reps from being paid a higher rate on new accounts that won’t grow.

If you have a combo rep who is supposed to manage accounts and find new ones, you can adjust the commission on a declining scale. The rep may earn a 10% commission on sales from a new account for the first 12 months, and then the rate drops to 5%, for instance. As the rep’s customer list grows, you can easily find yourself in a position where the income from the base business is satisfactory, and the rep begins to lose focus on finding new accounts. Strong management practices can help with this, but once the need to find new business is gone, skills decline, and it is almost impossible to get them back.

If you have a combo rep, the plan should include a commission for bringing in new business that includes the higher commission for the first 12 months and “grow over,” which is the amount each account grows year over year. A rep can earn higher commissions for the new accounts in the first 12 months and continue to earn higher rates for account growth. The commission on the base business is reduced. This is more difficult to administer, but the commission plan is aligned with the company’s goals of growing account revenue and finding new customers.

One final plan that is getting some traction is activity-based. These are best used with inside sales and prospecting reps, typically called Sales Development Reps. For inside sales reps handling people at the counter, working with existing customers, and fielding inbound leads, adding a commission component based on outbound activity and lead follow-up can help keep the focus on proactive activities and mitigate the risk that they wait for the phone to ring.

Sales Development Reps are workhorses. They are typically responsible for anywhere from 60 touches per day to upwards of 150. An activity-based plan keeps SDRs focused on the sales activities that lead to sales. Points are earned for outbound contacts via phone, email, and LinkedIn, the number of qualified leads generated and handed off to sales, and leads closed by direct reps. The commission is based on the points the rep earns either monthly or quarterly. This requires a CRM solution like Hubspot or Salesforce, where these activities can be accurately tracked.

These are a few options, and more creative plans are being developed daily. If you want to discuss your current plan, contact [email protected] for a brainstorming session.