Sales incentive compensation has a high impact on sales but also imposes a significant cost for asset and wealth managers —and it is of utmost importance to salespeople. The right IC plan motivates a sales force to work hard and achieve challenging goals, amidst a constantly evolving industry and a challenging macroeconomic environment. It creates enthusiasm among the sales force collectively and energizes individual salespeople, providing a much-needed positive reinforcement for salespeople, who often work alone and face rejection from investors, advisors, consultants, and others as part of their job.

We understand the extent to which incentives help sales leaders to set expectations for salespeople that reflect what is important to the company and to hold salespeople accountable for results. They are an important way in which many asset and wealth managers reinforce a sales-oriented culture so that high-performing achievers will want to join and stay with the company. Yet the use of IC is a double-edged sword. Incentives create many challenges for sales leaders. Poorly designed incentives can encourage salespeople to focus on the wrong customers, products, or selling activities, or, even worse, to spend their time finding ways to manipulate the IC plan and maximize their personal earnings, rather than acting in the best interests of the company and their customers.

With years of industry experience in sales incentive compensation design, we help sales leaders structure incentives to motivate and drive sales teams, ensuring alignment with the firm's overall goals.