Initial situation

An internationally active mechanical engineering company complains about stagnating sales in Germany. The company is said to provide excellent consulting services, but the competition often closes the sales. The sales employees receive a purely fixed salary without any performance-related components.

Task/Objective

Establishment of a consistent salary system for all functions influencing sales success. Increasing the motivation to conclude machine sales in the sense of team selling.

Implementation

Current influencing variables on sales success are analyzed and recorded, benchmark analyses are prepared.

Based on the resulting findings, a basic remuneration system with possible control variables is developed. It is crucial that the employees involved are able to understand the central control variables in the future and to influence them through their actions.

Once the basic system has been approved by management, the system parameters are fine-tuned and a business, legal and collective bargaining review is carried out. In the next step, a corresponding information system will be set up to ensure transparency and acceptance, the individual contractual regulations will be drawn up and transitional rules will be defined.

Result

The new remuneration system and its control parameters were presented at a staff meeting. All the people involved accepted the system and signed the new contracts.

In the following three years, the specified quantitative and qualitative targets were regularly achieved. With a cumulative sales growth of 9.5%, the stagnation of several years was broken and at the same time the profitability of the company was increased.