IBM, Armonk, New York, United States: Sales Incentives Training

A video of up to five (5) minutes

Total 324 words used.

At IBM, sellers were vocal about their questions and the need for transparency of sales incentives information. There was misunderstanding which created complexity, and Global Sales Incentives (GSI) was consumed with questions and exception requests which revealed the lack of understanding in the sales incentives plans.

In line with senior leadership’s direction, the goal was for GSI to provide sellers clarity and create understanding of their individual role, sales plan, and Business Unit strategy. As a result, the sales force would know how they get paid, realize the potential, and ultimately be motivated to sell and close more deals.

The Sales Incentives Training that GSI created did just that – empowered the sales force with knowledge on the process and gave them valuable resources to improve their sales experience. In pursuit of improvement and clarification, GSI developed robust, engaging education ranging from IBM Incentives Policies to the End-to-End process. This required training also included a Mastery Test where sellers must obtain an 80% success rate to pass, enabling sellers to exemplify who was a “master” of incentives. This was delivered through an interactive e-Learning platform, and ultimately provided a one-stop-shop on incentives information in a top-down explanatory manner that allowed sellers to gain awareness and act on what was previously considered complicated.

This newly created Sales Incentives Training was fully developed and successfully launched for the sales force in January 2023, and will be repeated as a required annual training moving forward.

Global Sales Incentives (GSI) is proud of the Sales Incentives Training and the dynamic transformation in empowerment of sellers since launch. Beyond improving time consumption, the training provided more than 19,000 sellers around the world with knowledge in 15 local languages that motivated them to deliver revenue and business results aligned to IBM strategy. The Sales Incentives Training is an example that demonstrates IBM’s company values of creating an environment that provides equal opportunities to individuals in every organization and community.

January 2023

Total 350 words used.

Simplified & Succinct – methods that led to pronounced positive outcomes.

• Within 40-minutes, sellers built an understanding and confidence in IBM Incentives Policies, the End-to-End process, and Global Framework.
• The Sales Incentives Training was designed for all IBM sellers and truly all IBM employees, to provide insight, answers, and valuable incentives resources enabling sellers to dive further into their specific plan and Business Unit Details to prepare for success.
• The request for clarification of where to find details on incentives is eliminated.

Exemplification & Interactivity – Sales Incentives Training sought to get sellers actively engaged and provide valuable knowledge in the learning process.

• The IBM Learning Patterns e-Learning platform allowed GSI to apply custom branding and imagery encouraging sellers to soak up training content in various ways (i.e., infographics, videos, downloadable content) within 40 minutes.
• Game-based Mastery Test – used for testing mastery of the incentives topic. Upon completion of the training, individual sellers move through a series of questions with an option of 2 lifelines to aid them (a one-time option of skipping a question & a one-time option to use 50/50 where 2 answers would be removed). The individual sellers must have an 80% success rate to pass and upon successful completion is awarded with a “Master” completion certificate to help motivate them.

Benefit / Savings – Executing upon the current plan designs, quota/objectives, territory, and measurements is of utmost importance to achieve results, and ultimately, the Sales Incentives Training was an essential piece to the puzzle and provided a top-down explanation which produced positive results:

• More than 4 minutes saved per session on web pages due to reduced uncertainty, less searching and improved seller experience.
• Over 85% of the Sales population from the 1st wave of assignments completed the training prior to the targeted completion date of February 20^th and activity resulted in 4.5-stars out of 5-star rating.
• Approximately 13% reduction in number of inquiries year-over-year to GSI team (~650 fewer inquiries in January 2023 compared to January 2022) due to one-stop-shop education which detailed incentives and process “necessities” enabling sellers to take action / make decisions.