Sales Incentive Plans for Special Business Objectives: The Sales Compensation Series for the Small Business Owner

A practical guide for small business owners on designing sales incentive plans that direct, motivate, and reward sellers to achieve three special growth objectives: fast starts, new product sales, and new account wins.

Written for time-pressed small business owners wrestling with profitable growth, this concise e-book from sales compensation experts Colletti and Fiss builds on foundational commission and bonus design to tackle specialized incentive challenges. It shows how to structure a fast start incentive to capitalize on early-year sales momentum, how to compensate new product sales without under-rewarding difficult selling effort, how to reward new account acquisition while protecting current customer revenue, and when to deploy short-term SPIFFs instead of restructuring the whole plan. Grounded in the authors' consulting research and client results, it offers actionable rules of thumb—funding sources, incentive sizing, qualifying periods, and technique choices (bonus vs. commission vs. accelerator)—so owners can confidently tweak pay plans to support their growth strategy.

The model it argues

A causal framework in which design levers (special incentive structures, opportunity sizing, funding source, qualifying rules) shape seller motivation and selling effort toward specific growth objectives, producing behavioral outcomes (fast starts, new product sales, new account wins) that drive profitable revenue growth, moderated by plan-fit and objective frequency.

Key ideas

Special Incentive Design: The structural choice and configuration of a special-objective incentive element layered onto the core sales plan to direct effort toward a specific growth objective.
Incentive Opportunity Size: The magnitude of the special incentive opportunity relative to target incentive, sized to be meaningful without overshadowing the base plan.
Incentive Funding Source: Where the money for the special incentive comes from, ensuring incentives are self-funding relative to results generated.
Qualifying Rules and Definitions: The precise definitions and thresholds governing when sales results count for special incentive credit.
Plan Fit and Objective Frequency: The degree to which the chosen technique matches the existing plan structure and the frequency of the objective.
Seller Motivation and Selling Effort: The degree to which reps are motivated by the incentive and direct increased, well-targeted effort toward the special objective.
Targeted Selling Behavior: The observable sales behaviors the incentive is intended to elicit.
Special-Objective Sales Results: The direct sales outcomes tied to the special incentive.