What is it that gets us to the gym? To learn a new skill? To get up off the couch?

It’s the same catalyst that gets sales reps to work hard and sell. M-O-T-I-V-A-T-I-O-N.

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If motivation leads to success, it makes sense that 90% of top-performing companies use incentive programs to reward their sales employees. It’s no secret that commission and incentive programs are essential for driving a growing business, but where does Spiff come in?

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What problem is Spiff solving for?

Incentive packages vary by business objective, and as such, they can quickly become complex. Reps may earn different percentages for renewals versus for signing new customers. Commissions may vary based on product. For example, maybe a business wants to focus on a new product launch, so they offer a higher percentage for that product. Additional bonuses or team incentives can make commission structures even more confusing.

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Historically, companies have used manual, spreadsheet-centric processes to manage commissions. This leads to some painful issues:

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• Reps and managers may have poor visibility into commissions
• There may be confusion around commission rules and logic - and inaccurate commission calculations can cause mistrust
• Using spreadsheets is inefficient, cumbersome, and time-consuming
• These manual processes do not scale well with a growing company

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This is where Spiff comes in.

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What is Spiff? And is it a part of Salesforce?

Spiff is one of the most popular Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) tools. ICM is used to plan, design, and implement a system for managing commissions for sales reps. Salesforce acquired Spiff towards the end of 2023. Spiff used to be an appexchange partner, but after the acquisition, Salesforce made Spiff available as an add-on for Sales Cloud customers. This add-on is now named “Salesforce Spiff.”

This is not to say you have to have Salesforce to use Spiff. Spiff is available to all customers, regardless of their CRM. But there are some huge benefits to using Salesforce Spiff. Salesforce Spiff can be boiled down to two main functionalities:

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• Commission Plan Management: The Salesforce Spiff Commission Designer allows management to use a low-code builder to build, design, and manage compensation plans. This means no more messing around in excel! The designer allows management to actually visualize the potential impact of various plans, so they can design the most effective plan possible, and change plans as business needs change.

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• Commissions Estimator: The commissions estimator allows reps to view estimated commissions right in a visualforce page in sales cloud. In real time, as they are building customer quotes, they can see their potential commission earned. Understanding potential commission early in the sales process can influence which customers reps target and which products they push to sell. This will improve behavior for sellers so they can focus on deals that align with business objectives, and deals that have the biggest revenue impact. 

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What else can Spiff do?

Here are a few other benefits of using Salesforce Spiff:

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• Real-time rep statement: reps can track their commission statements, and have a higher-level view to track earnings against goals

• Mobile Application: track potential to earn while on the road
• Audit-ready reporting: manual tracking of commissions in spreadsheets, which is prone to human error, can lead to challenges when it comes time for auditing. Salesforce Spiff will provide a deep audit trail, and with just a few clicks can create a report that is ASC 606 compliant. Make life a little easier for finance teams! 
• In-app comments: If reps ever have questions about commissions, they can add questions and comments right in Salesforce, on a single platform. 

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Other Integrations:

Whether you use Salesforce Spiff, or you use spiff independently from Salesforce, Everpeak can help with integrating Spiff with ERP, HCM, payroll, or other systems.

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Summary

Designing an effective compensation plan is essential for motivating sales reps to achieving business goals. Calculating commissions can be complex. Tracking commissions manually can be error-prone, and time consuming for your finance team and sales managers. Spiff allows you to automate that process as your business grows, and using Spiff as a Salesforce add-on will offer greater visibility for reps to help determine their behavior.