Publication date: 14 September 2025
Turning sales data into a cultural advantage: how to deliver an extra bonus by increasing trust with insights from SPM
SPM solutions don’t just calculate commission – they’re a rich source of data and insight into sales performance. And sales teams thrive when they feel confident in how they’re rewarded. Are you using your sales performance data and analytics to meet this opportunity? They can help you build loyalty, increase clarity and maintain motivation among your sales team. Let’s look at how to activate this valuable advantage.
Clarity builds trust, and trust unlocks performance
It’s hard for anyone to trust a system that’s confusing or complicated. If your sales team isn’t certain their performance will be recognised and rewarded fairly, they can’t be sure their effort is worthwhile. Making accurate data accessible provides powerful reassurance that incentives are calculated with integrity. If your team trusts the system, they’ll spend less time looking for loopholes and scrutinising calculations with suspicion. And you can’t blame them: many sales people have had bad experiences in their careers of commission inaccuracies that they’ve had to fight to rectify.
When your team can focus on sales rather than disputes, they’ll perform better, channelling their energy where you want it – in pipeline, deals and targets. This ensures your business can reach its goals, motivating your sales team to achieve, and removing any doubt about their compensation.
A transparent approach supports retention
When your sales team members knows they’re being treated fairly – and it’s a very reasonable baseline expectation – they’re more likely to stay with your business. Word travels fast in sales, so organisations with a reputation for clear and reliable commission processes are better at attracting quality reps. Communicating clearly about the data and the calculations that are in use will help you keep your valued and experienced team members for longer. It also supports positive perceptions of your company culture, embedding trust, respect and reward as key values.
Communication matters
How do you talk to your sales team about compensation? Of course, they want to hear about the numbers and their targets in unambiguous terms. But providing context for your compensation decisions and showing how historic data or projected trends have influenced your strategy is very important too. Clear, consistent and well-executed communications – from team presentation decks to one-to-one discussions – show careful consideration and help salespeople to understand how their effort is supporting the over-arching plan. Seeing that thought and time has gone into compensation planning and that leaders are prepared to show and discuss the data behind the decisions helps to avoid cynicism and suspicion.
SPM data reveals insights into your people and what motivates them
Holistic SPM data provides high value insights for managers and leaders. The patterns of performance revealed can allow you to understand more fully which incentives work best and how you can use compensation to align productive behaviours with your organisation’s strategic goals. It’s not just data for financial planning, it’s about human motivation and planning to make sure morale and effort remain high throughout your salesforce.
The data that modern SPM solutions provide is a rich source of information for your business. By communicating that data and the processes you use clearly, you can build or reinforce a culture of trust and performance.
If you need help with assessing the quality of the data your current SPM solution can provide, optimising it to unlock more value, or communicating about your compensation strategy and execution, our expert team would love to advise you.