Know-How Exchange : Career/Training

In your case I might suggest activity based goals...
These could be based on the needs of your company and sales group. Here might be a suggestion:

New Sales Materials Generated
New Leads generated -based on some criteria
Numbers of customer follow-ups generated out of your CRM System
New names captured via your website
Pre-sale information gathered from your website (registered names, downloads etc)

You definitely need to tie your bonus to the things you can control and impact directly. And you need to go back to your job description to make sure that you are not held accountable for things that really are not in your control.

What I might do is identify 2 or 3 things you can/should do each quarter and allocate a portion of the bonus amount to each. That will let you set some priorities and reflect the value to the company in the amount of bonus allocated to each activity. (Example: If there are two major initiatives, and one is worth twice as much as the other, and if your total bonus amount is to be $1500, you might set $1000 for the more important one and $500 for the less important one. Etc.)

As you gain some experience with the system, you can move more toward something that is results based (rather than activity based) and adjust the actual bonus amount to more accurately reflect the value you bring to the company.

You'll need to be careful with this, as your base salary is what they pay you to do your job. The bonus should be for deliverables that go above and beyond ... otherwise it's not really a bonus, just deferred salary in disguise.

Hi all,

This is a great question and I agree that you are in a tough position :)

I have to agree with Yen not with WMMA.

Sorry to say, but in the real word, marketing and sales are intrinsically linked together and canoot survive independently of each other.

At the end of the day, it is SALES that bring in the revenue.

An activity based bonus?? WOW I wish I could receive a bonus just for bringing traffic :) or generating campaigns :))

We all know how to bring traffic and generate leads but the problem is the 'QUALITY' of the leads you bring. It is easy to say I provided Sales with 50k leads and they didn't close any so it is their fault but I still expect to receive my bonus?? WOW.

The real truth is that BONUSES can only be paid from REVENUES, not from capital.

Marketing performance has to be judged by ROI - The best way that you can receive a bonus is the same way that a chef or buyer does; 'based on costs'.

1. Meet Revenue targets (agree with your boss in advance what they are monthly)
2. BEAT marketing costs targets.

Example agreed marketing budget is 3.5% of turnover. Get it down to 3.25% whilst maintaining revenues above the agreed threshold, then Wham you have .25% to play around with for a bonus. Thats $2,500 on 1Million sales in a month. You probably won't get to keep all of that :) But at least you have a basis to calculate from.

The hardest part will be to agree what exactly your marketing budget per month should be in percentage terms but you now your business better than anyone so you should have an idea what your spend and ROI is.

In this modern day of internet marketing ROI is king. :)))

IT IS THE ONLY MEASURE THAT YOU CAN USE.

Feel free to get in touch if you would like further ideas :)

Good luck,

Matthew