This document discusses the emerging role of the global sales compensation manager and profiles four professionals in this role. It describes the challenges they face in designing sales compensation plans for global, multi-country organizations. These professionals must balance central objectives with local needs, ensure plans stay aligned with changing business goals, and measure the effectiveness of plan changes. The advice they give is to constantly learn, challenge assumptions, and improve measurement and analysis of compensation strategies.

1. The Emergence of the
By David J. Cichelli, The Alexander Group
This in-demand professional
provides guidance to global
sales management clients.
Global Sales
Compensation
Manager bsent central compensation support,
world-dispersed sales leaders
normally assume the mantle of design
and administration of the sales
compensation programs for their local
sales talent. They configure sales
compensation plans to serve the jobs
within their business unit and will
modify these programs to address unique
sales challenges encountered in their
local markets. It is not unusual in such
situations for a company to have
numerous pay programs throughout the
world, even for sales jobs with similar
duties and accountabilities.
Almost nonexistent 10 years ago,
anecdotal observations suggest more
multicountry companies are appointing
global sales compensation managers
to oversee, support and ensure effec-
tive sales compensation practices on
a worldwide basis.
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2. 54 | workspan july 2013
But what do these global sales
compensation professionals do?
What skills do they bring to this
function? How do they view their
jobs? What advice do they have
for others interested in this field?
In this article, four global sales
compensation professionals share
their personal perspectives.
❙❙ Ellen Miller, director of global sales
incentive design and deployment, HP
❙❙ John Keller, director of global
sales compensation, Verizon
Enterprise Solutions (VES)
❙❙ Parrish Pullen, director of sales
compensation and recognition, Intuit
❙❙ Lori Bajema, senior director of
global sales compensation, Avaya
And, of added interest, the
professional training of these four
individuals is diverse: two are HR/
compensation practitioners, one
came from a line sales career
and one is a trained marketing/
sales effectiveness strategist.
Why Global
Sales Compensation?
Each of the four global sales compen-
sation professionals had numerous
career choices available to them.
But why have they chosen global
sales compensation for their current
role? It appears that the challenge
and the rewards that come with
this career choice is what attracted
these four leaders.
Although Ellen Miller of HP has been
offered other opportunities during her
career, she has chosen to stay in the
global sales compensation space. Her
view: “I find the work challenging
and enjoyable. You work on mission-
critical business objectives. And, you
can see how your work has a positive
effect on business outcomes.”
Miller has been with HP for two
years and is currently the director
of global sales incentive design
and deployment. She reports to the
vice president of sales compensa-
tion. Her career includes 20 years
of experience in various HR roles,
such as training, staffing and
general compensation at high-tech
companies. In addition, her experi-
ence includes a stint in consulting.
Currently, her role at HP includes
sales compensation design and
program communication and
training. Miller’s sales compensation
function sits within the Office of
Strategy and Technology.
Also relishing the challenges
presented in his role is John Keller,
director of global sales compensa-
tion for Verizon Enterprise Solutions
(VES). With more than 25 years of
experience, Keller has a background
in corporate marketing and sales
effectiveness consulting. He enjoys
the challenge of coordinating the
design and governance of all sales
compensation plans within VES.
In addition to the annual design
process, Keller ensures all plans
conform to legal/statutory and regu-
latory requirements in all relevant
jurisdictions. Keller and his team
coordinate the annual rollout and
training about the plans. He directs
a team of 10 professionals. A global
provider of IT, security, commu-
nications, network solutions and
professional services, VES has 5,000
sales employees in 41 countries using
125 sales compensation plans.
Speaking with great pride about
the sales compensation program
at his company is Parrish Pullen,
director of sales compensation and
recognition at Intuit. The company’s
sales compensation program
directly supports 75 percent of the
company’s revenue.
Pullen’s career has been within
the HR field as an HR generalist,
compensation manager, incentive
compensation manager and compensa-
tion director. He believes that global
sales compensation challenges sit at
the heart of critical business deci-
sions. Pullen said his work “has an
immediate impact on the company’s
performance.” He has a team of three
professionals who help him design
and administer the sales compensation
plans and the recognition programs for
Intuit. Pullen works closely with teams
in human resources, sales operations,
finance, IT and communications.
Intuit is the leader in financial
software solutions, such as TurboTax,
QuickBooks, payroll solutions
and online payment systems. The
company currently operates in the
United States, Canada, the United
Kingdom, India and Singapore with
sales teams in the United States,
Canada and the United Kingdom. The
company is expanding in Europe and
the Pacific Rim. Across the company,
Intuit has about 50 sales positions
covering nearly 900 sales employees
using 65 sales compensation plans.
Another global sales compensa-
tion leader, whose favorite aspect
of the job is seeing the impact the
sales compensation function has on
You work on mission-critical
business objectives. And,
you can see how your work
has a positive effect on
business outcomes.
—Ellen Miller, HP

3. | 55july 2013 workspan
driving the company’s goals, is Lori
Bajema, senior director of global sales
compensation at Avaya. She said:
“When the company has a short-term
or immediate initiative (new product
to ramp, or new solutions to sell
through acquisitions), you are often
the first point of engagement to help
design a compensation approach to
drive a solution to address the busi-
ness need. Every day is a unique set
of challenges.”
Bajema’s career has been exclusively
on the sales side of the enterprise.
During the past 10 years, she has
worked in global sales compensation
and sales operations functions. She
spent the previous 25 years working
her way up in direct sales and sales
management roles for several leading
technology companies. She brings a
much needed field person’s perspec-
tive to her job.
Avaya is the worldwide leader
in providing open, collaborative
platforms for all communication
technologies, including audio, instant
messaging, text, email, video and
content. Avaya’s global salesforce
services customers and partners
worldwide. The company has dozens
of unique sales positions. The
company has one unified global sales
compensation model that accommo-
dates slight regional metric variances.
Bajema leads a team of professionals
who are accountable for Avaya’s sales
compensation program, including
plan design, program assessment and
evaluation, performance reporting,
market competitiveness, special
incentives, and timely and accurate
payments to Avaya’s global salesforce.
Avaya uses an executive sales
compensation review board consisting
of the chief financial officer, head of
worldwide sales, senior vice president
of human resources, vice president of
global sales ops and herself. Input is
gathered from field leadership.
“A dialogue with all members on
decisions is required prior to moving
forward with program changes,”
Bajema said. This engagement with
the leadership team assures that
Bajema’s work “provides mission-
critical support to the sales efforts of
the company.”
As you would expect, Bajema
believes a background in sales
is “highly useful in this role when
connecting with sales personnel,
because they know I have walked
a mile in their shoes.”
Global Sales
Compensation Scope
In some cases, the scope of the
global sales compensation manager
can be expansive. For example,
Miller supports four major business
groups at HP, each with its own sales
organization. Across the company,
440 sales incentive plans cover 27,000
incumbents. Miller partners with sales
stakeholders, sales operations and
finance professionals to design and
deploy sales incentive plans to drive
targeted business initiatives through
the salesforce. She describes her role
this way: “We manage the design
process working with key sales leaders.
We also work with our business
account managers to determine how
to operationalize the plans. Of course,
we also work closely with those
responsible for sales coverage, job
design, plan assignments quotas and
program costing. Our ultimate clients
are the sales executives who own the
sales plans.”
Miller noted that her worldwide
duties require her to be in frequent
contact with personnel around
the globe. Fortunately, 95 percent
of the work can be done virtu-
ally, making good use of video
conferencing technologies. She
added that the extremes are the
most challenging. Emerging markets
are the most chaotic with limited
tools, systems and management
infrastructure. On the other end,
large mature markets, such as the
United States, struggle to keep their
pay plans agile and aligned with
emerging business requirements.
Worldwide Practices Require
Continued Monitoring
Verizon’s Keller encourages compen-
sation managers to be ever mindful
of divergent practices that occur
from country to country and region
to region — where such variances
can be driven by economic growth
rates, legislation or historical prac-
tices. Keller concedes that many
A background in sales is
highly useful in this role
when connecting with
sales personnel, because
they know I have walked
a mile in their shoes.
—Lori Bajema, Avaya
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4. 56 | workspan july 2013
practices can be followed in a
uniform manner on a worldwide
basis; however, he provided these
global location insights:
❙❙ South American and Latin American
countries (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico)
have cyclical currency issues
(hyperinflation and devaluation),
country-specific labor statutes
and fragmented labor markets.
❙❙ Eastern Europe (especially Russia)
has a booming economy, rising labor
costs and a shifting labor and regu-
latory environment. China is similar
to Eastern Europe in these respects.
❙❙ Western Europe has some unique
labor laws and regulations, but
over time, most countries are
becoming more similar to the
United States. In addition, works
councils present a unique chal-
lenge, but are manageable.
❙❙ In the United States, California is
extremely challenging. Frequent
labor law changes make it difficult to
stay contemporary with all the statu-
tory and regulatory requirements.
Challenges for the Global Sales
Compensation Manager
The global sales compensation field
has endless challenges. Some of
these challenges require balancing
competing demands of central
objectives with the needs of the
local sales teams.
For example, Pullen of Intuit says
his biggest challenge is to balance the
competing demands of a company
with multiple businesses while trying
to have an effective and efficient
sales compensation plan. Here is his
objective: “Making sure our incen-
tive programs are stable enough to
provide some year-to-year consistency,
yet flexible enough to respond to
rapidly changing market conditions.”
Not an easy task.
Avaya’s Bajema added that her
biggest sales compensation challenge
is keeping the pay plans aligned with
changing business objectives. For
example, in response to the growing
market demand for cloud-based
solutions, Avaya had to alter its pay
plans to reward for monthly revenue
cloud offerings in addition to tradi-
tional revenue from capital sales and
prepaid multiyear contracts.
Bajema described her challenges:
“During the last 10 years of sharing
with other sales compensation
professionals, I think we all have
good ideas about plan design,
creative SPIFF options, metrics and
leverage standards for various roles.
However, where professionals have
less concrete ideas is around how
we measure the effectiveness of our
plan changes. It’s easy to assume if a
plan change in some key technology
area results in higher revenue perfor-
mance that the plan was successful.
In reality, it may have been market
timing, economic impact or other
factors that caused the success.
“I don’t profess to have all the
answers here,” Bajema continued,
“but I keep pushing my team to
constantly improve our measurement
and analysis against our results and
to challenge our thinking around
how we spend our critical sales
compensation budget dollars to
actually drive the right behaviors
with our sales teams.”
Advice for Those Interested in
Global Sales Compensation
“Perhaps the most important piece of
advice I would give is to never stop
learning and always stay humble,”
Keller said. “You can never know
everything there is to know in this
arena. Actively pursue new ideas and
different ways of doing things.”
David J. Cichelli is senior vice president at
The Alexander Group in Scottsdale, Ariz. He can
be reached at dcichelli@alexandergroup.com.
resources plus
For more information, books and
education related to this topic, log
on to www.worldatwork.org and use
any or all of these keywords:
❙❙ Global + sales compensation
❙❙ Global + sales management
❙❙ Global sales + practice.
It’s easy to assume if a plan change
in some key technology area results
in higher revenue performance
that the plan was successful.
—Lori Bajema, Avaya