Regions
MAIN/REGIONS
regions/
Regions
  1. Americas
  2. Asia & Oceania
  3. Europe
  4. Middle East & Africa
  1. Solutions
  2. Insights
  3. Events
  4. Contact Us
MAIN/search
MAIN/Solutions
Solutions/
SOLUTIONS
  • Life Sciences Solutions
  • Healthcare Solutions
  • Medical Device and Diagnostic
  • U.S. Government
Life Sciences Solutions

Bringing together unparalleled healthcare data, advanced analytics, innovative technologies, and healthcare expertise to create intelligent connections that speed the development and commercialization of innovative medicines to improve patient lives.

Learn More
Life Sciences Solutions
Healthcare Solutions

Accelerate digital innovation to enable smarter decisions that reduce cost, modernize patient and consumer engagement, and improve health outcomes.

Learn More
Healthcare Solutions
Medical Device and Diagnostic Solutions

Your world is unique – and quite different from pharma. In the U.S., decision-making has shifted from individual physicians to integrated networks--GPOs, IDNs and payers. These groups have heightened the focus on proving your solution’s value, demanding outcomes analyses and putting pressure on pricing.

Learn More
Medical Device and Diagnostic Solutions
U.S. Government Solutions

For government agencies and organizations at every level—from federal or national to regional and local—Big Data can have a huge impact on public health.

Learn More
U.S. Government Solutions
MAIN/Insights
Insights/
U.S. PROGRESS POINT

A curation of IQVIA's best thinking on topics and trends driving change, disruption, and progress in the United States healthcare market.

LEARN MORE
U.S. BLOGS

Get the latest insights on our life sciences, healthcare, and medical technology solutions in the United States. Follow our blog today!

LEARN MORE

U.S. INSIGHTS LIBRARY

"Browse our library of insights and thought leadership.

LEARN MORE
MAIN/Events
Events/
ON-DEMAND WEBINARS

Visit our library of on-demand webinars.

LEARN MORE
UPCOMING EVENTS & WEBINARS

View our upcoming events and webinars.

LEARN MORE

FEATURED WEBINAR

"Top Issues for Pharma to Watch in 2022 and 2023

WATCH NOW
MAIN/Contact Us
Contact Us/
Blog
Five Tips for Building Sales Quotas
Robert Kelly, Sr. Principal, Practice Leader, Sales Force Effectiveness, IQVIA
Amit Srivastava, Principal, Incentive Compensation, IQVIA
Mark Parisi, Sr. Principal, Incentive Compensation, IQVIA
Jan 17, 2023

With the start of the new calendar year, many organizations that have completed their annual Incentive Compensation (IC) plan designs are turning their attention to generating fair and equitable sales quotas.

Setting fair and accurate goals continues to be the top-ranked Sales Operations Challenge based on IQVIA’s 2022 IC Benchmark Survey. With that in mind, IQVIA’s IC experts offer five tips to help healthcare organizations develop fair and motivating quotas for their salespeople.

  1. Upstream Inputs: Quota-setting challenges may be symptomatic of upstream issues. For example, an imbalanced territory alignment causes “outlier” situations that require manual intervention when setting quotas. Other examples include forecast accuracy, data capture, and localized issues of managed care coverage or customer access. If these problems can’t be easily resolved at the source, how can your quota setting process adapt to the challenges or circumvent them?
  2. Simplicity: Keep the quota-setting method as simple as you can. Consider both the actual fairness and field perception of fairness of your quota-setting method. A very complicated quota-setting method (one with many inputs and calculation steps) may not be perceived as fair by your salespeople. They may put more trust in a simpler method that sacrifices a small amount of mathematical fairness for the advantages of being easy to explain and understand.
  3. Accuracy and Timeliness: Accuracy is paramount for maintaining field motivation and organizational credibility with respect to sales quotas, but speed of delivery runs a close second. Frequent complaints from salespeople are that they receive their quota “too late to do anything about it,” or that not having a quota “makes it hard to know where I stand.” In our experience, best practice is to release quotas before 25% of a measurement period elapses. For a quarterly quota-setting cycle, strive to have your quotas released no later than the third week.
  4. Process: Build a robust process for finalizing sales objectives that are not traditional quotas. If your IC plan includes sales objectives such as MBOs, customer evaluations, patient outcomes, or team-based components, consider how they will be set. Who are the stakeholders and approvers to complete them? How will those objectives be delivered to your salespeople?
  5. Field Review: Based on the IQVIA survey, 65% of companies offer their sales leaders (District/Region/Nation) the opportunity to review and make changes to quotas. The ability to make changes often comes with business rules (e.g., “zero sum” changes within a district, territory level guardrails +/- 10%, etc.) to prevent perceived favoritism. We think this process builds credibility and a sense of ownership on the part of sales leadership. This also enables quotas to better reflect local market conditions. However, it does come with the cost of building additional time into the process.

Could your organization benefit from an independent evaluation of your organization’s quota-setting processes and methods? Please connect with us to discuss how IQVIA could help your organization optimize its quota setting models and associated business processes.

Reimagine your approach to incentive compensation design and management

Align sales rep behavior and drive performance with a future-fit IC platform.

Download Fact Sheet

Related solutions

Contact Us