Blind spots block growth. Outreach gives you full visibility into what’s happening in your entire pipeline so you can coach better, forecast accurately, and close quicker. Streamline your revenue ops.
Back-office positions, which focus on internal tasks rather than on client or consumer needs, are the workhorses of organizations, and they might soon be getting a new corporate carrot. As companies are looking for ways to get ahead, many are hoping to turn back-office roles into revenue drivers by tying compensation to revenue-related goals.
OneSource Virtual, which offers payroll services and solutions, changed how its back-office roles get paid and has seen improvements in revenue goals and retention statistics across the company. And for sales enablement companies like Seismic, which provides the technology for OneSource Virtual, empowering revenue operations through new back-office compensation structures is becoming a more common tactic to unlock new revenue generation.
“Companies are realizing with today’s competitive landscape that you can’t afford to have any role that’s disconnected from revenue outcomes,” Nicole Ward, senior director of revenue enablement and operations at OneSource Virtual, said.
The proof is in the bonus
When Ward was hired to lead revenue enablement for OneSource Virtual in 2022, she had discussions concerning the present state of the company and desired outcomes, she told Revenue Brew. The company created a hybrid compensation system where salaried roles, such as IT and HR, are offered bonuses tied to desired revenue outcomes, she said.
OneSource Virtual’s annual performance objectives are always tied to revenue impact and metrics like win rates, deal size, deal velocity, new hire ramp time, and quota attainment, Ward shared.
"We’ve shifted from being measured on volume and activities to really being measured on outcomes,” Ward said.
“When you can show concrete ROI, like reducing new hire ramp time to first opportunity by 47% or increasing average deal size by 34%, which are our actual metrics, you can align your performance goals,” Ward said. “So in short, I would say, don’t change the compensation strategy first. Change the measurement first.”
For Ward and her team, results have been hard to ignore: 28% more sellers reaching quota, 11% increase in win rates, and two consecutive record-breaking revenue years for the company.
A Seismic shift
In addition to working with OneSource Virtual on restructuring compensation plans, Seismic fielded a request from Shopify to put all of its departments on compensation plans tied to the outcomes of the teams they support. This resulted in a points system program tied to raises at Shopify.
“People think pipeline, ‘OK that’s [Sales Development Representative] and marketing,’ bullshit. That’s everyone, that’s product, that’s your back-office ops team,” Hayden Stafford, president and CRO of Seismic, said. “You need to get that mindset of pipeline being personal, retention being everyone’s responsibility, and compensating based on the performance of the business for everybody.”
Mapping a growing trend
Patrice Williams-Lindo, CEO of Career Nomad and a management consulting senior executive, noticed companies experimenting with back-office compensation at the start of the pandemic, but it has only been in the last year that she has seen the trend take off.
The most popular format she is seeing is a hybrid compensation plan, similar to that implemented by OneSource Virtual.
“In some organizations, the sales or revenue teams are getting their quarterly bonuses, but the rest of the organization are getting yearly bonuses. Have I seen in these cases back offices shift to that, not wholly and solely? It just depends on where they are,” Lindo said.
Lindo offered a word of caution when implementing compensation changes.
“Don’t tie pay to results if you’re not going to give them the power to influence those results, because then it’s like you’re telling them to run or you’re telling them to go forward, but you have your foot on the brake.”