Keep the Plan Simple and Focused

Incentive plans can be “incredibly effective” in shaping field force behavior but the golden rule is to keep them simple if you want them to be motivational. “A plan that is not simple is not motivating,” argues Marc Bacon, Director of Incentive Compensation at Sanofi, who is responsible for designing the compensation plans for some 3,000 sales associates across pharma, surgery, bio-surgery, US managed markets and oncology. “That’s a wide range of strategic imperatives we are trying to design incentives around,” he tells eyeforpharma ahead of his appearance at eyeforpharma Philadelphia. “My primary role is to make sure incentive design work is aligned to our overall incentive philosophy and of course aligned to the strategy of each the brands that we work with.” So how are the incentive plans structured? Some are revenue-based – some of the specialty field forces will have revenue goals assigned to the sales associates; however, the vast majority of the plans are goal-based around metrics like the product’s history and growth rate. “On the whole, we employ goal-based plans for the majority of our sales associates.” And are they financial? “Primarily yes, the vast majority are financial rewards associated with their performance, although we do also mix in some peer recognition as well.” Such rewards tend to take the form of trips as part of a three-tiered annual rewards program: Sanofi recognizes the top 1%, then the next 7 %, and the next 5% aft...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news