Q&A with Snowflake’s Jordan Wong & Stephen Huang: The Marriage Between Commissions and Sales Planning

In our Experts in ICM & SPM series, we’re sitting down with experts across compensation, RevOps, and GTM (Go-to-Market) functions to hear their perspectives on the biggest challenges and opportunities in incentive compensation and sales planning today.

We recently sat down with Snowflake’s Senior Manager of Sales Commissions Jordan Wong and Senior Manager of Sales Planning Stephen Huang – both of whom have over a decade of experience working in their fields – to learn more about how incentive and sales planning go better together.

Defining Swim Lanes and Handoffs

How can clearly defining “swim lanes” between sales, finance, and operations improve overall sales planning and commissions processes? What are the most common challenges that can arise during handoffs between different teams in sales planning, and how can these be mitigated?

Jordan Wong: Over the past four years, I’ve  witnessed our central planning function scale in both processes and team members, while partnering to drive the requirements of our sales commission inputs.

[BLOCKQUOTE
| Quote: Having both mutual goals and understanding underlies the efficiency of our comp plans, as well as the empathy we have between our teams.
| Author: Jordan Wong
| Title: Senior Manager of Sales Commissions, Snowflake
]

Per our audit trail, our core handoffs are Quota, Role,  and Territory reporting, as well as Attributed Attainment on Comp Plan Measures. There are so many issues that can arise in data quality, change management, policies and guardrails, and exception requests on this core deliverable. We meet weekly and lean on our leaders to navigate through the debris with confidence. 

Stephen Huang: A common challenge with handoffs in sales planning is ensuring the teams across Finance, Sales Ops, Sales Leadership, HR, IT, and Legal involved in the planning process are all read in on the latest inputs that impact their respective deliverables. This is especially critical when there are multiple iterations being made. A strong central data platform  like Snowflake can organize and give transparency to all stakeholders.

Audit-Driven Attainment Checks, Territory & Quota Reporting, and Validation

How can automating quota and territory assignments enhance the transparency and accuracy of attainment checks?

Jordan Wong: One of the mainstay concepts I learned in  college that I’ve applied throughout my career is preventative versus detective measures. Automation is aspirational for all of us in these roles. The more we can co-develop solutions around historical bugs in our datasets and build in logic and rules that prevent the errors from occurring again in our systems, the better we can move forward together.

What are the key benefits of using real-time data reporting to minimize the need for manual validation of quotas and territory performance? And in what ways can integrating automated reporting into the attainment process help maintain alignment between sales, finance, and operations teams?

Stephen Huang: Real-Time reporting plays a vital role in minimizing the need for manual and after-the-fact validation of comp plan info, and quota and territory performance. One challenge we’ve had to mitigate in the past is misalignment between sales commission requirements and published guidelines for sales by sales operations. This delayed the quota review and approval process, causing a backlog in comp plan distribution, and costing us the opportunity to establish clear expectations for the year. The more we push for further alignment on all quota checks earlier in the planning cycle, the better sales is equipped for planning. 

To optimize cross-functional collaboration, data and decision transparency is vital. Snowflake as our data platform plays a very important role in keeping all business functions aligned during planning.

Mid-Year Adjustment Comp Plans

When is the right time to implement mid-year adjustments in compensation plans, what factors should drive these changes, and how can organizations ensure changes align with evolving business goals?

And on top of that, how can mid-year adjustments in comp plans be communicated effectively to ensure sales teams remain motivated and aligned with company goals, and how can organizations prevent mid-year adjustments from disrupting existing workflows and data integrity?

Jordan Wong: Things change, from accounts to account teams, big structural drivers and individual exception requests. Having a comp plan framework that allows for mid-year adjustments with strong business justification is necessary. As we are on annual measures, one concept we introduced a few years back is the idea of a plan type change in which attainment is retained and there’s continuity with the existing plan versus a change, like a role or material territory shift,  in which resets your YTD attainment to zero. 

Stephen Huang: We manage a Planning Model to conduct annual planning for headcount, territory, and quota assignment and also an In-Year Model for operational changes to headcount, territory, and quota throughout the year. The In-Year Model provides flexibility to make adjustments based on shifts and changes to business needs. Upfront alignment and communication to impacted sales teams of mid-year adjustments minimizes ambiguity and keeps sales teams aligned to their key objectives. To maintain data integrity for finance requirements, mid-year adjustments are effective-dated to identify when the adjustment occurs. The effective dating also serves as a trigger to ensure reporting visibility and territory alignment are updated to match the effective date.

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If you’re interested in participating in one of the Multiplier Q&A features, or have burning questions to ask today’s compensation and sales planning leaders, let us know at multiplier@captivateiq.com.