Game the Plan

Create an incentive compensation plan knowing it will be gamed

Within five minutes of announcing an incentive plan, someone on the company’s sales team starts to find ways to game the plan. There is nothing wrong with that! By gaming, sales reps are trying to achieve the goals set out for them. Too many businesses walk away from incentives thinking they create a scenario in which every win by a team member means a loss for the company. The only thing a “loss” means, though, is that the corporate leaders wrote a bad plan. Instead of fighting the gamers, they should build their incentive plans knowing that the sales reps will use every possible means to earn their badges, bonuses, checks, extra PTO days, or whatever other bait is dangled in front of them.

Game the Plan starts with a revolutionary three-pronged approach to creating the right plan based on a combination of academic, anecdotal, and empirical data. The book guides readers through several self-assessment exercises to diagnose and fine-tune their incentive strategy effectiveness.

With several terabytes of proprietary information gleaned from industry leaders’ best practices behind him Xactly Corporation founder, president, and CEO Christopher Cabrera offers leaders—for the first time ever—a way to intelligently harness the unique motivational composition of their workforces and systematically spike company-wide collaboration and profitability across every job function and department. This is not a guessing game, or something that comes from a gut feeling. This is any organization’s key to driving desired employee behavior by creating a dialed-in incentive plan that motivates them to be more productive and loyal.