Compensating heterogeneous salesforces: Some explicit solutions

This paper considers the question of how a sales manager should design the optimal compensation scheme for his/her salesforce when it consists of salespersons of varying selling skills, i.e., when the salesforce is heterogeneous. The manager’s problem is to reward the salespersons based on observable, uncertain sales achieved by the salespersons. Under the assumption that both the manager and the salespersons are risk neutral, the optimal compensation scheme is derived. It consists of the manager offering a menu of plans, consisting of a quota, a payment for meeting quota, and a constant commission rate for sales above or below quota. Such schemes using constant commission rates are also called menus of linear plans. Salespersons choose the quota which best suits them, achieve sales, and are then rewarded based on their actual performance. This scheme, variants of which are often observed in practice, is shown to be optimal for sales environments characterized by commonly encountered sales response functions, and a large class of frequency distributions of selling skills in the salesforce. The problem is solved using the methods of principal-agent models. The key differences in managing homogeneous and heterogeneous salesforces are highlighted. Finally, the paper discusses the issues involved in practically implementing the optimal compensation scheme.