Game the Plan

CREATE AN INCENTIVE COMPENSATION PLAN KNOWING IT WILL BE GAMED

Tired of the reality that within five minutes of announcing an incentive plan someone on your 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 you set out. Too many companies 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 you, the corporate leader, wrote a bad plan. Instead of fighting the gamers on your staff, build your incentive plan knowing that your sales reps will take every possible means to earn their badges, bonuses, checks, extra PTO days, or whatever other bait you dangle in front of them.

Game the Plan’s revolutionary, three-pronged approach takes the guesswork out of creating the right plan by reviewing a combination of academic, experiential, and empirical data. And the self-assessment exercises will help you diagnose and fine-tune your company’s incentive strategy effectiveness.

Christopher Cabrera offers you a way to intelligently harness the unique motivational composition of your workforce and systematically spike company-wide collaboration and profitability across every job function and department. This is your key to drive your employees to the right behavior by crafting a dialed-in incentive plan that motivates them to be more productive and loyal.

“Game the Plan is a must-read. Chris shows how to use real-life data to create killer incentive compensation strategies that will transform your enterprise.” —Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, salesforce.com

“The ideas here resonate for me as a business executive and a former pro-football player. The right incentives are powerful motivators, and Game the Plan explains these ideas brilliantly.” —Ronnie Lott, NFL Hall of Fame (2000 Inductee)

“Chris and his team have designed a tool that creates more engaged employees, drives the right behavior, and helps organizations meet their goals. I’ve seen his principles work first hand.” —Steve Cakebread, former CFO, Salesforce.com

“Chris gives real-world tips, relevant research, and great examples to better reward our sales producers. Start here to ‘game the plan’ well!” —David J. Cichelli, Sr. Vice President, The Alexander Group, Inc.

“If you’ve thumbed your nose at incentives because you think they create win/lose scenarios, Chris will quickly change your mind.” —Keith Krach, Chairman and CEO, DocuSign

“Chris has written a fantastic book that helps bridge the ‘sales & finance’ chasm. If you deal with compensation, especially sales compensation, read this book.” —Aaron Ross, bestselling author of Predictable Revenue

“Game The Plan should be on every sales manager's and CFO's must-read list.” —Barry Rhein, founder of Selling Through Curiosity

“Game The Plan is the perfect example of why you should go with the tide instead of against it. There's brilliance in the simplicity of taking the natural tendencies of human behavior and rewarding those who achieve financial results.” —Rodahl Leong-Lyons, VP of Sales–Americas, Hyatt Hotels Corporation

“This is an easy, fast, and insightful read that delivers far more than the even title promises. [Chris] unveils the many powerful links between human motivation and business performance.” —Gerhard Gschwandtner, founder and CEO, Selling Power

“Chris stands out with his vision, experience, and access to hard data. It takes this unusual combination to inspire this unconventional insight.” —Alan Benson, PhD candidate, MIT Sloan

“Compensation plans can make or break employee morale and customer satisfaction. For the first time, [Chris] shows how to build those plans.” —Paul Greenberg, author of CRM at the Speed of Light, 4th Edition.

CHRISTOPHER W. CABRERA is a thought leader and expert in sales performance management, incentive compensation, and employee motivation. Since founding Xactly Corporation in 2005, he and the firm have received many accolades. Chris was chosen as the 2011 Alumni Entrepreneur of the Year by the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Xactly was named to the Wall Street Journal’s “Next Big Thing” list in 2012 and 2013, and it won Great Place to Work’s “Best Small & Medium Workplaces” award in 2012.

Chris advises a number of start-up companies, and he speaks regularly at industry conferences and at Stanford, the University of California at Berkeley, USC, and Santa Clara University. He is on the board of USC Marshall Partners, Northern California, and on the advisory board for SCU’s Leavey School of Business as well as the SCU Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He and his wife, Marla, have been married for 23 years, and they have two children, Alexa and Cole.