Marina Martin

This portion of your business efficiency project's execution plan involves identifying individual milestones and assigning them to the right team members. Here is a sample plan from a real-life scenario. List all required work and deliverables Compiling a master list of steps in a project requires thinking critically and in detail about the project.

If you decide that sales commissions make sense for your organization, you’ve done the easy part. Now the hard part: actually defining the commission structure, and then keeping track of it. Many popular accounting and CRM software titles offer commission tracking, and in a pinch, you can always track commissions in a spreadsheet.

An unclear sales commission policy is literally expensive, because you either pay for the lack of clarity in hard dollars or, if you choose not to reconcile the difference expected by your employee, goodwill. Making structural decisions up front and documenting them helps keep everyone on the same page. Ask yourself the following questions when coming up with your commission structure: Do you pay only commissions, or do salespeople receive a base rate with commission on top of it?

A quota is a minimum number (or dollar amount) of sales that a person has to reach during a set period of time, such as a month. Commissions are a percentage of each deal (on either the gross or the net sales amount) that a salesperson is entitled to after closing a deal. Depending on the nature of your particular organization, quotas and/or commissions may make a great deal of sense or no sense at all.

People are the heart of every business. The better people you hire, the better business you have. Some people are just meant to be in their jobs. You may know such individuals — someone who thrives as a receptionist or someone who lives to sell. Think about how great your organization would be if you staffed every position with people who lived for their jobs.

One of the most popular management concepts of recent years has been the scheduling concept known as alternate work arrangements. Broadly speaking, an alternate work arrangement is any scheduling pattern that deviates from the traditional Monday-through-Friday, 9-to-5 work week. Flexibility is the basic idea behind alternate work arrangements.

All performance appraisal systems are driven by the same objective: to establish a systematic and efficient way of evaluating performance, providing constructive feedback, and enabling employees to continually improve their performance. The basic ingredients in all systems are pretty much the same: setting performance criteria, developing tracking and documenting procedures, determining which areas should be measured quantitatively, and deciding how the information is to be communicated to employees.

Involuntary terminations—firings or layoffs—are seldom pleasant experiences for either manager or employee, but it’s more unpleasant for everyone involved if you wait too long to let someone go. Involuntary terminations come in two types: Layoffs: A layoff, also known as a reduction in force, occurs when an organization decides to terminate a certain number of employees for financial reasons.

Outsourcing is the practice of turning over an entire function (shipping, payroll, benefits administration, security, computer networking) to an outside specialist. In many cases, the outside firm’s employees or consultants work side by side with a company’s regular employees. In some cases, a function may be moved to a remote location miles away from your office — even occasionally out of the country.