Rewards of a banking variety have been hitting the headlines, which coincides with some musings in this parish about pay packages of a print-based nature.
Inspired by this article about a Dublin-based printco that had to make some radical changes in order to survive after losing a big client, this morning I have carried out a straw poll among a random selection of print bosses about how their sales people are paid.
The Irish company was forced to wake up and smell the coffee rather abruptly, and realised that paying its sales force based on volume was "driving the wrong behaviour". The rewards package is now based upon contribution.
My straw poll reveals that contribution, or added value, is generally the preferred metric among web offset printers, although there's always an exception or two to the rule. A sheetfed printer responded that currently his people work to a volume deal, but he'd prefer it to be contribution based. The difficulty being in moving everyone over to that model. And elsewhere more complex metrics and alternative approaches are involved, based upon a multitude of measures - and sometimes neither volume nor contribution is the driving factor.
Interesting, eh? Print sales reps have historically been pretty well paid by all accounts, but those deals tended to be based on the sort of margins that are part of ancient history too. As the second decade of this millennium approaches, it seems to me that reward packages need to be brought into the 21st century, with an eye to the future rather than the past. In order to avoid the dreaded "busy fools" syndrome surely contribution at the very least should be the focus, rather than volume.
Post Script added Jan 5 2010. I've just realised that the Irish Independent has taken down the original story I referenced above, not sure why, but unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore. Sorry about that.
