At Pennylane, commissions account for a significant proportion of sales reps' remuneration. It is a real lever for generating revenue across Pennylane as a whole, but also for pushing forward certain strategic initiatives, which is why it is vital to ensure that it is reliable, transparent and visible.

However, before equipping themselves with the commission management platform created by Qobra, they were using another solution and were encountering a number of problems with variable pay.

So we decided to interview Thomas Mesnil (Sales Operations), Thibault Lemaître (Sales Manager) and Stan Hollande (Sales) to find out more and understand how Qobra enables them to manage the topic of variable commissions simply, and turn it into a real driver of motivation, performance and loyalty.

1. Challenges

Before moving to Qobra, Pennylane was using another solution to calculate and manage their employees' commissions. 

An ill-suited solution that posed a number of major problems:

• Lack of visibility
• Lack of clarity and simplicity
• Considerable loss of time (centralising files, calculating commissions, going back and forth between the various stakeholders, etc.).

Lack of visibility

(Stan Hollande, Sales)

"Overall, I didn't use the previous tool too much because it wasn't up to date."

Lack of clarity and simplicity

(Thomas Mesnil, Sales Operations)

"It's not always easy in dataviz and CRM tools to find information easily and legibly."

Considerable loss of time

(Thomas Mesnil, Sales Operations)

"It's something very recurrent to do the sales reps' bonus closing. In the past, with the time it took to realign with all the managers, centralise the files that were scattered around, calculate the commissions themselves, etc., it took about three days for each end-of-period closing. It used to take about 3 days for each end-of-period closing".

2. Solutions

Thomas Mesnil (Sales Operations), Thibault Lemaître (Sales Manager) and Stan Hollande (Sales) explained how Qobra is helping them to meet the various challenges they face in the area of commissions.

A top-notch transition and onboarding

(Thomas Mesnil, Sales Operations)

"The adoption of this new tool by our sales staff is our top priority, so they also needed to have a good experience of the transition, as it obviously impacts on their day-to-day work. And that's where the Qobra teams came in. We had an onboarding session on site, at our premises, which was very pleasant and above all very productive."

Real-time visibility for a motivated team

(Thibault Lemaître, Sales Manager)

"It's crazy, a Sales person can literally log on to Qobra every day, see if they've unlocked their commission accelerator, the impact it's having on their variable and so it goes a long way to having teams that are super motivated on a daily basis."

(Stan Hollande, Sales)

"Qobra is connected directly to Salesforce, so it allows me to keep my remuneration data and my target attainment up to date, as we go along. Qobra allows me to know how much I'm going to earn based on the contracts I sign, and it also potentially allows me to anticipate the achievement of commission accelerators."

Total transparency on commission calculations

(Stan Hollande, Sales)

"Transparency in the calculations means that they can be checked and understood, and that we know why this amount is being displayed".

Superb customer support

(Thomas Mesnil, Sales Operations)

"We have a support team that has obviously been there from the start, and continues to be there, and which is of a very high standard. Nicolas Roussel in customer support is extremely professional, he helps us a lot, he answers all our questions and he also helps us to optimise the product as much as possible with the new features that come out, etc."

Major time savings

(Thibault Lemaître, Sales Manager)

"I'm pinged directly by the Sales Operations teams who ask me to check that the commission amounts are the right ones in Qobra. Then, I only have one click to make and it's good to go."

(Thomas Mesnil, Sales Operations)

"Today, with Qobra, bonus closing time has been cut from 3 days to half a day!"

Qobra

With its commission calculation and management solution for sales rep, business operations, finance and HR teams, Qobra helps companies make variable pay :

• The number 1 lever for sales rep motivation and performance
• A key factor in attracting and retaining customers
• A considerable time-saver for the teams responsible for managing and calculating commissions

Customers: +100 companies of all sizes and in all sectors (Doctolib, Payfit, Spendesk, Go1, Make, CoachHub, SeLoger, Figaro, Agicap, etc.).

Users: +10,000 users (Finance, Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, HR, Sales, etc.).

Countries: France, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Spain, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and Czech Republic.