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Benchmark: Sales + Happy Customers = Bonus

Some statistics concerning the percentage of companies that link customer satisfaction to pay.

By Susan Greco | 
 

Customer satisfaction: without it you're out of business. And if you haven't found some way to work it into your sales-incentive program -- and we admit that's not always easy -- you need to soon. Even big companies are wising up. In 1992 Hewitt Associates found that only 6% of companies used any measure of customer satisfaction in their sales-incentive plans. Two years later that had changed.

Does your company link pay and customer satisfaction?

Yes, in recognition programs outside of sales 32%

Yes, in sales-incentive programs 26%

No, but we're considering doing it 18%

No 24%

Source: "Strategic Influences on Sales Compensation," a study of 217 companies, Hewitt Associates, Lincolnshire, Ill., April 1995.

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