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  • Three simple questions to test your business's sales commission plan

    Three simple questions to test your business's sales commission plan

    If you employ salespeople to sell your company’s products and services, it is more than likely that you have a sales commission plan in place.

    If you do and you want to test whether or not your sales commission plan is fit for purpose, there are 3 simple questions you should ask yourself.
    The answers to these questions will inform you if your sales commission plan is what it should be, if it would benefit from adjustment or if you need to pull it apart and start again. The three questions are,

    Question 1: Is your sales commission plan aligned to your organisation’s financial objectives?

    We’ll start with something so obvious that it often gets missed. Are you rewarding people for achievements that directly contribute to the financial objectives and targets laid out in your organisation’s business plan?
    For example, if achieving your annual gross profit target relies on a balanced mix of products and services being sold, is this reflected in the plan, are there certain products that you want to sell more or less of?
    Aligned to the product mix theme, is your plan operating on a flat percentage of sales value (revenue) or does it reward as a proportion of the profitability of the sale. If it is the former, it is literally costing you more (in terms of commission payments vs profit ratio) to sell your less profitable products.
    However, the most important thing in aligning your plan to your financial objectives, is to check if it’s possible for you to pay out 100% or more of your commission plan budget without achieving your organisation’s financial targets.
    In other words, could you max out your commission plan budget without hitting your profit target? You should check this at an individual, team and overall company level.

    Question 2: Does your sales commission plan promote the correct behaviours?

    If your business sells high value and/or complex products with a long sales cycle, it’s probable that the accuracy of your sales forecast is important to you. If it is, have you linked the accuracy of sales people’s forecasts to the payment of their commission?
    On a similar theme, but extended to a wider scope, you may be an organisation that struggles to get its sales people to manage their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) input to the standard you want them to.
    This could include anything from keeping customer contact records up to date, through to ensuring sales opportunities are staged at the correct point in the sales cycle. If this is an issue for you, have you taken steps to link the payment of commission to the quality and accuracy of their CRM input?
    A final point on this section is to check if your sales managers are rewarded with exactly the same commission plan as the people in their teams and consider if this is the correct thing to do? Are there points of integrity, such as ensuring the correct product is being sold to the right customer for the right reasons, which mean your sales managers should be rewarded differently?

    Question 3: Is your sales commission plan clear, documented and understood by all?

    If you do run a sales commission plan (and if you have read this far I’m presuming you either run or are rewarded by one), have you ever received a complaint from a participant of the plan.
    The answer to that question was “yes” wasn’t it?
    In my experience the majority of complaints (or to more accurately describe them, disputes) about sales commission plans arise from two sources.
    The first is when the plan is changed mid-year; when this happens it is nearly always because the points raised in “Question 1” (alignment to financial objectives) were not addressed in the plan’s original design and a panic measure has been put in place to address a budget issue.
    The second is when the plan is not supported by a governance document. Moreover, the time and effort has not been taken to ensure that the plan’s rules are clearly documented and understood by everyone participating in it. These rules could include, thresholds, accelerators, bonus triggers (the aforementioned) product mix and the behaviours we covered in Question 2.
    Writing a governance document for your sales commission plan, explaining all of its moving parts, the rules and even producing a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section will minimise the instances of future disputes.
    More importantly, it will test whether or not the design of your sales commission plan is robust and fit for purpose. If there are gaps in your plan, writing the governance document will find them before you launch it, so it’s worth the effort.
    Getting it Right
     
    The premise of running a sales commission plan is that you are employing salespeople within a risk/reward culture.
    A good sales commission plan will align to your organisation’s financial targets and objectives, reward not only sales achievement, but also the correct behaviours and be clearly understood by all those participating in it.
    So, when you get a chance ask yourself the three simple questions outlined above and hopefully you can answer them in this order,

    It is
    It does
    It is.

    If you can that’s brilliant, if you can’t, you’ve got some sales commission plan redesign work to do.
     
     

  • 5 Warning Signs and Symptoms of Eye Problems?  – Health Cages

    5 Warning Signs and Symptoms of Eye Problems?  – Health Cages

    Common Eye Disorder

    Taking care of your eyes is important for your health. If you pay attention to your eye health and keep an eye out for any changes by getting regular eye check-ups, you can lower the chance of losing your vision.

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    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that more than 21 million Americans have problems with their vision. Some eye issues, like not seeing things far away, are not a big deal. But things like cataracts, glaucoma, and getting older can make you lose your eyesight if you don’t get help in time. So, it’s good to take care of your eyes and go for check-ups!

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    Signs And Symptoms Of Eye Problems

    Keeping an eye on your eye health is important to make sure your eyes are well taken care of. If your eye doctor sees any signs of a problem, they can make a plan to treat it and keep your vision safe.

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    1. Eye Pain

    If your eyes hurt, it can mean different things, like a throbbing or stabbing feeling. This might happen if something gets in your eye or if you have an infection or another serious problem.

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    Normally, your eyes shouldn’t hurt. If it happens once in a while, especially with a headache, it might not be a big deal. But you should see an eye doctor if your eyes hurt a lot. It could be due to inflammation or nerve damage, and they can figure out what’s happening.

    2. Night Blindness

    If you find it hard to see when it’s dark, you might have trouble with your night vision. Usually, your eyes can easily adjust from light to dark, but some eye issues can make it tough.

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    Troubles with night vision could mean:

    • Cataracts
    • Nystagmus
    • Retinitis Pigmentosa

    3. Double Vision

    Seeing two images instead of one, known as double vision, is a serious problem that needs quick attention. Whether it happens now and then or all the time, it can mess up your balance, reading, and daily activities.

    If it’s in one eye, it’s called monocular, but if it’s in both, it’s called binocular. Many things can cause it, like damage to nerves or muscles or other illnesses that make eye muscles weak. Sometimes, it can even be because of using drugs or drinking alcohol. If it keeps happening without using alcohol or drugs, it’s a sign that needs to be checked and treated right away.

    4. swelling of the eyes

    If your eye is swollen, it might show symptoms we discussed earlier, but there are many other reasons your eye doctor can figure out. Swelling could be from allergies, keeping too much fluid, or severe eye infections that could harm your eyes if you don’t treat them.

    Swelling in the eyelids can also mean serious health issues like orbital cellulitis, ocular herpes, or even Graves’ disease. These things can be really bad for your vision, so it’s important to get them checked out by a doctor.

    5. Floaters

    Floaters are like specks, dots, lines, or webs in your vision. Even though they seem to be in front of your eye, they’re floating inside the vitreous. There are tiny clumps of cells on the retina, which cause shadows.

    Usually, a few floaters are no big deal and will go away on their own over time. You might notice them when you look at something plain, like a blank wall or the sky.

    But if you have a lot of floaters, it could mean a more serious issue, like:

    • Diabetic Retinopathy
    • Eye Lymphoma
    • Torn or Detached Retina
    • Posterior Vitreous Detachment
    • Uveitis

    The four most common eye conditions leading to loss of vision or blindness are cataracts. Diabetes-related retinopathy.

    Sudden blurry or distorted vision. This symptom may be the most obvious one for patients to notice.

    “Eye strain” can produce eye discomfort and headaches, although it is uncommon and overrated as a cause of headache.

  • The risk of sickness absence is worth planning for

    The risk of sickness absence is worth planning for

    In his latest article, John Ritchie, CEO of Ellipse, reflects on how an overhaul of the state’s sickness benefits could actually be a blessing for his business.

    Ensuring processes and support are in place to ensure employees who are absent because of sickness or injury are quickly rehabilitated back to the workplace.

    Each year, one million people are unable to work for four weeks or more due to serious illness or injury. Given a total workforce of around 32 million, this equates to a risk that will materialise for one in every 32 people.

    Each year, illness will lead to a quarter of a million people permanently dropping out of the workforce.

    These sobering statistics were quoted in a recent research report from the Association of British Insurers (ABI), ‘Welfare Reform for the 21st Century’. The report echoed my October column, speculating that having seen pensions for all being brought about through auto-enrolment it will not be too long before government looks to repeat the trick with long-term sick pay.
    The idea of your business taking over the state’s role as benefits provider will not, I suspect, sound very appealing, but the ABI report highlighted that a radical overhaul of sickness benefits could work just as much to employers’ advantage as it would for the state and employees.
    This is because employers can cover the costs of long-term sick pay through income protection insurance. Although this insurance started out years ago to do the purely financial job of covering a sick employee’s pay, it has evolved to offer much more. Like many other forms of insurance, the requirement to pay claims focused the minds of insurers on how the number and value of claims might be reduced. The result is that insurers have augmented their income protection policies to deliver a wide range of services designed to help employees back to work – a key difference in the approaches taken by state and private benefit providers.
    Insurers gain because the impact of absence on their businesses is reduced. As the head of a small business myself, I am acutely aware of how disruptive and expensive absence can be. Short-term absences can generally be covered by other staff, but once an absence starts extending to weeks and months it becomes much more difficult.
    Having insurance in the form of group income protection means my business has modest amounts in the shape of the premiums to find each year rather than the unknown and potentially much larger costs of continuing a sick employee’s pay. But there’s an added bonus in the shape of the rehabilitation services we can access. Finding people with the right skill-set who are happy to fill in on a temporary basis is difficult. What I really want is for my absent employee to get better and return to work, so anything that helps that happen is a real boon.
    Obviously, some causes of absence will not be susceptible to rehabilitation techniques, but many are. Data shows that two of the commonest causes of long-term sickness absence are mental illness and what are termed ‘musculo-skeletal’ problems – back aches, whiplash and the like. In both cases, the NHS often struggles to provide resources adequate to the problem. It takes more sessions of counselling, cognitive-based therapies, physiotherapy and the like to get someone back to fully fit than the NHS is often capable of funding. Even though it could well save the NHS money in the long run, the pressure is ever on to control this year’s spending. For insurers, though, if they can get someone back to work, their claims costs will be reduced hence they are happy to fund such services.
    When it came to pensions, after various attempts to persuade people they needed to put money aside for their retirement, the bullet was bitten and auto-enrolment – which is compulsion in all but name – was introduced. Persuading people of the need to put money aside to cover the possibility of long-term sickness is even harder. While most feel confident they will reach retirement – even if that doesn’t particularly incline them to save for it – many see long-term sickness as something that happens to other people, not them. This is a very head in the sand attitude. Most people’s houses won’t burn down, be flooded or broken into but most would agree that taking precautions, and getting insurance cover, against all three possibilities is sensible. And, as the statistics introducing this article show, a significant number will suffer long-term sickness and lose their ability to earn as a result.
    So an inability to work is obviously a risk that all working people should be prepared for, but most aren’t. Businesses can play a large part in making sure workers avoid being plunged into poverty if they go long-term sick, and the advantages for businesses themselves in terms of the financial cover and early rehabilitation of employees make it worth their while even before the state gets around to deciding they are obliged to.

  • Uncover the Hidden Foundations of Modern Hygiene: Breathable Sterile Bags and Disposable Non‑Woven Bedsheets

    Uncover the Hidden Foundations of Modern Hygiene: Breathable Sterile Bags and Disposable Non‑Woven Bedsheets

    Meet the Unsung Superheroes of Cleanliness

    Think you’re only cleaning with a mop, soap, and a dash of elbow grease? Think again. The newest heroes of hygiene are lurking in your hospital rooms, hotel suites, and even at home: sterile breathable bags and disposable non‑woven bedsheets. They’re the quiet crusaders that keep germs out, oxygen in, and every surface fresh as a spring breeze.

    Why These Innovations Matter

    • Hospital‑Grade Protection: Surgeons need a sterile theater; these bags guard instruments like exorcists guarding against evil spirits.
    • Hospitality That Smiles: Hotels want guests to feel safe and pampered; a fresh, disposable sheet is a swanky “virtual spa” on a roll.
    • Personal Care Peace: At home or in care facilities, one disposable sheet can keep you away from nasty bacteria—no extra laundry drag.
    • Eco‑Smart Efficiency: Disposables reduce the need for endless washing cycles, saving energy and water—all while keeping the planet happy.

    Science Behind the Cool Stuff

    What’s the secret sauce that makes these products tick? It’s a mix of micro‑engineering and material wizardry.

    • Breathable Barrier: The bags are made of ultra‑fine fibers that let oxygen and humidity slip through—think of them as a “transparent shield” popping twin bullhorns on a window.
    • Precision Porosity: Engineers tweak the gap between fibers so that tiny microbes can’t squeeze through, but sweat and air stay free. It’s the same logic that keeps coffee grounds out of your cup.
    • Non‑Woven Knits: These sheets are woven from a web of polypropylene strands that are smooth enough to feel fluff‑ish against the skin, yet tough enough to stand up to a guest’s next morning roll‑up.
    • Antimicrobial Coatings: A sprinkle of silver or zinc ions adds an extra defense layer—a silent “ghostbuster” that scrubs away germs without a single wash.
    Real‑World Impact in Numbers
    • Reduced hospital-acquired infection rates by up to 25% when sterile bags replaced traditional packaging.
    • Hotels report a 30% drop in laundry costs after switching to disposable sheets.
    • Eco‑impact: each disposable sheet saves up to 10 gallons of water compared to a traditional wash cycle.
    How to Embrace the Future of Clean

    Got a hospital, a hotel, or just a super‑busy household? Here’s how to get on the clean squad:

    • Start with a low‑cost pilot—mix a few bags in your storage routine.
    • Train your staff to understand the science behind them—knowledge sparks care.
    • Keep track of metrics—patient infections, guest satisfaction, and waste numbers. Numbers prove the magic.
    • Celebrate the wins—once your area is noticeably cleaner and quicker, throw a “Clean Team” party.

    So, next time you see a sterile bag or a disposable sheet, remember: they’re not just dress‑up items; they’re silent guardians, sprinkling a little science‑backed, laughter‑feeling, and eco‑friendly magic into our hands, rooms, and beds.

    The Emerging Need of Hygienic Innovation:

    Why the World Craved One‑Use Hygiene Like Never Before

    In the last decade, the appetite for efficient, single‑use hygiene supplies—think wipes, gloves, and masks—has spiked across healthcare, spa & wellness, travel, and senior care. When the COVID‑19 pandemic hit, this boom turned into a full‑blown frenzy, making everyone’s focus on barrier protection, sterilization, and infection control sharper than a chrome‑finned clam.

    What Fueled the Surge?

    • More people suddenly understanding that “clean” is the new “cool.”
    • Regulators tightening the drill and giving anything less than a cruciform wipe a mutiny look.
    • Late‑night runs through airports and stairwell rinses at home that felt like a race to the most germ‑free corner of the planet.

    The Fun Side of Forget‑Me‑Not Hygiene

    Who knew a pair of disposable gloves could become the new “missing‑in‑action” accessory? Guests at spas are now signing up for a “clean‑bath‑life” contract, and travelers, excited by the prospect of a germ‑free globe, are practically brining their own disposable hand sanitizer.

  • Leading through the 3pm fog

    Leading through the 3pm fog

    “I feel brain dead by the end of the day”

    “I’ve got so much stuff whirring around inside my head, it’s making me feel anxious.”

    “By mid-afternoon I’m mentally drained from the back-to-back calls; I need a coffee just to get me through the last few hours of the day.”
    These are just some of the things that I’ve heard leaders saying to me over the past few days; and I can relate to all of them.
    Many of us are bouncing from one online meeting to next with little or no time in between. Or perhaps as soon as we click hang-up, we’re straight into answering a question about our teenage son or daughter’s algebra lesson, or trying to teach prime numbers to eight-year-old, as I was last week.
    The relentless nature of attempting to work from home during a global pandemic has a significant impact on our cognitive bandwidth. We’ve all felt it.
    Harvard describes cognitive capacity as our ability to pay attention, make good decisions, stick with plans and resist temptations; which are all perhaps more important now than ever before.
    If we place too much demand on the home Internet connection that’s enabling our virtual meetings, we eventually hit the upper limit of its bandwidth and things start to slow down.
    Our cognitive bandwidth has an upper limit too. When we hit that limit, things start to slow down for us. We start to feel ‘brain-dead’, anxious and in need of another shot of caffeine or sugar hit. The benefits of which are short lived and add to the tiredness and mental fog.
    When this happens, we start missing things.
    We make poorer decisions.
    Our patience is compromised, and our tempers become frayed.
    We’re less effective team members.
    We’re compromised as leaders.
    But maybe none of this applies to you.
    Perhaps you don’t have children, or your partner doesn’t work, so the home-schooling and work juggle is a challenge you’re not faced with.
    And maybe you’ve got brilliant discipline around taking regular breaks throughout the day and giving yourself at least 10 minutes between calls as a virtual transition period; a strategy that allows things to settle and gives our brains time to process information from the last meeting.
    But there will be many in your team and many attending your meetings who are being impacted by bandwidth depletion every day.
    People will be leaving meetings with different views about what was agreed.
    Some actions will be missed.
    Others will be recorded, and then lost amongst the scrawl of notes from a day of back to back meetings that never got reviewed because there simply wasn’t the time to stop and think.
    But it doesn’t need to be this way. There are a number of simple things that we can do to help ourselves and our teams be much more effective amidst the fog that can easily cloud our days.
    One tactic is to become unapologetically relentless about clarifying actions and commitments.
    At the end of each major topic of discussion, simply ask one person to recount all of the actions. This does a number of things:

    It provides a moment of reflection.
    It allows everyone to listen and confirm their understanding of the actions.
    It gives you confidence that all actions have been captured accurately.

    It’s a very simple thing to do and one that can often feel embarrassingly basic. You may even find yourself saying:
    “Really? At our level? Do we really need to be asking someone to recount the actions out loud?”
    A lesson I took from my time in the military is this:
    “Leaders do not test for understanding by asking for questions. Leaders ensure understanding by asking questions.”
    So, my answer is yes. We really do need to focus on the basics because it’s what all of the great teams do.
    Great teams focus on doing the basics brilliantly well, with ruthless consistency.
    Do you?
    #LeadOn