On May 15, 2008, Centive was notified that our company has been named a finalist in the 2008 American Business Awards in the "Outstanding Customer Service" category.

More than 2,600 entries from companies of all sizes and in virtually every industry were submitted for consideration. Members of the Awards' Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors and their staffs will select Stevie Award winners from among Finalists in final judging during the week of May 19, 2008. Finalists were chosen by business professionals nationwide during preliminary judging in April through early May.

"We are pleased to be recognized by the American Business Awards judges for providing our customers with exceptional levels of service," said Michael Torto, president and CEO, Centive. "Our focus on delivering consistent, high value customer service has paid tremendous dividends; our customers have rewarded us by providing glowing references to support our sales efforts. Exceptional service builds the long-term customer relationships that have been instrumental in Centive's rapid growth and continued success delivering award-winning on-demand sales performance management solutions."

"ABA entries grew more than 30% this year, so being named a Finalist is more of an accomplishment that ever before," said Michael Gallagher, founder and president of The Stevie Awards. "It means that independent business executives have agreed that the nominee is worthy of national recognition. We congratulate all of the Finalists on their achievement and wish them well in the competition."

Stevie Award winners will be announced during the annual gala on Thursday, June 12 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. More than 600 executives from across the U.S.A. are expected to attend. The ceremonies will be broadcast on radio nationwide by the Business TalkRadio Network and hosted by Liz Claman of FOX Business Network.

Sales compensation is one of your greatest sales performance management tools; no other program will drive sales behavior, and ultimately, sales results to the same extent as incentive compensation. 

Getting salespeople to sell the right products and services to the right customers at the right price is the best way to increase revenue and profits, and compensation is the best lever to motivate sales people. The management truism, "what gets measured gets managed and what gets awarded gets done," is spot on. Sales representatives are much more likely to work towards a company's strategic goals when properly motivated by well-designed, accurately calculated, and frequently communicated sales compensation plans.

Achieving these goals requires a proper technology foundation - one that supports agility, speed, accuracy, reporting and analysis. Unfortunately, in most organizations, this technology foundation is absent. In fact, most companies today manage sales compensation programs with Excel spreadsheets and Access databases.

As a result, sales executives are handcuffed by slow, rigid, and unsophisticated systems that provide no strategic value, and sales representatives are frustrated and de-motivated by delays, errors, and uncertainties in their commission payments.

The result is the Performance Gap. The Performance Gap is the delta between the performance results executives expect from their sales compensation programs -- and the technological capability to support achievement of those results. This white paper will examine the issues surrounding the Performance Gap and discuss how executives can bridge that gap to gain strategic benefits from their sales compensation programs.  

CRM Magazine's "Real ROI - Best Practices and Proven Results" is a special section that explores how companies can -and do- generate measurable ROI through technology innovation.

In the May 2008 issue (both in print and on-line), CRM Magazine interviews Bruce Carter, Director of IT for Obagi Medical, to examine the real-world ROI benefits gained by deploying Centive Compel.
The results: after deploying Centive Compel, Obagi Medical:

Follow the link below to read Marshall Lager's report on Obagi Medical's use of Centive Compel to automate sales compensation management and drive sales performance.