Marketing Compensation: Is the Customer the Foundation of Your Marketing Compensation?

Does money motivate you?  Incentive compensation is one of those controversial organizational issues that every company must tackle in some shape or form.   Typically, when I read about compensation in business press, the topic isn’t specifically in reference to the marketing function or marketing compensation.

Today, I ran across an article on Forbes.com written by Mike Linton, former Chief Marketing Officer of both eBay and Best Buy.   It was titled, Marketing Compensation: You Get What You Pay For.

Mr. Linton made a great point by telling a tale of how a restaurant might operate if you compensated each individual based solely on their specific job task without taking the entire customer experience into account — in other words — you wouldn’t want to step foot in that restaurant I’m sure.

Since the article was about marketing compensation, he highlighted how incentive compensation within specific jobs in the marketing function could work at odds against each other.   He concluded by providing these two insights into marketing compensation:

1.  Everyone should be accountable for sales and profit.

2.  Everyone should share responsibility for the entire customer experience.

Mike Linton went on to make a great point, of which I share the same opinion, that the customer must be at the center of the compensation plan for marketers.   He did acknowledge that some individual accountability should be in place; however, it should not be front and center. 

The marketing function requires teamwork to provide the customer with the best possible experiences…working together towards that goal should be built into the marketing compensation framework.   I’d love to hear what you think.