We recently wrote a piece on our blog at http://www.salesresourcegroup.ca/blog/blog.aspx posing the same question; this seems to be a hot-button topic right now.

We followed this article with an informal poll and the results we similar in ranking, however the percentages were slightly different. Of 35 responses, 62% indicated that Sales is responsible for the compensation program. In our survey, more respondents noted that Human Resources(15%) should own the sales comp program than Finance(6%).

What i found most interesting in comparing our results, was the number of respondents that believed there should be a shared responsibility for the sales compensation program. While the shared responsibility option received little consideration in your results, 18% of those who participated in our poll said there should be a shared responsibility between all functional departments (Sales, HR, Finance and IT).

While your research might have been more in-depth than our informal poll, it is still interesting to see the overwhelming belief that Sales should hold responsibility for the compensation program. I think the stronger support for shared responsibility, in our poll, hints at the belief that while Sales should be held accountable for the compensation program, each department should have a hand in it’s development and administration.