Overrides make sense. How better to reward a manager than by basing a percent of their earnings on the performance of the people he or she is supposed to manage. Overrides may rank as an 8 out of 10 on the motivational benefits scale but they rank about 5 out of 10 on the simplicity scale.

Overrides mean you need to track and link the performance of (x) participants to their manager. That's not as easy as directly tracking a manager against his/her own goal but it's not too complicated.

Now Salesman (x) moves to territory (y). How do you get this info (automatically from the client?, from the manager?, do you have "change forms"?), Is there a replacement? Are they from another territory? Do you move performance history with the individual, does one manager lose credit and one gain.

In other words, keeping the updated communication flowing, accurate, timely and fair adds complexity, and the larger the participant base involved in an override, the more complex the administrative adjustments.

This isn't to say you should never use overrides, just understand there is more to them than meets the eye.

The Retroactive to Dollar One Syndrome

Management Reporting How much reporting is enough? The more info a customer wants, the more info you must gather, track, summarize, subtotal, sort and maintain. Don't assume that the client wants to know everything. Have them identify the information that they need to evaluate the program.

The client that wants to know it all

For the client that wants absolutely every fact about his or her program reported including how often the bulk freight carrier delivering the merchandise changes their oil, just give them a friendly reminder that there is almost no information that enough money can't buy. In other words, if you've got the money, we've got the time.

If a customer isn't sure what information they need, as a guideline they should be looking at:

• How many people participated vs. projected
• How many people earned awards vs. projected earnings
• What were the average earnings
• What were the popular awards
• Distribution channel performance (earnings by division, region area etc.)

And most important... Were the program goals achieved.