1. Making New Sales? Or Keeping the Old?

Legacy IT companies have to balance competing interests when migrating their sales forces to the world of cloud and recurring revenue.

On one hand, businesses want to reward reps that acquire new customers or expand existing customers into next-generation products and services. But on the other hand, DiMisa said companies want to protect the windfall from core products such as enterprise hardware and software.

“Companies are hesitant to cannibalize that revenue,” DiMisa said.

DiMisa also cautioned partners on the limit of what a quality compensation plan can achieve, saying it can reward the right behavior by salespeople but adding that more is needed to drive sales in the right areas.

“A compensation plan is not necessarily a mechanism for managing your sales force,” he said.