Incentive, Compensation and Sales Performance Management

Many readers and friends have been asking me about how to get a consulting job in the field of Incentive Compensation Management / Sales Performance Management. There are several ways to achieve this.

1. Get a job with a large Management/IT consulting company (such as IBM or Accenture) working in that area and have them train you. That's how I got there.
2. Get a job with a consulting company specializing in these areas (either a large firm like Towers Perrin or a smaller firm like nGenera). This may be harder to do if you have no experience.
3. Look at job boards for interesting jobs. There are often good opportunities posted on dice.com, and monster.com, etc. There are also specialized job boards such as the career opportunities page of World at Work and the Canadian Professional Sales Association's job board.
4. If you have business or technical skills, you could look for any job with an SPM Solution Vendor and move into a consulting job.
5. Get a related position in the industry; once you have a bit of experience, you can move on to a consulting company.
6. Get some experience! Most vendors offer free Webinars, giving a good overview of their products. There are also dozens of books on the topic! If you can afford it, World at Work offer many courses and certifications. SPM software vendors also usually offer training on their products.
7. If you are interested with the implementation aspect of ICM/SPM you could learn a Customer Relationship Management package such as SugarCRM. You may never use SugarCRM ever again, but at least it will be something to add on your resume (experience implementing an on-demand CRM software package).
8. Participate to my blog, ask questions, build your knowledge.
9. Click on my adds (just kidding)
10. The most important recommendation last: Network, make contacts. Join a local professional chapter of World at Work or the CPSA... Attend all the conferences you can afford and introduce yourself to everyone you meet and have plenty of business cards to hand out.
11. Contact me, I often hear about openings but I don't always have someone in mind to recommend. I may be able to help out and share your resume...