Read our Co-CEO’s take on compensation trends — featured in WSJ.
Intro text here,
With custom blockquotes, I can add a bunch of optional fields. There's the intro text, and all sorts of information about the author. The coolest part is that any element is optional!
Author N.
Head of Placeholders
Massa tincidunt dui ut ornare. Habitasse platea dictumst vestibulum rhoncus est pellentesque elit ullamcorper dignissim

Named a Strong Performer in “The Forrester Wave™: Sales Performance Management Platforms, Q1 2023”

Tour the Product
Explore our new thought leadership hub for all things incentive compensation management
See what's new

Spreadsheets Beware: CaptivateIQ is Coming for Sales Planning

Table of Contents

Leveraging our expertise in replacing spreadsheets for commissions, CaptivateIQ Planning will help revenue teams unify their territory, quota, and incentive processes to get the most out of their GTM resources.

Seven years ago, our founders set out on a journey to remove tedious spreadsheets and rigid legacy systems from the commissions process after experiencing the pain firsthand. Now, seven years later, in a completely new era focused on efficient growth, these same problems persist, just in adjacent spaces, Revenue teams everywhere are looking to get the most out of their go-to-market (GTM) resources with optimal territories, quotas, and incentives, yet their sales planning processes are still handcuffed by siloed data and manual spreadsheets, making it difficult to optimize those programs effectively. 

That’s why CaptivateIQ is branching beyond incentives to introduce CaptivateIQ Planning, our purpose-built solution to transform the territory and quota planning process. Leveraging our expertise in eliminating spreadsheets from commissions for more than 800 leading organizations like Affirm, Gong and Figma, we’re applying that same approach to sales planning. With CaptivateIQ Planning, you get the best of spreadsheets with advanced, purpose-built software features. As the market’s first fully-native, purpose-built Sales Performance Management solution, CaptivateIQ empowers you to get the most out of your resources and drive sustainable growth.

Territory & Quota Planning Explained

Territory and quota planning is the process of aligning your sales resources with the most promising market opportunities. It involves distributing accounts, balancing sales territories, assigning sales reps, and setting achievable quotas that reflect both the potential of each territory and the strengths of your sales team. Done effectively, it ensures that sales efforts are focused where they can have the most impact, maximizing performance and revenue.

Introducing CaptivateIQ Planning: The Solution to Your Territory & Quota Planning Problem

CaptivateIQ Planning empowers revenue leaders to build and align their unique territory & quota plans, maximizing GTM effectiveness with a single platform. With CaptivateIQ in place, these leaders can plan more efficiently, maximize territory effectiveness, and keep their teams productive along the way with a tool that’s built for the complexity of the territory and quota planning process.  

On top of that, the solution complements your overall Sales Performance Management (SPM) strategy by ensuring that your territories and quotas are aligned with your broader sales incentives with CaptivateIQ Incentives. By doing so, it helps drive consistent, focused execution across your entire sales force, leading to better results and higher morale.

[QUOTE | quote: The sales planning process has long been plagued by chaotic spreadsheets and complex software that just haven't cut it. As a long-time CaptivateIQ Incentives customer, I've seen firsthand how they bridge these gaps for commissions. That's why I was so excited to see them bringing the same innovation and simplicity to sales planning. | name: Rosalyn Santa Elena | title: Founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer, TheRevOps Collective | image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/66e4a016d6fefb40a20f9615_rosalyn_santa_elena%20(1).jpeg |]

The Clear Next Step for CaptivateIQ

While there are many reasons for CaptivateIQ to invest into the Sales Planning space, a few stand out above the rest: 

  • Tackling the known & significant pain of Sales Planning:  For many companies, the sales planning process is fraught with significant pain points. It’s often slow and disjoined, with key information often living in people’s heads. This all results in unbalanced territories and misaligned teams that struggle to meet their goals, with serious implications including missed revenue targets, lost opportunities, and frustrated, unmotivated sales teams.
  • Breaking down incentive, territory & quota silos: CaptivateIQ Planning will not only solve these pains, but also drive better alignment of territory and quotas with your sales incentives. Misalignment between these two can lead to unmotivated teams and inconsistent performance, whereas tight alignment drives focus and execution.
  • Addressing another modeling problem hindered by spreadsheets: Similarly to commissions, Sales Planning is a modeling problem with a widespread reliance on spreadsheets. While familiar and flexible, spreadsheets are prone to errors, inefficiencies, and lack the real-time collaboration teams need. This is a problem CaptivateIQ has solved before, and has the experience & technology with SmartGrid to solve again. Take a self-paced product tour.
[QUOTE | quote: Sales planning and incentive compensation are both critical parts of the sales operations ecosystem, so today’s announcement comes as a natural expansion. Businesses are under pressure to maximize every go-to-market resource, yet managing territories, quotas, and incentives across multiple tools and spreadsheets has proven ineffective. We’re proud to now offer a solution that streamlines these processes, help our customers drive performance and consistently hit their targets. | name: Mark Schopmeyer | title: Co-founder and Co-CEO, CaptivateIQ | image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/66e4a016e4dc55fecce43d57_Mark%20headshot%20(4).jpeg |]

Solving Sales Planning End-to-End  

So how does it actually work? CaptivateIQ Planning takes an end-to-end approach to the Sales Planning process. With this solution, revenue operations teams can:  

  • Connect & prep their data from any source: CaptivateIQ takes the pain out of data management, helping you get your data planning-ready in a fraction of the time.
Features Include:  Data Integrations  ·  Data Management ·  Connection to Incentives
  • Build & optimize territory & quota plans that fit their business: Identify the optimal account balance using CaptivateIQ Planning’s modeling engine  and allocate accounts accordingly.
Features Include:  GTM Structure Modeling  ·  Real-time Impact Analysis  ·  Rules-based Crediting  Account Dealer
  • Align with their teams from a centralized source: Cut out the clunky back and forth between sales and ops with a suite designed for collaboration.
Features Include:  Automated Permissions  ·  Commenting  Version Control & Comparison

A Truly Different Sales Planning Experience

While others have tried to tackle the Sales Planning problem, CaptivateIQ has taken an entirely new approach: 

  • Purpose-built for Sales Planning: While some solutions like spreadsheets have an overly agnostic approach to the Sales Planning problem, CaptivateIQ is bringing purpose-built tech to the table, like our powerful Account Dealer and seamless collaboration experience.   
  • Modeling Centricity Powered by SmartGrid: Unlike other players in the space that have tried to pigeon hole Sales Plans into a standardized box, CaptivateIQ, at its core is a modeling-centric platform, allowing you to create, test, and refine different territory and quota scenarios before committing to a plan. This ensures that you’re always making data-driven decisions that will yield the best results.
  • Connected Operations Experience: While other vendors have tried to solve the Sales Planning problem in a vacuum, or piece together acquired solutions, CaptivateIQ Planning will be deeply connected to your incentive structures, living natively next to CaptivateIQ Incentives. By integrating territory and quota planning with your incentive programs, it ensures that your sales strategies are fully optimized and that your team is motivated and aligned with your business goals.

Planning + Incentives: A Match Made in Sales Ops Heaven

Sales Planning and Incentive Compensation Management are both critical parts of the sales operations and strategy ecosystem. With CaptivateIQ plugging into key data sources (including your CRM, ERP, HRIS, and more), analysts can aggregate that data, build their plans, manage those plans, analyze performance and then optimize based on those insights, allowing operations teams to approach their sales processes more thoughtfully and holistically.

In the end, CaptivateIQ Incentives focuses on ensuring that your sales team is motivated and rewarded correctly, while CaptivateIQ Planning ensures that your territories and quotas are set up in a way that maximizes your team’s potential and effectiveness. Together, they provide a complete solution that drives sales performance and helps your organization hit its targets consistently.

Already Unlocking Customer Value

CaptivateIQ partnered for months with leading sales and revenue operations professionals to understand their biggest pains and gather feedback on what we were building. We now have CaptivateIQ Planning being leveraged by a number of existing CaptivateIQ Incentives customers like Bloomreach to transform their sales planning process. 

[QUOTE | quote: Our sales planning process used to be bogged down by a massive, unwieldy spreadsheet, leading to inconsistencies and inefficiencies. With CaptivateIQ Planning, we've transformed how we manage territories and quotas—streamlining the entire process, optimizing our plans, and aligning our incentives for better results across the board. | name: Adam Edmiston | title: Associate Director, Revenue Operations and Strategy, Bloomreach | image: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/5e20acf46e0215232a00fa2f/66e1be6c2da9d6264ca690f9_AdamEdmiston.jpeg |]

See How You Can Simplify Sales Planning with CaptivateIQ

CaptivateIQ Planning is currently only available to CaptivateIQ Incentives customers. 

If you’re an existing CaptivateIQ Incentives customer, now is the perfect time to explore CaptivateIQ Planning. Request a demo from our team to see how these two powerful tools can work together to optimize your sales strategies.

Not an existing customer but interested in seeing how CaptivateIQ Incentives and Planning can help drive your sales success? Request a demo or take a self-guided product tour.

If you’re not an existing customer but are focused on improving just your territory and quota planning, subscribe to our mailing list to stay attuned to the latest updates. 

Conclusion

In today’s era of efficient growth, optimizing your go-to-market resources is essential for success. CaptivateIQ Planning is designed to help you do just that, by transforming how you approach territory and quota planning. Combined with CaptivateIQ Incentives, it offers a comprehensive solution for driving sales performance and achieving your revenue goals. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to elevate your sales operations—get started with CaptivateIQ Planning today.

Only CaptivateIQ helps businesses drive true Return On Incentives

Talk to our commission plan experts to learn how you can make commissions a strategic growth driver.

Image Desciprtion