Ensure incentive plans are competitive, scalable, and financially sound, balancing market practices with internal equity and profitability.
Evaluate plan effectiveness and recommend improvements to drive desired sales behaviors, performance outcomes, and retention of top talent.
Model financial impact, validate plan affordability, and assess payout distributions and performance leverage.
Partner with Financial Planning & Analysis and Accounting to align incentive expense projections with enterprise financial plans, budgets, and outlooks. Present incentive expense outcomes, forecasts, risks, and drivers to executive stakeholders.
Establish consistent incentive design standards including measures, thresholds, accelerators, caps, modifiers, and crediting rules.
Own the annual incentives calendar, including but not limited to plan design updates and approvals, on-time payouts, incentive system/Varicent updates, and other key incentives-related milestones.
Define and maintain sales role and eligibility frameworks.
Ensure incentive plans appropriately reflect role responsibilities, performance expectations, and goal structures.
Partner with Sales Leadership and Compensation to periodically review and evolve roles and plans as the organization changes.
Ensure sales incentive programs comply with company policies, internal controls, and applicable federal and state regulations.
Own process narratives, control evidence, and management responses related to incentive compensation for internal and external audits.
Lead process and service‑level enhancements through strategic use of technology and close collaboration with business partners
Partner with Finance, Internal Audit, and Compliance to design, test, and remediate controls related to incentive calculations, accruals, and payouts.
Partner with Legal and Compliance to review plan documents, resolve issues, and support audit, FDIC and risk management requirements.
Maintain formal documentation, approval processes, governance standards, and exception management protocols. Ensure appropriate governance over assumption changes, plan amendments, true-ups, estimates, and manual adjustments impacting incentive expense.
Monitor incentive plan payouts to ensure plan compliance across lines of business.
Own the end-to-end incentive compensation financial lifecycle, including calculation oversight, monthly and quarterly incentive accruals, validation, true-ups, dispute resolution, and payout readiness.
Partner directly with Finance to ensure accurate, timely, and auditable incentive accruals in alignment with forecast assumptions, plan rules, and accounting guidance.
Develop and monitor performance metrics such as attainment distributions, payout alignment, growth portfolio baselines, and plan effectiveness indicators.
Analyze sales and incentive data to identify trends, risks, and opportunities for continuous improvement.
Partner with HRIS, IT, and Sales Leadership to optimize incentive compensation systems and reporting capabilities.
Develop clear, comprehensive communication materials including plan documents, FAQs, payout examples, incentive estimators, training, and manager toolkits.
Lead plan rollouts, ensuring sellers and leaders understand plan mechanics, performance expectations, and earning opportunities.
Deliver training and ongoing guidance to improve clarity, transparency, and adoption of incentive programs.Executive and Enterprise Partnership
Serve as a trusted advisor to senior executives and sales leaders across all lines of business.
Present incentive strategy recommendations, analyses, and insights to executive stakeholders.
Translate enterprise business strategy into practical and effective incentive structures.
Provide people leadership and strategic direction for sales incentive resources supporting the entire Bank and all lines of business.
Responsible for hiring, coaching, performance management, and development of team members.
Set priorities, ensure consistent execution, and promote best practices across incentive programs enterprise-wide.
Westernalliancebank · Phoenix, AZ