Let’s be honest. Sales planning has come a long way, but a lot of teams are still stuck in the past. Twenty years ago, success meant getting your comp plans out on time. If the numbers lined up and reps got paid, you called it a win.
Today? That’s the bare minimum. (Though many teams still have trouble with it.)
Now you're expected to deliver profitable growth, move faster, adapt in real time, and make every dollar count. And you can’t do that with disconnected tools, siloed teams, or rigid spreadsheets.
This is exactly what we explored in our recent webinar with KPMG, McKesson, and Varicent: how high-performing revenue teams are rethinking GTM planning and how you can too.
Here are three things the best teams are doing differently.
A decade ago, the goal was getting comp plans out close to the start of the year. If they were accurate, you’d done your job.
But alignment is the new advantage. If your incentive compensation and sales planning aren’t tightly connected, your strategy will always lag behind your market.
When these systems run in silos, plans become outdated the second they launch. And that’s not just inefficient. It’s expensive.
That’s a $10 million mistake. Literally. Learn why—and how to avoid it—in our latest eBook: The $10 Million Mistake: The Sales Planning Gaps That Will Cost You (Unless You Fix Them Now).
Dashboards look great. Reports are helpful. But just seeing the data doesn’t mean your team knows what to do with it.
The best teams don’t just track sales data. They use it. They’re constantly digging and analyzing, then sharing what they find with sellers in insights in a way that actually drives seller behavior. Because behavior is what moves revenue, not another colorful chart.
McKesson's Carlie Bissler, Vice President of Product Management, McKesson Medical-Surgical shares why data visualizations aren’t enough—and why sellers are stuck guessing, even with all the right tools in place:
AI sounds great on paper. Faster decisions. Smarter forecasting. More personalized everything.
But here’s the thing: if your planning, comp, and performance data aren’t connected, AI can’t help. It isn’t a fix. It’s an amplifier. And if it’s amplifying messy, siloed, or outdated data, you’ll just get bad answers faster.
The teams getting real value from AI have already done the groundwork.
Their data is clean. Their systems are integrated. Their metrics are aligned. That foundation allows AI to surface insights that lead to better actions. Things like adjusting capacity plans mid-cycle, refining incentive strategies, or spotting churn risks early enough to do something about them.
Here’s how leading teams are shifting from insight to execution with AI:
The teams pulling ahead in 2025 aren’t necessarily the ones with the biggest budget. They’re the teams who are more aligned. They’re the ones who are using sales planning as a strategic lever to connect compensation, behavior, and performance in one unified motion.
That kind of alignment doesn’t just happen. It’s designed.
Want to see what it looks like in action?
Watch the full webinar with KPMG and McKesson to hear how they’re putting it into practice or download The $10 Million Mistake to see what’s breaking GTM plans today. Discover how leading teams are building smarter, faster, more aligned strategies that actually deliver revenue.