There’s no point having a performance system in place without being able to track it. Just like your marketing and advertising dollars shouldn’t be spent blindly, neither should you’re bonus or performance pay.
You can measure sales compared to last year’s sales. To last month’s sales. You can do this for each individual employee. When you see a climb or a dip in the chart, it’s probably a good idea to call that employee aside and ask them what they think the cause of the increase or decrease is.
If it’s a decrease, help them to work it out and give them specific suggestions on what they should do to improve. If it’s an increase, great. Ask them what they’ve been doing and explain it (or get them to explain it) to the other employees.
As a teenager, one of my first jobs was working for a sports retail shop. One summer the owner put in a performance system where all employees would get a percentage of increased sales compared to the month or year before. The managers would get a higher percentage than the senior staff, and they higher than us entry-level workers. The result was that each of us worked harder to promote sales. Remember customers don’t buy if they’re not happy, so that meant being more friendly and helpful.
We had a great summer that year and I got a big pay check for a kid who just entered high school. What you want to keep in mind is that implementing pay for performance systems do work. They are easy to implement and as I said before, if done properly, will create a win-win situation.