Your comp plan is your real sales strategy. Whatever the plan pays for is what your team will do, regardless of what the strategy deck says. If leadership wants multi-year deals, new logos, and healthy margins, but the plan pays only on bookings, expect short contracts, discounting, and upsells to existing accounts.
Principles that hold up
- Keep it simple. A seller should be able to calculate their own commission on a napkin. Two or three measures at most.
- Pay for what you want more of. If new logos matter, weight them. If margin matters, tie a portion of pay to it.
- Set achievable quotas. A healthy plan has most of the team between 80% and 120% of quota. If only a few reps hit it, the quota is the problem.
- Reward overperformance. Accelerators above quota keep your best people motivated past the finish line.
Test it before you launch it
Run last year's actual deals through the new plan. Look at what each seller would have earned, and whether the plan would have paid more for the deals you wanted. You will find surprises, and it is much better to find them in a spreadsheet than in a resignation letter.
Revisit annually, not constantly
Changing comp mid-year erodes trust fast. Make changes at the start of the plan year, explain the reasoning, and give sellers the model so they can see exactly how they earn.
We start by understanding where revenue is stuck, then scope the work to fit.
