Read Time: 5 Minutes
Your reps have a comp plan.
It has accelerators. Kickers. Bumps.
And nobody on the team can explain how they get paid.
Short answer: Keep your comp plan simple. Pick 1 or 2 things that make a deal great for your business this year, like longer contracts or cash up front, and pay more for those. Then spike the rate for a short time, let it become normal, and move to the next thing.
This one comes from my podcast with Ryan Milligan. He is the CRO at QuotaPath, a commissions tool. He joined 5 years ago to run RevOps, then took over sales, marketing, and account management. He has done about 500 comp plan reviews.
When reps can't explain how they get paid, they stop aiming. They sell whatever they can close and hope it pays. Every extra kicker or bump makes the plan harder to read. So the plan stops steering reps toward the deals you want. A plan a rep can say in 1 sentence works better.
Ryan sees this all the time.
"People make their comp plans way too complicated"
He lists the usual add-ons. "accelerators, decelerators, kickers, bumps, whatever."
And then what happens next: "And then the rep is flabbergasted. And when they don't understand their comp plan, they just throw whatever against the wall to see what sticks."
His view is that the plan is a tool most teams don't use well. In his words, "your comp plan is this hidden tool to drive your sellers to close better revenue for your business".
It's Ryan's rule for keeping a plan simple. Pick 1 or 2 "toppings" on a deal that make it great for your business this year. Pay more when a rep brings those in. Skip the rest. Then change the toppings when the business needs something new. Two clear extras beat 6 confusing ones.
Ryan calls it "one to two things on a deal that tell you that this is a great deal for the business."
His examples:
The key is the year. He says "whatever your business needs this year, use your comp plan to drive your sellers to close more of that type of revenue."
Next year, the needs change. So the plan changes too.
Spike the commission rate for the deal type you want, for one quarter. Tell reps up front it's short term. Budget for it. Reps will chase the higher rate, close a bunch, and get comfortable selling it. Then shave the bonus down once it feels normal, and pick the next thing to push.
This is how QuotaPath changed the shape of its revenue.
When Ryan joined, "we were primarily selling month-to-month contracts." They used the comp plan to move "primarily to annual contracts and then now all two-year plus contracts."
Here is the move he described:
"Tell a rep, hey, you're gonna make 2x your base rate if you sell three-year deals this quarter and see what they do."
What reps do next is simple. "And they'll just only offer three-year quotes, right? Because they want to make money."
Then you pull it back. "you can shave that accelerator down over time." And you plan for the cost. "You build a budget for it and experiment with it."
The steps:
Ryan thinks yes. At QuotaPath every rep level has a set base and variable, and the whole team can see it. Reps talk anyway, so secret deals cause bad feelings. Open pay also means two reps get the same rate for the same kind of deal. That makes the plan fair and easy to forecast.
QuotaPath uses a 50/50 split of base and variable. Each rep level has its own pay band. In Ryan's words, "everybody knows what everyone's making."
Why do it? Side deals leak.
"all that stuff breeds like contempt within your team. They all talk to each other."
So "you might as well just be open about it."
It also fixes a common mess. You "avoid where you're paying different commission rates for a new business deal based on who closed it."
Same goes for hiring. "the OTE is right in the job posting." And "there's no negotiation after the fact."
And the bar is clear. Ryan's team has to hit 90 to 95% of quota in a quarter to make the revenue plan. A rep under 80% for 2 quarters in a row knows a plan or an exit is likely. That rule is shared on day 1, so it doesn't feel personal.
Ryan says RevOps should lead it, with sales and finance giving input. RevOps does the math on how to hit revenue goals. Sales decides how to staff the team to get there. Finance protects cash. RevOps sits in the middle and keeps it fair. Both sides want the same thing anyway.
His take: "RevOps is really well suited to captain your comp and quota process".
A lot of RevOps leaders tell him they never get to do strategic work. His answer is to take the comp plan. "It's like literally the most strategic thing you could possibly do."
And it doesn't need to be a fight. "people tend to consider comp plan design this all-out war where sales and finance are going to fight each other". He says "both of them are just looking to pay a lot of money to reps who are closing great revenue for the business."
As he put it, "I think that's what great RevOps is, right? It's like building a system that's easy to admin and use."
Run the hiring process like a sales process. Ryan watches how a candidate sells themselves, because that's how they will sell for him. Do deep research. Follow up fast. Talk to other reps on the team. Show up with a clear reason for this job. Bring work that shows how you'd do it.
Ryan's rule: "how clean of a process they can run as a candidate for this role is how clean of a process they can run to be an employee on my team."
He looks for "prompt next steps, multi-threading to other stakeholders in the organization".
One account manager built an ROI tool for QuotaPath before her interview. She showed him how she'd use it with a customer. His reaction: "Okay, we have to hire this person."
His advice for job seekers: "narrow the scope of the jobs that you're applying for". And be curious. "intellectual curiosity is so important to me."
A quick check on your own comp plan:
If any answer makes you wince, your plan is paying reps to sell the wrong deals.
One more thing for Salesforce teams. You can only reward a "great deal" if the CRM tracks it. If you want to pay more for 2-year contracts, contract length needs to be a clean, required field on the deal.
More on this: Pipeline hygiene rules that stop your AEs from gaming the number, Stop your Salesforce forecast from lying to you every Monday, and How do I build Salesforce opportunity stages AEs will actually use?
Your comp plan tells reps what to sell.
Keep it to 1 or 2 extras. Tie them to this year's goals. Spike, settle, repeat. And let RevOps run the math.
1 or 2. Ryan Milligan calls this the pizza topping rule. Each extra should match something the business needs this year, like longer contracts or cash up front. More than that, and reps stop knowing what to aim for.
50/50. Ryan says QuotaPath's research on its customers shows most new business selling uses that split, and it makes the math easier. Every rep level has a set base and variable that the whole team can see.
Ryan's example is one quarter. Tell reps up front it's short term, budget for it, then shave it down once the new deal type feels normal.
No. Ryan's view is that paying two reps different rates for the same kind of new business deal makes no sense for the business. Same deal, same rate.
RevOps should lead it, with heavy input from sales leaders and finance. RevOps does the math on revenue goals, sales plans the team, and finance protects cash flow.
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