The Challenge: Spreadsheets That Couldn’t Keep Up
Echo360 ran commissions out of a spreadsheet until its sales team grew too large for that to work. Kyle flagged the problem directly to his CFO.
“If we continue through spreadsheets, it’s going to take me a lot longer to manage this,” Kyle told him. The CFO agreed it wasn’t a viable route and told Kyle to look into tools and report back.
Beyond the workload issue, the spreadsheets had a visibility problem too.
Reps could only see one month at a time and in a single statement with no sense of where they stood for the quarter or the year.
“They didn’t know how they stood year-to-date,” Kyle said. “We didn’t have proper quota attainment tracking… it was only one month at a time that they could view.”
Ten Vendors, and a Choice Over Salesforce’s Own Tool
So, with the CFO’s approval, Kyle kicked off a thorough evaluation of tools.
He built a list of about ten vendors using web searches, reviews, and AI-generated comparisons, then reached out to all of them.
“This was the first software purchase that I have been directly involved with at a larger-scale company,” Kyle said. “I wanted to make sure I made the right decision.”
Two vendors stood out immediately: Salesforce’s own native commission tool, since Echo360 already runs on Salesforce, and QuotaPath. Both responded quickly and had real product details available online, rather than marketing pages promising capability without showing it.
Kyle’s must-haves came down to a short list:
- Support that didn’t require him to personally build and maintain the tool
- An implementation that wouldn’t take months to get right
- User-friendly features
- Pricing that wouldn’t strain the budget.
Weighed against those criteria, and even against Echo360’s own CRM vendor, Salesforce, QuotaPath won out.
A Purchase-to-Onboarding Process That Built Confidence Early
As a first-time software buyer at this scale, Kyle had to figure out the process as he went: what his CFO needed, what IT’s security review required, what legal needed to review in the terms. Every time he reached out to QuotaPath with a request, the response came back fast.
“It was typically within a day, within a few hours, that we got responses,” Kyle said. “Everyone was able to answer and resolve all issues quickly, so it wasn’t a hard decision to be like, is this the right tool to choose? We knew that this was the right one to go with.”
That responsiveness carried into implementation.
Josh, Kyle’s CSM at QuotaPath, gave Kyle as much or as little hands-on involvement as he wanted.
“If I could say, hey, we need this fixed, you do it, he would do it,” Kyle said. “Or I could say, oh, I want to know how to build this out, and he would walk me through it so I can at least be competent in the tool. It was a very smooth process overall.”
Catching What a Spreadsheet Missed
For July payouts, Kyle ran QuotaPath and his spreadsheet in parallel as a final check before rolling QuotaPath out fully. Even running both at once, QuotaPath was faster. Then, on a final double-check, he found a gap in his own spreadsheet.
“I noticed there was one component of one deal under one rep that I had forgotten to carry over in the spreadsheet,” Kyle said. “The rep closes the deal, but the manager gets an override… I had missed one of those carryovers to a manager, but QuotaPath already had that there.”
The effect showed up immediately in his inbox. Kyle typically fields 10 to 15 rep questions after sending monthly statements.
This time, he got one or two, and they weren’t corrections.
“Those little questions were more like, ‘ Oh, did this close August 1st versus July 30th?” Kyle said. “There weren’t actually errors to correct.”
Asked whether he’d braced himself the way he normally does before sending statements, Kyle didn’t hesitate.
“I had that same kind of thought, of like, okay, over the next few days I’m going to get questions where I find my problems…And I didn’t.”
More Visibility, for the Whole Team
Echo360 hasn’t rolled QuotaPath out to individual reps just yet. The CFO and VP of Sales are on board, and training reps is next. But Kyle is already thinking about what changes once the whole team is in the tool.
Where spreadsheets showed one month at a time, QuotaPath shows a rep exactly where they stand today: closed deals, quota attainment, and areas that need attention. Managers get the same view across their whole team, once reps are trained on the tool.
“They can see who’s performing well, who might need some more support, who is killing it and should maybe provide some training to the other teammates,” Kyle said of the manager view.
Kyle expects that same visibility to change how quickly issues get resolved once it’s live for the full team. “Instead of getting a spreadsheet, they can now see a line, like, this person is 50% of the way there,” he said. “They don’t have to combine spreadsheets; they don’t have to pick through the data. It’s right there, and it’s easy to take action after that.”
Kyle also expects the accuracy gains to show up on the accounting side, not just in fewer rep questions. Fewer manual errors means fewer prior-period adjustments to expense recognition, more accurate accruals, and a review process where issues surface the day after a deal closes instead of a month later at statement time.
Would He Go Back to Spreadsheets?
Asked if he could imagine returning to a spreadsheet-based process now that he’s seen the alternative, Kyle didn’t need to think it over.
“If I had one or two sales reps, sure,” he said. “On any scale above 10 reps? No.”
The Bottom Line
Before QuotaPath, Echo360’s commission process was:
- Run entirely out of spreadsheets, with reps limited to a single month of visibility at a time
- Vulnerable to missed details, like manager override carryovers, catchable only through manual double-checking
- Generating 10-15 rep questions a month after every payout cycle
- The first major software evaluation Kyle had run, without an established process to fall back on
Today, with QuotaPath, it is:
- Validated side by side with spreadsheets during the transition, catching errors before reps ever see a statement
- Delivering real-time, year-to-date attainment visibility, built out for reps and managers as rollout continues
- Down to 1-2 rep questions after its first side-by-side payout cycle, with none of them actual errors
- Backed by a support team Kyle credits with making a first-time, high-stakes purchase decision easy
“We knew that this was the right one to go with,” Kyle said.
To see how QuotaPath can help your organization replace spreadsheet guesswork with confidence, book time with our team here. can help your organization uncover the true value of comp strategy and transparency, book time with our team here. alesVista, it was how can we fit our plan to SalesVista. With QuotaPath, it’s which is the best QuotaPath method to fit our plan.”
