The Challenge: A Manual Process Wearing Down the Wrong Person
Before QuotaPath, Kisi ran commissions out of a spreadsheet, with approvals that could take the better part of a week, handled by Kisi’s Director of Sales on top of her job managing the sales team.
“She was drudging through this, approving deals manually, doing these calculations, and basically doing whatever she needed to do to take care of her sales reps,” Brent said.
The spreadsheet also had a ceiling: no clean way to build in clawbacks, tie payout timing to when a customer actually paid, or test a new plan mechanic without adding more manual tracking.
It was… a lot.
Crawl, Walk, Run: Maturing the Comp Plan
So they turned to QuotaPath to remove this time suck.
Brent describes Kisi’s path with QuotaPath as a steady progression rather than a single overhaul: “How do we get commissions out of a spreadsheet and into something that’s automated? And then from there, how do we add and automate more strategic features of a comp plan, like accelerators and clawbacks, and the timing of when we’re actually paying out?”
To get there, Brent partnered with QuotaPath’s team for both the technical build and the underlying plan strategy, including questions like how similarly sized companies structure account management comp.
“I’ve leaned on the team for structure setup and foundational comp things, like, “Hey, we’re thinking about this type of plan for account managers, how do you guys think about it?’” Brent said.
Clawbacks and Payment Timing Cut Low-Quality Deals
And in Kisi’s three years with QuotaPath, one specific change to comp structure stands out.
With guidance from QuotaPath, Kisi introduced clawbacks and tied commission payout timing to when Kisi actually collected payment from the customer, rather than paying the moment a deal closed.
“We saw a big decrease on our end in just the number of low-quality deals that were coming through, and early cancellations,” Brent said. “Now a rep has a vested interest in just seeing this deal through those early stages, the first 90 days that they’re on board with us. You may give a rep quota credit today, but they actually aren’t going to get the commission payment until Kisi’s paid, until the company’s paid.”
Mechanics like that are tedious to run out of a spreadsheet, which is likely why a lot of companies don’t try. Automated in QuotaPath, they became a lever Brent could pull with a measurable effect on deal quality.
A Comp Plan Reps Actually Trust
Brent called out, though, that plan mechanics like clawbacks only work if reps understand and trust them.
“I was a seller at one point, and I had to deal with comp plans and all of this stuff, and I didn’t have the transparency and access to tools like QuotaPath at the time,” he said. “QuotaPath makes it easy for reps to understand it, have confidence in it, focus on high commission actions on their part, and not worry about the comp plan.”
That matters because, in his experience, comp plan changes rarely get the benefit of the doubt.
“Almost every change is viewed negatively. Unless it’s incredibly obvious that this is going to make me more money, the default reaction is, ‘…this is another change that’s going to make it harder for me to make money,’” Brent said.
Having the plan itself, and the math behind it, visible in QuotaPath removes a lot of that suspicion before it starts.
Scaling to a Second Team, and Testing New Ideas
When Kisi began building out its account management org, comp plan design scaled right alongside it. Brent’s team currently runs a live component tied to multiple SKUs or line items on a single deal, meant to push up initial deal value before an account ever reaches the AM team.
Asked whether he’d be willing to test that kind of component without a system like QuotaPath in place, Brent said: “I wouldn’t even do it. It’s just so much of a pain to do manually.”
Tracking which deals had a certain number of line items over a certain value, and whether the rep had also hit quota before an accelerator applied, isn’t the kind of logic he’d want to maintain by hand.
That’s changed how his team approaches new ideas generally. “It’s so powerful that I often look to QuotaPath first when we have ideas to see if it’s something we can pull off before I go back to my team with the change.”
The Rippling Integration: From 20 Hours to 5 Minutes
The change with the most direct impact on Brent’s own workload has been Kisi’s integration between QuotaPath and Rippling, its payroll provider. What used to be a 20 to 40 hour manual effort each cycle, run by a sales leader who had better things to do, is now a 3 to 5 minute task once a month.
“Anytime it takes something longer, it’s because of a mistake I’ve made,” Brent said, pointing to a field mapping issue or unclean data on his end rather than any friction in the integration itself.
More Than Software: A Comp Plan Thought Partner
We asked Brent why Kisi has stayed on QuotaPath for three years. Yes, the automation is nice, but the partnership pis stronger.
“If we left QuotaPath, my first question is, what would we do instead? Because we’re not going to do this manually,” he said. “The savings in time is a big one, but then also just the intangible of being able to have another person to collaborate with that has seen customers do this the right way, the wrong way, the complicated way, and can advise me in a certain direction, is priceless.”
That collaboration tends to happen informally, split about evenly between QuotaPath’s account management and support teams. “I’ll record a quick Loom video, here’s what I’m trying to do, and the beautiful thing is they respond right back with a Loom video,” Brent said. “There’s a lot of thoughtful, contextual answers specific to what I’m trying to achieve, not just a support article I read and still have questions about.”
Advice for Other RevOps Leaders
Asked what he’d tell another RevOps leader evaluating comp platforms, Brent pointed to a short list of fundamentals: the software needs to be able to support plans with accelerators, decelerators, clawbacks, and control over when something counts toward quota versus when it actually gets paid out, with the flexibility to change those mechanics over time.
Beyond that feature set, he framed the real test as whether the system becomes the source of truth for commissioned employees.
“I go in here to see what my comp plan is. I go in here to calculate and see and forecast my commissions, so that I don’t need to ask somebody every day, how much is this deal worth, am I close to hitting plan,” he said. “If it’s not doing that, you’re probably leaving a lot of opportunity on the table in terms of the amount of workload that can be taken off your plate.”
And he’d tell them not to underestimate the value of having someone to build with.
“A lot of people, myself included until I trained myself otherwise, will be like, I’m going to figure this out and get it done myself,” he said. “I’ve been able to record a Loom video, this is what I’m trying to do, I think I have the backbone of this up, can you help me get to the next stage? That’s immensely valuable when you’re trying to get one of these core things for your business up and running.”
The Bottom Line
Before QuotaPath, Kisi’s compensation was:
- Calculated manually out of a spreadsheet by a sales leader who had a team to run
- Missing plan mechanics like clawbacks and payment-timed payouts
- Limited to one team, with new plan ideas too costly to test by hand
- A source of quiet doubt for reps who couldn’t easily see how their own pay worked
Today, with QuotaPath it is:
- Automated and integrated directly with Rippling, cutting a 20-40 hour process to minutes
- Built around clawbacks and payout timing that have measurably reduced low-quality deals
- Live across both sales and account management, with room to keep expanding
- Transparent enough that reps trust what they see and stop thinking about it
“If you nail the comp plan, everything else falls into place,” Brent said. “QuotaPath and the people there have been really helpful with us in honing in on nailing the comp plan, beyond just the execution of the automation. How should this actually work?”
To see how QuotaPath 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.”
