This is a guest blog written by Paul Aroloye.

Are you looking for ways to streamline your sales compensation process and maximize your team’s performance? Look no further than AI-powered strategies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the sales landscape, creating new opportunities for optimizing compensation strategies.

With its potential to analyze vast amounts of data, predict trends, and automate tasks, AI promises a future where sales compensation is fair, motivating, and conducive to business growth.

In this guide, we’ll dive into 9 AI-powered strategies that can help you optimize your sales compensation plan and propel your team toward success. Are you curious how AI could reshape your current compensation model?

Let’s dive in!

Model and Predict Compensation

With QuotaPath, plan and predict the cost and performance of your compensation plan before putting it into effect.

Learn More

Understanding AI in Sales Compensation

AI in sales compensation involves leveraging intelligent systems to manage and enhance the reward process for sales teams.

Conventional methods of sales compensation involve manual calculation and distribution, which often result in errors and bias, negatively impacting the morale of the sales personnel.

AI, however, mitigates these issues through algorithms designed to ensure precision, fairness, and adaptability. These algorithms analyze diverse data sets, including sales performance, market trends, and individual targets, to generate compensation plans that motivate and reward appropriately.

This allows AI to transform sales compensation from a mere administrative task to a strategic tool that aligns the sales team’s efforts with the company’s goals.

Why Should You Use AI-Powered Strategies for Compensation Optimization

Just like an AI comic generator saves time and resources while promoting creativity, incorporating AI into your compensation strategies can bring remarkable benefits to your sales operations. 

Here are a few reasons why you should consider the shift:

• Enhanced Accuracy: With AI, you’re less likely to encounter errors in commission calculations, which are commonplace in manual processes. 
• Real-time Adjustments: AI systems can analyze real-time performance data to see if you need to adjust compensation plans. You could see an immediate reward increase if you’re outperforming your targets.
• Fairness and Transparency: AI removes bias, ensuring each team member is compensated based on their performance. Tech giants like Google are already utilizing AI to analyze and rectify pay disparities.
• Scalability: As your sales team grows, manually managing compensation can become daunting. AI can effortlessly scale up, saving you from hours of administrative work.
• Informed Decision-making: AI’s predictive analytics capability can help plan future compensation strategies. Companies like Adobe use AI to forecast sales and optimize their compensation plans.
• Employee Motivation: By providing a clear and fair link between performance and reward, AI-powered compensation can significantly boost your team’s morale and motivation.
• Cost Savings: Automating tasks associated with compensation management can lead to substantial cost savings. A study by Forbes reported that AI could boost profits by 38% by 2035, partly due to reduced labor costs.

Key AI-Powered Strategies for Compensation Optimization

Now that we’ve seen the benefits of AI in sales compensation, let’s explore 9 strategies to optimize your compensation plan:

1. Predictive Analytics for Sales Performance

The first step to leveraging AI in sales compensation is analyzing your data to identify patterns and trends. By analyzing vast amounts of historical and real-time data, AI can predict future sales performance and guide your compensation strategy.

Imagine you’re no longer basing your compensation plans on guesswork and formulas in spreadsheets but on data-driven insights. This can bring a new level of fairness and transparency to your compensation structure.

Moreover, linking performance to compensation becomes seamless with AI. AI algorithms can track individual performances and tie rewards directly to outcomes.

This means if you’re outperforming your peers, your efforts are rewarded appropriately. This strategy motivates your team and fosters a healthy competitive environment.

2. Dynamic Commission Structures

Thanks to AI, keeping your commission structures static is a thing of the past. With Artificial Intelligence, you can adapt your commission structures based on real-time insights.

Imagine a scenario where your sales team closes deals left and right, exceeding the targets much earlier than anticipated.

Insights from AI can help flag when it’s necessary to adjust commission rates to reward overperformance. This dynamic approach ensures that your team’s hard work is consistently recognized and rewarded, driving a more productive and motivated sales force.

3. AI-Enhanced Sales Quotas

The third strategy involves leveraging AI to set and adjust sales quotas. Traditional quotas are often based on past performance, industry benchmarks, or guesswork.

AI can offer a more accurate approach by analyzing historical data, current market trends, and individual team members’ capabilities to set realistic, challenging targets.

This strategy ensures that your team is consistently challenged and sets them up for success by providing attainable goals.

4. Real-Time Performance Feedback

Embracing the power of AI doesn’t just enhance your compensation strategies; it also revolutionizes how you give feedback.

Gone are the days of waiting for quarterly or annual reviews. With AI analytics, you can provide your team with real-time performance feedback.

Think of it this way: you are not just telling your team how they’re doing but showing them with tangible data. This enables them to see where they excel and where they can improve, facilitating continuous growth and learning.

Plus, with instant feedback, your team can immediately adjust their strategies and efforts for better results. So, you’re not just motivating with rewards but also encouraging self-improvement

5. Sales Gamification with AI

Sales gamification with AI is another strategy on our list. By incorporating elements of game design, such as competition, challenges, and rewards, into your sales compensation plan, you can significantly boost motivation and engagement levels.

Picture this: your sales reps accumulate points for every customer interaction, deal closed, or target achieved. These points could be redeemed for rewards or recognition, feeding into your compensation plan.

The competitive element also fuels the drive to perform and score higher points. AI comes into play by tracking performance, tallying points, and even offering real-time leaderboards.

Integrating gaming elements into your compensation strategy can keep motivation high and make achieving sales targets more fun!

6. Customer Segmentation for Targeted Sales

In the world of sales, understanding your customers is paramount. But how do you identify your most valuable customer segments? Here’s where AI comes to your rescue.

AI algorithms sift through mountains of customer data, analyzing patterns and behaviors to identify high-value customer segments.

These customers bring the most profit and are most likely to remain loyal. Suddenly, you’re not just shooting in the dark; you’re targeting your efforts where they’ll make the most impact. Your sales outreach and cold emails can be more targeted than ever. 

By focusing on high-value customers, you ensure your sales efforts – and subsequently, your sales compensation – are invested wisely. So, you’re not just rewarding sales but smart sales.

7. Adaptive Pricing Strategies

Dynamic pricing, guided by AI algorithms, is another sales game-changer.

Picture this: instead of having fixed prices for your products or services, the prices fluctuate based on various factors such as demand, customer behavior, or even time of day. Sounds complex? Well, that’s where AI steps in.

AI algorithms can analyze these factors in real-time and adjust your pricing strategy accordingly, ensuring you’re always pricing your products competitively. This gives you an edge in the market and maximizes your profits.

So, you’re not just making sales; you’re making smart, profitable sales. And the best part? AI handles all the heavy lifting, so you can focus on what you do best – selling.

8. AI-Powered Sales Coaching

This is one of the most exciting applications of AI in sales compensation. With AI-powered coaching, your team can always access personalized training and guidance on their performance.

By analyzing data from customer interactions, deals closed, and more, AI can identify areas where each needs improvement and provide tailored training modules to help them grow.

This boosts overall team performance and motivation and ensures that each team member has the necessary skills to succeed.

With AI-powered coaching, you’re not just compensating for sales but investing in your team’s growth and development.

9. Better Sales Forecasting

Last but certainly not least, AI can significantly improve sales forecasting. AI algorithms can provide accurate predictions for future sales performance by analyzing past sales data and current market trends.

This enables you to set realistic targets and quotas, adjust your resources and strategies accordingly, and make informed decisions about your sales compensation plan.

With better forecasting comes more precise budgeting and more efficient utilization of resources, leading to better overall results.

So, by integrating AI into your sales compensation plan, you’re not just rewarding for current performance; you’re setting your team up for future success.

Ethical Considerations in AI-Driven Compensation

While AI-driven sales compensation has numerous benefits, it is crucial to consider its ethical implications.

• Transparency: Communicate how the AI assesses performance and determines compensation. This helps to maintain trust and fairness in the system.
• Data Privacy: Ensure that the data used by the AI system is managed responsibly and not used for ulterior motives. Be clear about what data is being collected and how it is used.
• Bias and Discrimination: AI systems are not immune to bias. It is crucial to regularly check and correct any biases in the AI algorithms to avoid unfair treatment or discrimination.
• Responsibility and Accountability: Ultimately, the responsibility for fair and ethical compensation lies with the organization. While AI can aid in objective decision-making, human judgment must be the final determinant in sensitive matters like compensation.

Implementation Challenges and Considerations

Transitioning to AI-driven sales compensation is no small venture, and it comes with its fair share of challenges. It’s important to tread carefully and consider these potential roadblocks:

• Technological Constraints: Does your organization have the necessary technological infrastructure and expertise to implement an AI-powered compensation system? If not, are you ready to make that investment?
• Resistance to Change: People are often wary of changes, especially when it involves something as critical as their compensation. Managing this change effectively is essential, communicating the benefits clearly and providing necessary training and support.
• Complexity of AI: AI algorithms can be complex and sometimes incomprehensible. It’s essential to understand how the AI system works to ensure it’s making fair decisions and to be able to explain it to your team.
• Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Depending on your industry and location, specific legal and regulatory requirements may be related to AI and data usage. Make sure your AI-driven sales compensation system meets these requirements.

Implementing AI in sales compensation requires careful planning and consideration. But the right approach can be a powerful tool to motivate your team, maximize profits, and drive your business forward.

Future Trends of AI in Sales Compensation Optimization

As we gaze into the crystal ball, specific trends in AI-enhanced sales compensation start to take shape.

First and foremost, we’re likely to see an ever-increasing adoption of AI across diverse industries. This technology isn’t just a flashy new tool; it’s a game-changer that can boost profitability and productivity like never before.

Secondly, we can expect AI systems to become more intricate and sophisticated; they’ll likely be able to analyze a broader spectrum of data and factors, providing even more precise, tailored compensation strategies.

Lastly, there’s a strong possibility we’ll see a shift towards more transparency in AI operations. As people become more AI-literate, they’ll want to understand how these systems make critical compensation decisions.

Embracing this trend will be vital to maintaining trust and engagement within your team. The future of sales compensation is undeniably tied to AI, and it’s a future that looks bright indeed.

FAQs

Can You Use AI to Set Sales Targets and Quotations?

Yes, AI can set sales targets and quotas by analyzing past sales data and current market trends to provide accurate predictions for future performance. This helps organizations set realistic goals and allocate resources effectively. 

Furthermore, AI can continuously analyze performance data to make adjustments in real time as needed.  Overall, this results in better forecasting accuracy and improved overall performance.

How Can You Ensure the Ethical Use of AI in Sales Compensation?

To ensure the ethical use of AI in sales compensation, organizations should prioritize transparency and communication about how the system works and its decision-making process. Additionally, responsible data management and regular checks for bias are crucial.

Does Implementing AI in Sales Compensation Require a Lot of Technological Expertise?

It depends on the specific AI system being implemented. Some may require more technological expertise than others, but organizations must have the infrastructure and support to implement and maintain an AI-powered compensation system effectively.

Takeaway

In conclusion, integrating AI in sales compensation holds untold potential to revolutionize your business’s performance and profitability.

It is more than a trend; it’s an actionable strategy that can deliver precise forecasting, efficient resource allocation, and an overall boost in your sales team’s performance.

With its ability to tailor compensation strategies, AI brings fairness, motivation, and transparency into your sales compensation plan.

But remember, this transformation requires careful planning, ethical considerations, and an aptitude for change management.

So, are you ready to redefine your sales compensation strategy with the power of AI? Take the decisive step today – embrace AI and witness a paradigm shift in your sales performance.

Author’s Bio

Paul Aroloye owns the #1 AI Review Blog and helps websites rank on Google. You can reach out to him here.

QuotaPath’s new integrations and field calculator provide even more flexibility within our sales compensation management app so that you automate commissions faster and on your terms. 

We understand the importance of meeting our users where they are today within their existing tech stacks.

Hence, we’ve broadened QuotaPath’s integration scope to include more applications and enabled data transformation through straightforward formulas with our new Calculated Fields feature. Moreover, we’ve created processes and UI that make both releases self-serve to remove the guesswork of setting up integrations and manipulating data once up and running.

Read on for the specifics, and look for more releases that help you test, model, and manage sales compensation more effectively and efficiently next month.

Integrations

Our new self-serve integrations allow you to add and edit the tech connections fundamental to your commission process, including data warehouses, spreadsheets, business analytics, and payment and ERP systems. 

New integration sources:

• Chargebee
• Excel
• Google BigQuery
• Google Looker
• JobAdder
• Keap
• Leaflink 
• Maxio (Chargity & SaaSOptics APIs)
• Netsuite
• Smartsheet 
• Snowflake
• Tableau

We continue to increase our customers’ ability to scale and manage their commissions and payouts by building connections to various systems where commission and payment information can live. 

Regarding future integrations, we will continue to look to our customers to prioritize our strategy and ensure we develop valuable integrations with tools that allow them to manage the connections themselves (or with our help as needed). 

Field Calculator

As a result of our integration upgrades, we can now offer Calculated Fields in QuotaPath, a request from our customers to manipulate data from their integrations directly in-app.

For context, the systems used to calculate compensation have been designed for other business needs, such as CRMs for managing customer relations during and after the sales process. Because of this, when it comes to calculating earnings, data from these original deal sources often needs adjusting. This leads to a manually intensive method or more fields to manage within the CRM when you go to automate commission payouts with a platform like QuotaPath. 

Let’s look at annual contract value for multi-year deals, for example.

Your CRM will reflect the total contract value and the term length fields. However, compensation for the deal is based on the annual contract value. So, to get that number, you must divide the contract value by the term length. 

Instead of adding a field to calculate it or running a spreadsheet external to our app, you can transform this data with our Field Calculator by entering a simple formula. This allows users to quickly divide, multiply, add, or subtract fields to get Monthly Recurring Revenue, Annual Contract Total, and more, saving your Ops team time and maintaining the integrity of your data in your deal record system. 

As part of this release, we also launched additional fields so that you can add more context per deal to speed up earnings approvals and payouts. Need to check term length or region when approving earnings? No problem. You can add up to 20 fields per integration source and customize your deals and payout view with these new fields. 

More from QuotaPath

In conclusion, our latest enhancements signify our ongoing commitment to empowering users with greater flexibility and efficiency in sales compensation management. With the introduction of new integrations, users now have the autonomy to seamlessly integrate essential tech connections, ranging from data warehouses to ERP systems, aligning with their unique commission processes.

Moreover, our revamped integrations and improved performance and data flexibility ensure enhanced control and reporting capabilities. Notable enhancements include reduced data load times, expanded syncing options, and the ability to pull commission data from up to three years back, enabling users to drive sales performance and model future compensation plans effectively.

The introduction of the Field Calculator addresses a longstanding need for manipulating data for commission calculations without compromising data integrity. By allowing users to build simple formulas within QuotaPath, operations teams can save time and maintain accurate records, transform their data in QuotaPath, and streamline the commission calculation process.

As we continue to innovate and evolve, QuotaPath remains dedicated to delivering solutions that empower users to test, model, and manage sales compensation more effectively and efficiently. 

Stay tuned for more updates next month as we strive to enhance your QuotaPath experience further.

Can’t wait? Schedule time with our team to learn how QuotaPath can improve your compensation strategy and process. 

Obviously, we talk about sales commission errors a lot because that’s why QuotaPath exists. 

Mistakes like incorrect payouts due to manual errors from a commission tracking spreadsheet or reps opening up their commission paystub, excited for a big bonus, only to find a check much smaller due to a misunderstanding of their compensation plan, are frequent.

In fact, our 2024 Compensation Trends report found that 22% of sales reps have at least one commission dispute yearly. What’s more, we learned that it takes reps an average of 3 to 6 months to understand how they earn variable pay, so of course, their commission checks will look wonky to them. 

What about instances where a company has to claw back commissions, but the compensation policy left too much room for interpretation? That’s a mismanagement of compensation at its worst.

We haven’t called attention to any significant commission horror stories recently.

Until now. 

We sourced LinkedIn and professional communities RevOps Co-Op and Pavilion for costly commissions-gone-wrong stories in the field.

Here are the top three.

Rep Commission Dashboards in QuotaPath

Give reps an accurate, automated commission tool to track earnings. Build trust and motivate your reps to bring in the next deal through forecasted views.

Book a Demo

An Almost-Lost $36,000

Our first story comes from Dan Goodman, a name you might recognize from LinkedIn. Dan, a crusader for employee advocacy, is the Founder and CEO of Dan Goodman Employment Advisory, which supports individuals who have experienced unjust or illegal actions by their employers. 

Dan recently shared the story of his client, Josh. This seasoned sales representative faced commission discrepancies and intimidation from his employer but ultimately fought for transparency and fairness, resulting in a significant payout and recognition for his hard work.

Here’s what happened. 

• Josh joined a new company in the middle of 2023
• An all-star rep throughout his career, Josh earned the President’s Club trip 15 of the past 17 years.
• In his new role, his comp plan consisted of a 6-month, $600K margin quota, with a $25K bonus for meeting the quota.
  • On all margin sales, he earned a 12% commission rate
  • An accelerator of 18% kicked in for all deals after $600K

With 5 weeks remaining in 2023, Josh found himself $60K short of goal, which seeemed off.

So, he proactively contacted leadership and accounting for reports to look into it himself. 

But instead of simply sending him the data, he was met with some backlash, like “Don’t you trust us?” “Why is no one else asking for this information?”

In fact, he didn’t receive any reports until Josh escalated it multiple times to the C-suite. Then, when he finally got access to the report, he met a spreadsheet 4,000 rows deep with data. 

“It was a general ledger report where the expected revenue by line item was offset by a separate line item showing the cost from the vendor,” said Dan. “The difference had to be manually calculated to derive the gross profit that Josh was paid on. That was only half of it.”

To estimate how much Josh could expect to make on his remaining deal, he needed to create a bookings report, which required additional data. 

That’s when Dan stepped in to review the data.

“Eight deals out of 30 appeared to have not been paid properly,” Dan said.

Those 8 deals estimated more than $50K in gross profit that Josh wasn’t paid commissions on, plus $100K that didn’t count toward his attainment.

And they had evidence of it, thanks to Dan’s calculations.

As a result of Dan’s and Josh’s commission deep dive, Josh ended up exceeding his quota for the year, earning his $25K bonus,  another P-club trip, and $36K in commissions. 

“Check your commissions. Demand pay transparency,” said Dan. “It’s your right. It’s your money. You earned it.”

 The $2M Revenue Recognition Error

Our second commission horror story is the thing of RevOps nightmares.

Before this anonymous company went public a few years ago, an account executive sold the company’s largest contract in Asia.

Think: 3-year deal worth $5M in revenue.

“The AE made bank on it, was promoted to director, etc.,” our anonymous RevOps source said.

But, as the 3-year renewal approached, the Ops team uncovered that the only person assigned to the account post-sale was a man from professional services.

No AE. No customer success manager.

Suddenly, SalesOps noticed $2M in forecasted churn, and no one could figure out why —  except for our source and the VP of professional services. 

“Apparently, they had embedded deep down in the contract terms that they got 2 full-time professional services employees for the duration of their contract, valued at $2M,” our source said. “So when they renewed, they dropped that part because it would have had to be paid for.”

What’s more, the Ops team uncovered that at the time of the contract, the AE mistakenly listed the $2M as a “license” instead of correctly labeling it as professional services. This led to the professional services team missing revenue. It had to be reported to the auditors, and it still “churned.” 

The result?

They had to report the situation to auditors

The $2M still “churned”

That quarter’s earnings report caused the stock price to drop from $350 to $30 ahead of its IPO

The company fired the AE-turned-Director.

Inconsistent Clawback Policies

Our last story could trigger any sales rep and involves the dreaded clawback.

A clawback occurs when a company compensates a sales representative for a sale, and the customer terminates the contract within a specified timeframe. When this happens, a clawback issues the employee to return the earned commissions as stipulated in the sales compensation policy.

Download This Commission Agreement Template

“Many years ago, I worked for a tech company whose commission policies needed to be better documented,” said our source. “This led to two similar scenarios, resulting in two different outcomes.”

The first situation involved a considerable enterprise customer churning due to not paying their invoice. As a result, the company clawed back commissions from everyone who earned a piece from the deal, ie: SDR, AE, Manager, VP. 

Not fun, but it happens.

However, the second time this happened with a different customer, the company allowed the rep to keep their commission, causing a (rightful) uproar amongst those who felt the pain of the first clawback.

“It was really frustrating,” our source said. “This may have been about the Chief Customer Officer at the time and their decision-making process. But as someone impacted by the first scenario, the decision-making process and how they ended up in two places with the same scenario was lame and caused a lot of heartache.”

What did we learn here? 

Have a documented process to follow, and stick to it.

This creates consistency, and although your team might not love a clawback, they’ll at least understand that it’s policy. 

The Takeaways

These commission horror stories serve as a stark reminder that mistakes can happen. But with the right tools and a commitment to visibility and process, you can mitigate these errors and foster trust across your team.

QuotaPath exists to eliminate commission errors and confusion around compensation and give Finance, RevOps, and Sales leaders and reps visibility into deal, earnings, and attainment data. This makes it easier to identify issues long before they jeopardize team morale (or future stock prices). 

Learn more about QuotaPath by scheduling time with our team today. 

According to our 2024 Compensation Trends report, it takes reps an average of 3 to 6 months to fully understand how they’re paid. Two things are happening here. First, comp plans are overly complicated, making them difficult for reps to decipher—and second, compensation plan communication is poorly planned and executed.

So, it is no surprise that 30% of leaders don’t think their plan motivates their reps since there is a direct correlation. The more reps understand how they are compensated, the more likely they are to be incentivized by your plan.

Many leaders are rolling out their new plans at the start of the year. This blog explores ways to ensure your reps understand how they are paid by the time the plan goes live.

1. Transparency & Clarity

First, make the plan accessible by distributing clear, well-explained documentation such as FAQs, videos, and emails. These communications should outline commission calculations, performance metrics, and payout rules. Show the math and how it translates to overall revenue targets or the achievement of other North Star metrics.

Additionally, we recommend documenting your comp plan in a compensation policy or commission agreement for rep sign-off. Your commission agreement should avoid subjective interpretation. Clearly define payout terms, what defines a deal, how deal splitting is managed, clawbacks, accelerators, bonuses, and commission tiers. Make it as black and white as possible.

Collect reps’ signatures on your commission agreement to ensure understanding and make these documents accessible. You can complete plan verification with hard copy documents, e-signatures, or with QuotaPath.

As changes or updates occur, make sure to prepare your team ahead of them. Don’t wait for an annual review. Boost understanding by giving reps ample opportunities to discuss changes and get immediate answers to their questions by hosting open forums, team meetings, or one-on-ones.

2. Alignment & Connection

Another way to ensure understanding is to tie your teams’ comp plan to your company targets. This fosters connection and individual impact to company-wide outcomes.

However, despite these benefits, our research identified “alignment to business goals” as the most needed area of improvement in sales compensation management. Individual targets must align with team and company goals so everyone understands how their efforts contribute to collective success.

To help, consider implementing forecasting software so that reps can easily connect the dots between deals in their pipeline and forecasted earnings. In doing so, you’ll enable team members to run various scenarios to see how the plan works and what its implications are for their attainment and earnings progress when bringing in the next deal. These real-life examples show reps how they can achieve their goals and reap the rewards, boosting understanding by making it personal and bringing the plan to life.

3. Communication & Feedback

Just as important as the initial communication of new plans is the collection of ongoing feedback throughout the year.

A solid compensation communication plan is essential for reps to understand and embrace a new or modified compensation plan. Otherwise, you risk confusion, demotivation, and even potential sales rep churn.

Regular dialogue about the plan allows reps sufficient opportunities to get answers to their questions and gain clarity around how it works and how they earn commissions. So, offer group and individual opportunities where team members can raise concerns and seek clarification.

Feedback is a critical element of compensation plan communication that helps you assess rep understanding and identify areas for improvement in the plan’s design or communication. You can gather feedback through anonymous surveys, feedback sessions, a hosted Slack channel, or during one-on-ones.

“Sometimes RevOps leaders make the mistake of not asking the sales team what they need, what they see in the market, and how they think they should be measured,” said Ryan Milligan, VP of RevOps at QuotaPath.

These conversations will help you keep an end-user pulse on the success of your plans.

Ryan often uses the following questions when seeking feedback during a one-on-one:

• Do you feel this comp plan is fair? Why or why not.
• Are you incentivized? Why or why not.
• Do you understand how you’re paid? He follows this question by offering a scenario for them to explain.

Pro tip: “Sales reps tend to give their RevOps counterparts more honest feedback than they do with their sales managers,” according to Jessica Zangre, Head of RevOps with Syncari. “That loop is really important to keep that trust.”

So, create a feedback loop or iterative process because gathering feedback is not one-and-done.

4. Gamification & Engagement

Next, deepen your team’s compensation comprehension by making it fun through commission gamification. These tactics improve understanding of comp plans, drive desired sales behaviors, and boost rep performance.

Dashboards or trackers help reps visualize individual and team progress, motivate goal achievement, and add an element of competition. Celebrate individual and team wins, including plan targets and non-plan behaviors like collaboration, mentorship, or exceeding customer expectations.

Create up to five leaderboards with QuotaPath’s Team Attainment Leaderboards as an easy way to engage and motivate the sales team through gamification.

5. Ongoing Training & Support

Lastly, make sure to include sales enablement that supports team members in their efforts to achieve their plan goals. Provide training resources like webinars, online modules, or external consultants to help reps deepen their understanding of the intricacies of the compensation plan. This allows them to make more informed decisions about which deals to pursue and why.

Host workshops for your reps on topics like personal finance, saving strategies, and commission-related taxes to help them make educated financial decisions. Then give your reps access to commission tracking software so they can run what-if scenarios to help identify which deals to prioritize and track progress toward both personal and professional goals.

Ensure Your Team Understands Their Comp Plan

It takes reps an average of 3 to 6 months to understand their comp plan. When reps don’t understand how they earn commissions, they aren’t motivated by the plan. This lack of understanding often translates to demotivation, confusion, and frustration and may end in sales rep turnover.

Make sure your team understands their comp plan by clearly and transparently explaining the plan. Align it to business goals and help the team see the connection. Discuss the plan with your team and gather their feedback routinely. Leverage gamification to motivate and engage sales reps. Then enable them with ongoing training and support. See how QuotaPath helps you ensure your team understands their comp plan. Schedule time with our team to learn more.

Strategic compensation planning refers to the deliberate and thoughtful process of designing and managing an organization’s compensation structure and policies in alignment with its overall business strategy and objectives. 

This process involves creating an incentive structure that attracts, retains, motivates, and rewards employees while supporting the company’s growth, profitability, and competitiveness goals.

It’s essential to business goal achievement — and many agree.

According to a ZS and Reality Works study, 79% of tech companies and 90% of non-tech large companies use quota-driven sales compensation plans.

By carefully designing and implementing effective plans, companies can achieve their sales goals, attract and retain top talent, and gain a competitive edge in the market. Conversely, getting the strategy behind a comp plan wrong could lead to missing organizational targets.

Our 2024 Compensation Study found that 91% of organizations missed their targets in 2023. Of the 450+ revenue leaders surveyed, 35% cited their organization’s miss to misaligned sales activities. Another 30% admitted they set unrealistic goals. 

We want to help demystify the compensation planning process.  

In our guide below, you’ll learn:

• What strategic compensation planning is and why it’s more effective than traditional methods at driving organizational objectives.
• The role of automation in compensation planning and its benefits.
• The key elements of an effective compensation plan.
• How QuotaPath streamlines and facilitates the strategic compensation planning process.
• Compensation plan development challenges and why they occur.
• Best practices in compensation plan design for successfully navigating the planning process.
• How to leverage data to measure your compensation plan’s success, identify improvement opportunities, and make adjustments.

Let’s get started.

Understanding Strategic Compensation Planning

Strategic compensation planning is more than deciding how to reward your employees for their efforts. It involves intentionally tailoring compensation to business goals by incentivizing sales rep behaviors that support their achievement. 

“Compensation plans should be the caboose, not the engine,” said Pablo Dominguez, Operating Partner, Sales & Customer Success at Insight Partners.

That means focusing first on what you want the company to accomplish. Then, you can collaborate on the plans with Finance, RevOps, and Sales to model them based on those goals. 

This approach drives profitability, growth, and employee satisfaction while achieving organizational targets.

Traditional methods of compensation planning end up working against business goal achievement by rewarding the wrong behaviors. 

For example, a traditional single-rate compensation plan that pays a flat percentage for every single deal fails to provide reps with deal prioritization. 

However, strategic compensation planning may involve structuring a plan that rewards a higher rate for accounts that fall under an ideal customer profile because those customers are most likely to renew and realize total value.

Although aligning incentives with company goals drives desired behaviors and organizational goals concurrently, 39% of leaders admit that their plans don’t align with business targets.

This is problematic as compensation impacts employee morale, engagement, and performance. Companies with clear and transparent compensation plans experience 54% higher employee morale. Studies also show that transparency increases employee retention, while unclear or unfair compensation can decrease employee morale and productivity.

Why is Strategic Compensation Planning Important?

Without a deliberate approach to compensation, companies risk creating plans that don’t align with core business objectives, leading to unintended and often counterproductive outcomes. When incentives don’t match up with company goals, sales teams may focus on activities that don’t drive growth, retention, or profitability. For example, without strategic planning, a flat-rate commission structure could encourage reps to prioritize quick, one-time deals instead of building long-term, high-value customer relationships. This misalignment can ultimately hurt customer loyalty and business stability.

Additionally, compensation plans that lack clarity or transparency can harm employee morale.

When reps don’t fully understand how their efforts translate into earnings—or worse, if they feel the plan is inconsistent or unfair—they are more likely to disengage. This disconnect affects individual motivation and can lead to high turnover, with top performers seeking companies that offer clearer and more meaningful rewards.

Another downside is the loss of competitive edge.

Top talent has options today, and organizations without well-aligned, motivating compensation plans will struggle to attract and retain high-performing salespeople. Over time, this talent gap can impact everything from team productivity to market share.

Finally, the lack of strategic compensation planning often leads to missed organizational targets.

When compensation plans fail to drive the behaviors necessary for achieving business goals, it becomes much harder to meet revenue, retention, or profitability targets. This misalignment can create a cycle of underperformance, where leadership must constantly revise goals and sales strategies to compensate for the shortcomings of an ineffective incentive structure.

In short, without strategic compensation planning, companies face the risks of misaligned priorities, reduced morale, high turnover, weakened competitive standing, and the potential to miss critical business goals.

The Role of Automation in Compensation Planning

Automation tools can streamline planning, reduce errors, and increase efficiency. Unlike commission spreadsheets, automation eliminates time-consuming, faulty manual input, formulas, and calculations.

These platforms facilitate data analysis, scenario modeling, and plan simulation, enabling you to estimate annual incentive earnings, calculate revenue potential and commission costs, and quickly run attainment scenarios.

This frees up time for strategic decision-making and boosts confidence that your new plan structure is fair, logical, and effective.

Key Elements of an Effective Compensation Plan

The fundamentals of a strategic compensation framework include:

Market Competitiveness

Benchmarking against industry standards is essential to creating a market-competitive compensation plan. This enables you to attract top talent as well as motivate and retain current team members. We recommend Betts Compensation Guide for industry standards. 

Goal Alignment

Individual and team goals must be linked to broader company objectives through metrics and KPIs. For instance, if a business’s priority is to increase gross revenue retention, then incentives need to reward behaviors that support the achievement of this outcome.

Pay Mix Structure

People are motivated by various means. So, it’s essential to use a balanced pax mix of base salary, bonuses, and incentives so the compensation plan motivates the desired behaviors and performance while inspiring team members to go the extra mile.

Transparency & Communication

Clearly and simply communicating the new sales compensation plan is essential to its success. Explain the details in simple language and various formats, including commission calculations, performance metrics, and payout rules. When employees understand the plan and any changes, you’re more likely to get their buy-in and active participation. This ultimately drives desired behaviors and business outcomes.

Compensation Plan Templates

Discover, compare, build, and customize plans using one of our 20 adjustable compensation plan templates.

Explore Templates

Strategic Compensation Plan Examples

For inspiration, check out a few examples of strategic compensation plans below.

Each one is designed to align rep incentives with specific company objectives, from growth and customer retention to successful new product launches. By choosing the right plan, companies can effectively guide their sales teams to focus on what matters most, achieving results that support individual and organizational success.

1. Tiered Commission Plan for High-Value Accounts

• Objective: Drive focus on high-value or ideal customer profiles (ICPs) that are more likely to convert into long-term, profitable customers.
• Structure: In a tiered commission plan, reps earn higher commission rates for deals that match specific ICP criteria, such as industry, company size, or geographic location. Lower-tier deals, such as those outside of these criteria, yield a smaller commission.
• Benefits: This plan encourages reps to prioritize deals with high-value potential, resulting in more valuable accounts and greater customer lifetime value for the company. It’s especially useful for businesses aiming to build a loyal customer base that aligns with long-term growth objectives.

2. Accelerated Rate for Over-Quota Performance

• Objective: Motivate sales reps to consistently exceed their targets and boost overall sales productivity.
• Structure: Once a rep reaches their quota, they move into an accelerated commission tier where they earn a higher percentage on each additional sale. This tiered accelerator can increase further as reps exceed specific benchmarks, such as 125% or 150% of quota.
• Benefits: This structure incentivizes reps not just to meet their goals, but to push beyond them. It’s ideal for companies looking to increase sales velocity and reward top-performing reps, while ensuring that the most productive salespeople see substantial financial rewards.

3. Milestone-Based Bonuses for New Product Sales

• Objective: Promote adoption and success of a new product or service.
• Structure: Reps receive milestone bonuses when they reach specified sales targets for a newly launched product, which could include bonuses at the first sale, after reaching ten sales, or achieving a set revenue goal.
• Benefits: This approach encourages reps to prioritize the new offering, giving it early traction in the market. It also helps the company capture valuable data and market feedback, which is often crucial during a product’s initial rollout phase.

4. Annual Retention Bonus for High Customer Retention Rates

• Objective: Drive customer retention and increase revenue from renewals or upsells.
• Structure: Reps earn a bonus at the end of the year if a significant percentage of their accounts renew or if they maintain a low churn rate within their portfolio.
• Benefits: This plan is ideal for companies that want to reduce churn and improve customer relationships. By incentivizing retention, reps are encouraged to focus on client satisfaction and upsell opportunities, directly supporting long-term revenue goals.

5. Cross-Selling and Upselling Incentives

• Objective: Increase revenue per customer by expanding product penetration across existing accounts.
• Structure: Reps receive additional commissions or bonuses for each successful cross-sell or upsell to current customers. This can be structured as a flat bonus per additional product sold or as a percentage increase in their total commission rate.
• Benefits: By rewarding cross-selling and upselling, this plan maximizes the potential value of each customer account and deepens customer relationships. It’s highly effective for SaaS or subscription-based companies that benefit from a broader product adoption within their existing customer base.

QuotaPath’s Approach to Compensation Planning

QuotaPath is a powerful software solution for designing high-performing comp plans, managing sales compensation, and providing insights into plan and team performance. This platform supports the entire compensation planning process and streamlines payouts of commissions.

Ensure you’re offering market competitive compensation with our free Quota:OTE ratio calculator. This tool verifies your on-target earnings and quotas align with industry averages.

Confirm goal alignment by running plan scenarios with QuotaPath’s compensation modeling features. This allows you to perform a compensation plan analysis before implementation and adjust it proactively.

Automate commission calculations for error-free paychecks so you can confidently include a mix of performance-based incentives to motivate behaviors that drive company objectives.

Increase transparency and communication of new or revised comp plans by providing your sales team with QuotaPath’s free commission calculators, allowing them to run what-if scenarios for deals in their funnel. Then, streamline the plan verification process to confirm employee understanding and buy-in.

EverView is an excellent example of how these tools simplify the employee compensation management process. 

Before partnering with QuotaPath, EverView had 35 compensation plans for a sales team of 80. Fifty percent of their sellers reported not understanding their comp plan and had no idea how much they had earned until they received their paychecks.

After implementing QuotaPath, EverView consolidated their 35 plans into eight and then to 1 in QuotaPath. Sellers could measure plan attainment and current or future earnings at any time. This led to EverView having its highest sales year, with 70% of the team hitting quota and 20% achieving 90%.

Challenges in Compensation Plan Development

We surveyed over 450 Finance, RevOps, and Sales leaders across SaaS to identify the top pain points regarding sales compensation. Surprisingly, 97% of these executives reported challenges.

Unrealistic expectations were cited as a top challenge by 19% of leaders. Setting excessively high quotas and on-target earnings (OTEs) that are unattainable sets your team up for failure and often results in sales rep churn.

Failure to motivate reps was reported by 19% of surveyed executives. Although using the wrong mix of incentives is one reason a compensation plan falls short, a lack of understanding is often the problem. That’s why leveraging an effective compensation communication plan so reps understand how they earn commissions helps prevent reps from getting demotivated or frustrated.

Too complex to execute well was a challenge specified by 18% of participants. Overly complex comp plans contain too many compensation elements. These plans are labor-intensive to execute well and maintain.

Too complicated to understand was identified as a top compensation challenge by 17% of those surveyed. Plans that are overly elaborate leave reps overwhelmed and confused, making it unclear where to focus their efforts.

Failure to drive customer acquisition cost efficiency (CAC) was cited as a compensation challenge by 14% of leaders. Plans that aren’t optimized to drive CAC affect the efficiency of your growth engine like marketing spend, sales capacity, and management overlay.

Best Practices in Compensation Plan Design

These compensation planning process best practices will help prevent significant mistakes while increasing plan success.

Regular Reviews & Updates: Compensation planning is not a set-it-and-forget-it sort of process. Routinely revisit and adjust the plan based on performance and market changes.

Employee Feedback & Involvement: Incorporate employee input during the planning process by surveying reps, engaging them on a Slack channel, or during 1-on-1 meetings. Ask what motivates them, how well they understand the plan, and how they’d change or add to it. Then, incorporate employee suggestions or explain why something isn’t feasible.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Base compensation decisions on data and objective metrics rather than gut feeling or emotion. Using historical performance data, industry insights, and modeling projections is best to make educated compensation decisions.

Measuring the Success of Your Compensation Plan

An essential element of the strategic compensation planning process is measuring the success of your plan through the lens of employee retention, performance, and compensation-related costs, also known as effective rate.

Track these metrics with compensation reporting tools like dashboards, integrated software like QuotaPath, or manually gather data from various systems into spreadsheets for analysis.

There are various ways to analyze the data to evaluate the plan’s effectiveness. For example, start with quota attainment. 80% of your team should hit their quotas. If you’re considerably below 80%, getting to the root cause, such as closing skills, leads, or motivation, is essential.

Verify that the quotas and OTEs are realistic and in line with industry trends. You can measure this with our free Quota: OTE Ratio Calculator.

Unrealistic goals, especially in the current economic environment, set your team up to fail. This leads to frustration and discouragement and could ultimately cause reps to quit.

Resolve unrealistic quotas and OTEs by decreasing quotas and better aligning them with OTEs so reps don’t get discouraged. You can also increase motivation and yield quick wins by adding logo commissions and other SPIFs.

If you find a significant difference between commissions and goal achievement for your weakest and best-performing team members, figure out why. This often stems from unbalanced comp plans or territories. Adjust them to ensure they are fair and proportionate for all employees.

Are you paying high commissions to a team falling short of their targets? It may be time to establish minimum performance requirements before reps can earn commissions. A commission floor accomplishes this and motivates quota-carrying employees to hit goals while preventing the business from rewarding underperformance.

Complete this process periodically to identify areas for improvement and refine the plan over time.

Approach Compensation Planning Strategically

Strategic compensation planning is essential to business success. It affects employee motivation, retention, and the company’s ability to achieve organizational goals.

Strategic planning involves intentionally tailoring compensation to business goals and incentivizing sales rep behaviors that drive their achievement. This approach is significantly more effective than traditional methods that often work against hitting business goals.

Automation tools streamline the planning process, increase efficiency, and reduce errors. They facilitate data analysis, plan simulations, and modeling, enabling data-driven, strategic decision-making while boosting confidence in new plans.

An effective strategic compensation planning process considers market competitiveness, goal alignment, pay mix structure, and leverage clear and effective communication. Leverage these elements to increase plan success.

QuotaPath is a powerful software solution for designing high-performing comp plans, managing sales compensation, and providing insights into plan and team performance. Providing support throughout the planning process, including employee compensation management, our platform includes many useful tools to calculate the Quota:OTE ratio, model compensation, commission calculators, and plan verification automation.

Our recent survey revealed the top sales compensation challenges of leaders across SaaS include unrealistic expectations, failure to motivate reps, overly complex plans, plans too complicated to understand, and failure to drive CAC. You can avoid these challenges by leveraging a strategic compensation planning process.

Conduct regular reviews and updates, gather employee feedback and involve them in the process, and leverage data for more informed decision-making as you build compensation plans to increase the success of your compensation planning process.

Strategic compensation planning is cyclical. It involves creating a plan, measuring its effectiveness, and refining it. During reviews, identify weaknesses and areas for improvement so you can adjust and improve your plan over time.

You can start developing effective compensation plans by:

• Identifying organizational goals
• Selecting business targets that specific behaviors can directly impact.
• Tailoring compensation and incentives to these business goals
• Testing the plan to ensure it is financially sound.
• Using an effective compensation communication plan to increase understanding and buy-in across the organization.
• Measure compensation plan success, leveraging data to identify areas for improvement.

Whether you are designing compensation plans with a strategic mindset or need performance metrics and insights to assess team output or your plan’s success, QuotaPath is your partner for strategic compensation planning success.

Artificial intelligence remains in.

Adoption rates for companies using AI more than doubled from 2017 to 2022, according to McKinsey. Moreover, amongst individual users, 71% reported they had at least some exposure to generative AI following its entrance into the mainstream over the past two years.

Various functions of organizations are leveraging AI to streamline operations, boost efficiency, and improve accuracy. Use cases range from AI-powered customer service chatbots, automated manual sales tasks, and lead scoring automation to automated candidate screening by HR and security monitoring for cybersecurity departments. And, in finance, we see this emerging technology used for data analysis, fraud detection, forecasting, and compliance monitoring.

But there’s so much more that finance can do with AI to grow more efficient in their roles.

In this blog, we will share how AI in finance teams helps to improve accuracy and security, and more.

10 Ways Teams are Using AI in Finance

Teams are using AI in finance in a multitude of ways.

As the technology evolves, financial professionals continue to find innovative applications for artificial intelligence that enhance decision-making, streamline operations, and drive efficiency across the industry. Below, we’ll explore 10 compelling use cases demonstrating how AI transforms the finance sector.

These examples range from automating routine tasks to predicting market trends with remarkable accuracy, showcasing the versatility and potential of AI-driven solutions in the financial world.

Whether you’re a financial analyst, investor, or simply intrigued by the intersection of finance and technology, these real-world applications of AI will stimulate your imagination and inspire new possibilities.

10. Risk assessment

Banks and loan apps are already turning to AI for smarter financing. Machine learning algorithms crunch the numbers, assess risk, and personalize offerings faster and potentially fairer than traditional methods.

9. Automated reporting 

Software powered by AI eliminates manual data compilation and reconciliation by automating financial reports and statement generation as well as distribution on a scheduled basis.

8. Fraud detection, management, and prevention

Humans are inefficient and error-prone when discerning between normal versus abnormal or suspicious behavior for fraud detection. AI tools efficiently analyze real-time data to accurately detect potentially fraudulent behavior and notify relevant parties for further review.

7. Improving financial workflows 

Automate approval workflows for purchase orders or expense reports with AI-powered software. This reduces delays, increases collaboration, and ensures timely processing.

6. Intelligent data entry

AI-driven automation reduces error-prone, time-consuming manual data input, minimizing the risk of entry mistakes and miscalculations.

5. Forecasting future trends

AI tools process large volumes of historical, industry, and company-specific data to generate predictive models. Finance departments minimize risks by using this capability for forecasting, budgeting, and resource allocation decisions.

Model Your Compensation Strategy

QuotaPath’s new Plan Performance Modeling tool gives Finance and Revenue leaders insights they to analyze and predict the cost and performance of comp plans.

Learn More

4. Compliance monitoring

Finance has many regulations to adhere to. AI reduces the risk of regulatory violations and penalties by automatically recording designated financial transactions and activities and performing compliance checks.

3. Cost optimization

AI is used to analyze historical expenditures, market conditions, and expense data to identify cost containment opportunities.

2. Generating real-time insights

Real-time financial performance insights from enhanced reporting are displayed on AI-powered dashboards for easy reference and decision-making.

1. Data analysis

Finance teams and financial services organizations leverage AI tools to process the significant amount of data they manage. These platforms identify patterns, trends, and insights for better data-driven decision-making to manage credit, calculate risk, and select investments.

Best AI Tools for Finance Teams

Ready to start implementing AI in fiance?

Figuring out which apps to consider first can feel overwhelming. Therefore, in this section, we’ve identified a selection of popular and highly effective tools designed specifically for finance teams looking to harness the power of AI.

These tools have been handpicked for their ability to streamline financial processes, enhance data analysis, and improve decision-making. Whether you’re a financial analyst, a CFO, or part of a finance team, these AI tools can provide valuable support in your daily operations.

Booke.AI

Booke employs AI automation to help finance teams with bookkeeping and accounting tasks. This tool corrects coding errors and uncategorized transactions while improving client communication and streamlining month-end close.

Domo

Domo seamlessly integrates diverse data sources to merge them into user-friendly dashboards designed for business decision-makers. This use of AI in finance enables teams to create a single dashboard that incorporates information from sources like Excel, Salesforce, Workday, and numerous others.

Nanonets

Nanonets Flow is a solution that uses AI in finance to streamline processes, increase efficiency, and improve results. This tool extracts data from documents like invoices and receipts, automates processes, manages workflows, and integrates with your current financial and accounting platforms.

How to Start Using AI in Finance

The shift to AI in finance has begun. It’s time to jump in so you can start enjoying greater efficiency and insights.

This may seem intimidating, so break it down into manageable steps to facilitate the process. Follow these best practices for beginning to implement AI in your finance practice.

1. Educate yourself

Expand your understanding of AI and its potential use cases and limitations in finance to help hone in on how to get the greatest benefit for your department. You can take a course, contact knowledgeable colleagues, attend industry conferences and seminars, or hire a consultant.

2. Identify use cases

Determine which aspects of your finance practice will benefit from AI. Then prioritize them based on importance and set clear, measurable goals for your initiative.

3. Assess your systems and resources

Before you start using AI in finance, evaluate your data infrastructure, quality, and completeness to avoid issues. Then determine if your staff is equipped to use AI tools, if they’ll require training, if you’ll need to hire additional employees, or if you should use an outside vendor.

Once you’ve completed these preliminary steps, you can select your AI tools and work toward implementation.

Start using AI in finance

The use of AI in finance is on the rise. Its benefits include increased efficiency and accuracy, reduced risks, cost containment, and more informed decision-making.

Don’t be left behind by the competition. It’s time to start using AI in finance. This doesn’t need to be difficult. Educate yourself, identify use cases that best suit your requirements, assess your systems and resources, and select your first AI tools.

See how QuotaPath can help Finance teams model compensation plans and draw insights to predict and measure the performance of their plans—schedule time with our team to learn more.

We recently conducted a LinkedIn poll to get a pulse on the current business climate, asking leaders to identify their North Star metrics for 2024. 

The results were resounding: revenue growth and customer retention emerged as the top two priorities. This unsurprising outcome underscores the fundamental need for businesses to attract new customers and cultivate lasting relationships with existing ones.

This laser focus makes sense, as attracting new customers while nurturing existing relationships forms the bedrock of sustainable success. But achieving these goals requires more than just wishful thinking – it demands a strategic approach to talent management, and that starts with sales compensation.

More specifically, this calls for sales compensation strategies that align go-to-market teams with key business plays so that the company reaches its goals when the team hits their performance metrics. 

In this blog, we’ll explore five standard North Star metrics and share compensation levers that can help drive these. 

• Revenue Growth: We’ll review how incentivizing new customer acquisition, deal size, and sales velocity can fuel top-line expansion.
• Customer Retention: Discover how rewarding repeat business, reducing churn, and fostering customer loyalty drives sustainable growth.
• Product Adoption or Usage: Learn how incentivizing feature exploration, active engagement, and product mastery can unlock the full potential of your offerings.
• Upsell and Cross-Sell: We’ll examine how encouraging reps to identify additional customer needs and recommend complementary products or services can boost average order value and overall revenue.
• Cost Management: Explore how aligning compensation with resource efficiency, cost optimization, and responsible spending can contribute to a healthy financial bottom line.

By meticulously aligning your compensation plan with these critical objectives, you can equip your team with the necessary tools and incentives to navigate the path toward success. So, prepare to set your sights on the horizon, calibrate your internal compass, and embark on a journey of growth fueled by a strategic and motivating compensation plan.

Join us as we dissect each objective, offering actionable insights and practical strategies to ensure your compensation plan drives a prosperous 2024.

Revenue Growth

Revenue growth refers to a company’s income increase over a specific period. In the SaaS context, it translates to acquiring new customers, expanding existing subscriptions, and, ultimately, an upward trajectory of recurring revenue.

Why It’s the North Star: For SaaS companies, and many years before 2023, revenue growth was the ultimate indicator of sustainability and success. 

Here’s why:

• Recurring Revenue Stream: SaaS thrives on subscriptions, generating predictable income. Each new customer or expanded subscription adds to this stream, fueling the company’s financial engine.
• Investor Magnetism: Investors heavily prioritize revenue growth potential when evaluating SaaS companies. Demonstrating steady and consistent growth attracts investment, fueling further expansion and innovation.
• Market Validation: Growth signifies customer satisfaction and validates your product’s value proposition. As your customer base expands, it signals market acceptance and product-market fit.
• Internal Alignment: Growth goals drive decision-making across departments, from marketing and sales to product development and customer support. Everyone works towards the shared objective of acquiring and retaining customers.

Beyond Just a Number:

While revenue growth is undeniably crucial, it shouldn’t exist in a vacuum. Sustainable growth hinges on balancing with other key metrics like customer churn, customer lifetime value (CLTV), and product adoption. 

Focusing solely on acquiring new customers without nurturing existing ones can lead to a leaky bucket, where churn cancels out gains.

Optimizing for Growth via Comp Plans

New Logo Bonus: One way to drive new revenue is by motivating your reps to capture new business via a new logo bonus. ​​This refers to acquiring new customers who haven’t previously purchased from your company and is often offered when entering a new market or customer segment or launching a new product.

We recommend a fixed, single-rate bonus for every new logo (ex: $500). 

You could also consider upping the amount for high-value logos, larger accounts, or accounts that are your ideal customer profile (ICP).

Ideal customer profile: Speaking of ICP, your ICP accounts often have the shortest sales cycles because they meet all the criteria of your “perfect customer.” You could offer a higher commission rate on a new biz that classifies as ICP or a bonus. 

Accelerators: We love an accelerator. Motivate your high-performing reps to go after more new business after achieving their targets by offering an accelerated commission rate (1.5x).

Customer Retention

A cornerstone metric, customer retention is often considered the north star for business success. It is defined as the ability of a company to keep its existing customers subscribed to its services. We measure it by the churn rate, representing the percentage of customers who cancel their subscriptions within a specific period. 

Why It’s the North Star: Customer retention plays a crucial role in multiple ways:

• Predictable Revenue Stream: Unlike one-time sales models, retaining existing customers ensures a stable and predictable income stream. This financial stability fosters growth and investment opportunities.
• Reduced Customer Acquisition Costs: Acquiring new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing ones. High retention translates to lower overall customer acquisition costs, improving profitability.
• Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Loyal customers become long-term subscribers, generating more revenue over their lifetime. Focusing on retention increases the average CLTV, boosting overall profitability.
• Advocacy and Network Effects: Satisfied customers become brand advocates, recommending your service to others. This organic growth through referrals further amplifies the benefits of retention.
• Improved Product Development: Feedback from retained customers provides valuable insights to guide product development and ensure your offerings continue to meet their evolving needs.

Optimizing for Customer Retention using Compensation

Reward High NPS Scores: A good indicator of how likely a customer is to renew is the net promoter score they leave you. The more high scores you receive, the greater the chances your customer renews. 

You can encourage your team to deliver exceptional onboarding experiences by offering bonuses or SPIFs to reps who earn the highest NPS scores tied to onboarding. 

Early Renewal Bonus: You can also impact retention and forecast retention more accurately by incentivizing your reps to sign early renewals. Consider a 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day early renewal bonus. Your 90-day renewal should reward your reps the most. 

Multi-year Conversions: We talk a lot about offering multi-year accelerators on new biz that sign for more than one year, and the same can apply for renewals. Offer a multi-year commission rate higher than your standard renewal to incentivize your customer team to convert single-year renewals to multiple years. 

Product Adoption Or Usage

Production adoption represents the percentage of users actively engaging with your product’s core features and functionalities. It reflects how many users have moved beyond initial onboarding and derive real value from your offering. Similarly, product usage measures the frequency and depth of interaction with your product. This includes metrics like active users, feature utilization, average session duration, and completed tasks.

Why It’s the North Star: For SaaS companies, product adoption and usage hold immense significance in several ways:

• Predictable Revenue: High adoption and usage make engaged users more likely to renew their subscriptions, contributing to a stable and predictable revenue stream.
• Reduced Churn: Users who actively engage with your product experience more value and satisfaction, reducing the likelihood of churn and boosting customer retention.
• Increased Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Engaged users typically become long-term subscribers, utilizing more features and generating higher revenue over their lifetime.
• Valuable User Feedback: Usage data provides insights into user behavior, preferences, and pain points, informing product development and ensuring alignment with user needs.
• Stronger Product-Market Fit: High adoption and usage suggest a strong product-market fit, indicating you’re addressing a genuine need and delivering value to your target audience.

Optimizing for Adoption and Usage via Compensation

Promote Individual Performance: Set targets for key usage metrics like active users, feature adoption, or completed tasks within the platform. Then, reward exceeding these targets with milestone bonuses for hitting goal. 

Team-Based Incentives: Foster collaboration and healthy competition by setting team-based goals for platform usage metrics. Reward achieving these goals with team outings, incentives, or additional paid time off.

Upsell And Cross-Sell

Upselling involves convincing customers to upgrade to a more expensive version of your product. At the same time, cross-selling means locking in your customer to additional products or services that complement their current subscription.

Why It’s the North Star: Upselling and cross-selling can hold immense value, including: 

• Increased Revenue: Expanding the value customers derive from your platform translates directly to higher revenue per customer, accelerating growth and profitability.
• Reduced Customer Acquisition Costs: Retaining existing customers and increasing their value is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
• Enhanced Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): Upsold and cross-sold customers become more valuable over time, generating higher revenue throughout their subscription lifecycle.
• Stronger Customer Relationships: By helping customers discover additional solutions to their needs within your platform, you foster trust and loyalty, strengthening relationships.
• Improved Product Adoption: Upselling and cross-selling opportunities often arise from understanding customer needs and usage patterns, leading to improved product adoption and satisfaction.

Optimizing for Upsell and Cross-Sell

Upsell component in comp plan: To encourage upsells and cross-selling, set a net revenue retention component in your customer team’s comp plans. We recommend one that splits with gross revenue retention so that you don’t hide customer churn in made-up revenue in upsells.

Upsell/Cross-Sell Contests: Run short-term contests with attractive prizes or rewards for individuals or teams who achieve the highest upsell/cross-sell rates or revenue within a specific timeframe.

Accelerated Commissions: Pay out commissions for upsells and cross-sells earlier than for initial deals, providing faster financial rewards and boosting motivation.

Cost Management 

The strategic cost management approach involves optimizing resource allocation, minimizing unnecessary spending, and ensuring financial sustainability. Defined, cost management can encompass various aspects like cloud infrastructure costs, employee expenses, marketing spend, and ongoing operational costs. Cost management aims to maximize the value of every dollar spent, align expenses with strategic priorities, and ensure resources are effectively used to hit business objectives. 

The metrics to measure cost management include burn rate, customer acquisition cost (CAC), customer lifetime value (CLTV), and gross margin. And tracking these metrics helps identify areas for optimization and measure the effectiveness of cost management strategies.

Why It’s the North Star Metric: 

• Financial Sustainability: Efficient cost management ensures a healthy bottom line, providing the financial foundation for future investments, growth initiatives, and product development.
• Improved Profitability: Minimizing unnecessary spending directly translates to higher profitability, allowing you to reinvest in strategic areas and fuel sustainable growth.
• Data-Driven Decision Making: Cost management involves analyzing data to understand spending patterns, identify inefficiencies, and make informed decisions about resource allocation.
• Competitive Advantage: In a competitive market, controlling costs effectively gives you a pricing advantage and helps you attract and retain customers.
• Investor Confidence: Demonstrating responsible financial management and efficient cost optimization attracts investors and builds confidence in your long-term success.

Optimizing for Cost Management in Your Comp Plan

This one requires you to get a bit more crafty with your comp plans.

Reward Full Price Deals: You can impact cost management by paying higher commissions or offering full-price bonuses anytime a member of your GTM team avoids discounts.

Implement Decelerators on low gross-margin deals: Motivate your reps to focus on deals with more efficient onboarding by paying a decelerated commission rate on deal types that require significant technical assistance. 

Pay Commissions On Invoice Payment: For early-stage companies or startups looking to impact their cash flow, consider switching your commission payments from the time of the deal to the time of invoice payment. 

Conclusion

How you feeling after reviewing those business objectives? 

Revenue, adoption, upselling, and cost management drive the business machine. Remember, amidst the whirring pistons of growth and optimization, it’s easy to overlook the crucial fuel that keeps it all running. Customer retention.

While acquiring new customers is vital, retaining existing ones is a gold mine. Loyal customers spend more, refer others, and provide invaluable feedback. Neglecting them is like pouring gasoline on your profit margin and setting it alight.

The most successful businesses in 2024 will prioritize retention alongside their other objectives. 

So, how do we translate this into action? 

Money. Use your compensation plans as a lever to drive those business objectives. 

If you’d like to draft, test, and model any of these compensation changes to your existing plans, we invite you to connect with our sales team for a guided tour of how to do so before signing up for a free trial.  

In today’s economic climate, organizations are tightening their budgets and spending money on software that impacts the business by creating value and operational efficiencies. Choosing the right sales compensation management solution is no different and should be treated as a strategic investment. 

Especially since this is your people and their money. 

“Money is emotional,” said Hilary Headlee, EVP, Sales + Customer Success Center of Excellence at Insight Partners. “You’re playing with people’s money and their livelihood.” 

But with so many options in the commission space (a market expected to triple its value by 2028), the noise has made it increasingly difficult to choose a trusted partner and platform. According to our 2024 Compensation Report, 15% of revenue leaders identified “automation” as their most needed improvement improvement in their sales compensation management process.

Businesses today, however, need more than just an automated commission management tool. 

They need a solution that evolves and grows with their expanding needs. That pulls insights to inform your compensation strategy, motivates your revenue teams, and drives (and measures) performance at the team and plan levels. 

Your sales compensation management software should be an innovative, forward-thinking investment that addresses what your sales and RevOps teams need today, with the ability to model performance and meet anticipated growth according to your revenue and finance teams.  

Plus, with key business metrics changing amid the market’s volatility, organizations merit a partner that knows sales compensation and how to adjust your compensation strategy accordingly.  

This buyer’s guide will help you identify and prioritize the essential criteria for commission management software. Read on to feel confident that your choice will propel your business forward.

Sales Compensation Management Software Core Considerations

Before you begin evaluating sales incentive compensation management software platforms, start here.

First, Identify the specific needs and goals of your Finance & Go-to-Market (GTM) team. Some goals might include:

• Identify your team’s North Star metric (annual recurring revenue, gross revenue retention, customer acquisition cost, etc.).
• Building and aligning competitive compensation structures and sales objectives according to the North Star metric
• Partnering with a compensation strategy consultant to address the above
• Establishing practices that motivate sales performance
• Retaining top reps
• Increasing sales compensation equity and fairness
• Leveraging data-driven insights through a source of truth to measure the performance of incentive strategies
• Simplifying administrative processes through more efficient methods of tracking and payment

Then, address the complexity and health of your commission structures.
Take our 1-minute quiz to evaluate the health (and complexities) of your existing or future compensation plan proposals.

• How do your on-target earnings (OTE) compare to those of similar regional and industry roles? 
• What are the pay mix ratios across your variable-pay-earning teams? 
• Do your quota periods match your sales cycles?
• What’s your North Star or key business metric?
  • How do your compensation plans drive those?
• Would you consider your comp plans simple, logical, and fair?
• Do your reps understand how they are paid?
  

Can your reps explain their comp plans?

Our 2024 Compensation Report found that it takes reps 3 to 6 months to understand how they earn commissions.

View Report

The above questions will help set the stage for evaluating sales incentive compensation management tools. This way, you can know how to describe your comp plan designs to providers and approximate the amount of plan design support you’ll require. Additionally, it will help you determine if you need guidance revamping your sales compensation strategy.

Below are a few other practices to think about and put into place before you begin your evaluation.  

Create a Comp Committee

Build a compensation commitmentee consisting of sales, RevOps, and finance. This will promote cross collaboration between departments and foster alignment early on in your process.

Keep in mind what is most important to a sales manager differs greatly from what matters to a finance leader.  

Understand the Volume and Structure of Your Deal Data

Remember that your commission tracking will only be as accurate as your deal data.

Do you use multiple sources to track deals?  Do you pay reps on contract closing or invoice sent,  or payment received?  Who manages each one of these tools?  Do you aggregate all your data in a warehouse?

What’s the average volume of deals per quarter?  Do you have cumulative quotas? 
Having a deep understanding of how deal information is captured, how it relates to your commissions, and who manages each tool is essential in understanding if a compensation platform will work for you. 

Most comp software tools will allow to integrate from one source, but will they allow for multiple fields from that source?  Will they allow for multiple deal sources?  Can you join fields to calculate a certain criteria?  

What Will Your Sellers Care About Most?

Keep in mind your end users: the reps.

Are you using teams and leaderboards? Contests? Is your sales team remote or in the field?  Will they rely on a mobile version?

Do you review attainment and earnings once a week? A month?  A quarter? 

Lastly, Don’t Forget Budget

Consider how much value you want to place on saving time, gaining team alignment, forecasting earnings, and modeling total costs of compensation and performance. Think about how many users and the number of admins your team will require. You’ll also want to consider your growth plans over the next year. 

Some solutions have minimum contract values and users, while others, like QuotaPath, do not. 

What about pricing? How easy is it to independently find how much incentive management solutions cost? The less you can find yourself, the more likely you will face higher and hidden costs later in your research. 

Sales Incentive Compensation Management Checklist

Great! With those initial considerations in place, you’re now ready for the evaluation checklist. 

Conclusion: Guiding Your Strategic Investment in Sales Compensation Management

In closing, the significance of choosing the proper sales compensation management solution cannot be overstated. 

As you’re evaluating, consider the level and access of support you’ll have to your vendor’s team. Think about your existing compensation plans and future proposals. Could they be better aligned to your business targets? Are they driving the behaviors you aim to see? Can the team you work with offer guidance? 

Look into customization options, ease of getting started, and how much you can run the platform autonomously when you need to make changes. 

We created our buyer’s guide to empower you to navigate the complexities and considerations that go into sales incentive compensation management solutions. As you embark on this journey, envision your choice as a tool and a cornerstone of growth, maximizing impact, and positioning your organization for sustained success.

Learn more about QuotaPath by scheduling time with our team, or explore our solution by signing up for a trial. 

​​For sales professionals, commission tracking is more than just a bookkeeping exercise; it’s the critical link between performance and reward. That’s why we automated commission tracking so leaders don’t risk incorrectly paying their sales reps while providing transparency into their earnings, comp plans, and upcoming paychecks. 

Still, not everyone is ready to adopt sales compensation automation, and if that’s you, we built a Google Sheet Commission Template for you to take with you.

Download Your Google Sheet Commission Template

This downloadable tool gives you control over your commission tracking, whether you’re a rep or a leader of a small team. Designed with precision and efficiency in mind, the template provides a clear and organized framework for capturing and calculating your earned income.

Help yourself to a downloadable Google Sheet Commission Template, and read on to learn how to set up your own, best practices for maintaining your spreadsheets, and how to automate tracking by syncing your sheet to QuotaPath.

Understanding Google Sheet Commission Templates

We begin with the main components of our free commission spreadsheet templates. 

You’ll notice that the template includes a base salary, commission rate, quota, quota frequency, and on-target earnings. 

You’ll also notice a Deals tab (where you will input your deal data) and a Monthly Totals tab to keep track of your attainment progress and monthly commissions. 

Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Commission Templates in Google Sheets

Not much setup is required if you use our Google Sheet Commission Templates. 

You’ll input your compensation plan components into the fields (base salary, OTE, etc), then add your deals. A combination of the fields on the front sheet and your Deal data will populate your earnings and attainment goals in the third tab. 

However, it’s still pretty simple to build your own, should you want to.

What to include in your commission sheet template:

• Employee Name: Label a column clearly to identify each salesperson.
• Base Salary: Enter each employee’s fixed monthly or annual salary.
•  Commission Rate: Define the percentage of sales revenue earned as commission. Remember, different products or services might have varying rates.
• Quota: Specify the individual or team sales target for the chosen quota frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.).
• Quota Frequency: Declare the time frame of the quota, ensuring consistency across your calculations.
•  On-Target Earnings (OTE): Calculate the total potential earnings when an employee achieves 

On the deal tab, include the date it closed, customer name, order or account number, total revenue, and date paid. 

To build the formulas to calculate the commissions, check out this blog, Calculating Commissions in Excel. 

What To Look For In A Commission Sheet Template

In this article, we will walk you through the steps and formulas to create a sales commission spreadsheet.

Read Blog

Commission Sheet Template Best Practices

Next, you’ll want to maximize efficiency with your Google Sheet Commission Template. Here are a few best practices regarding the organization of your spreadsheets.

1. Freeze Panes: Freeze the top rows containing field labels for easy navigation through larger datasets.
2. Data Validation: Limit user input by utilizing dropdown lists for selections like quota frequency or product categories.
3. Conditional Formatting: Highlight key metrics like on-target earnings or commission earned for quick visual cues.
4. Charting & Visualization: Leverage charts and graphs to present performance trends and insights at a glance.
5. Version Control: Create and maintain different versions of your template for historical comparisons or different sales teams.
6. Error Checking: Utilize formulas like SUM and SUMIF to verify accuracy and identify potential discrepancies.
7. Share & Collaborate: Make your template accessible to relevant stakeholders for transparent communication.

Benefits of Automating Commission Management with a Sheet Template

Manually tracking commissions in spreadsheets can be a time-consuming and error-prone process. Automating commission management with a Google Sheet template offers a structured approach while reducing administrative overhead. Here’s how:

1. Increased Accuracy and Reduced Errors

Manual calculations and data entry introduce the risk of human error, potentially leading to overpayments, underpayments, or disputes with sales reps. An automated sheet template with built-in formulas ensures that commission calculations are precise and consistent.

2. Time Savings for Finance and RevOps Teams

Instead of spending hours manually inputting deal data and recalculating earnings, an automated template updates commissions in real-time as new sales are added. This allows finance and RevOps teams to focus on more strategic initiatives rather than administrative tasks.

3. Improved Transparency for Sales Reps

With an automated system, sales reps can instantly see their earnings, track their performance against quota, and forecast potential commissions. This level of transparency helps drive motivation and accountability.

4. Seamless Integration with CRM Data

By linking Google Sheets with CRM platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot, deal data can flow directly into the commission template, eliminating the need for duplicate data entry and reducing the risk of discrepancies.

5. Scalability for Growing Sales Teams

As companies expand, managing commission plans manually becomes increasingly complex. Automating calculations within a template allows businesses to scale their sales team without adding a proportional amount of administrative work.

6. Better Compensation Insights

Automated commission templates allow leadership to analyze trends, track attainment levels, and assess compensation plan effectiveness. With a well-structured template, leadership teams can make informed adjustments to optimize commission structures.

7. Simplified Payout Processes

By automating calculations and aggregating commission data in a structured format, finance teams can easily review and process commission payouts, ensuring that payments are accurate and timely.

8. Easy Customization for Different Commission Structures

Whether your team operates on flat-rate commissions, tiered structures, or accelerators, an automated sheet template can be customized to accommodate various compensation models, making it adaptable to your evolving business needs.

While Google Sheet templates offer a great starting point, integrating commission tracking with QuotaPath takes automation to the next level—providing deeper insights, automated approvals, and direct integration with payroll systems.

Automating Sales Commissions with Google Sheets: Tips and Tricks

Of course, there is an easier way to do this entirely.

You could automate sales commission tracking with Google Sheets by integrating it with a tool like QuotaPath. 

If this is your route, here are some tips and tricks to maximize accuracy and value while starting with QuotaPath.

First, prioritize accuracy. Double-check field mappings and data transfer settings for proper alignment.

Then, determine the review frequency or the optimal sync frequency (real-time, hourly, daily) based on your data volume and reporting needs.

You’ll also want to validate calculations with the QuotaPath team, which we are happy to assist with. You can utilize pre-built formulas or compensation plan templates provided by QuotaPath for complex commission structures.

Lastly, we recommend thorough testing with sample data to identify and rectify errors before full-scale implementation. (Again, our team is happy to assist during this process.)

Integrating QuotaPath’s Commission Automation Services with Google Sheets

Curious to see what integrating Google Sheets with QuotaPath looks like? 

You can test it on your own time by signing up for a free trial. 

Our trial lets you sync to your CRM or Google Sheets to automate attainment and commission calculations. You can invite team members and even run payouts before your next commission cycle. 

To do so, here’s what to do.

First, organize your Google Sheets to include the deal id, Deal Name, Deal Amount, Close Date, the rep’s email address tied to the deal, and the deal stage (ie: Closed Won). 

Below is an image of what your sheet should look like, however, to make it even easier,  you can make a copy of this Google Sheet Commission Example and import your data. 

Once your sheet resembles this above, you can integrate your spreadsheet with QuotaPath. This is a multi-step process that splits into two parts. The first connects it to QuotaPath, and the second involves syncing the sheet to your compensation plans.

Connecting your Google Sheet to Quotapath

This takes less than 10 steps.

• First, select “settings” from the menu along the left side in QuotaPath, then select “integrations.”
• Find the Google Sheets integration card and click “Connect.”
• Choose the Google Account you would like to use and allow QuotaPath access to your selected Google account.
• When you return to QuotaPath, fill out the prompt to complete the integration source form. Here, you’ll share the link to your spreadsheet (shareable works or the URL at the top of the page).
• Upon hitting “submit,” you will fully authenticate with Google Sheets.
• Hit “Next” to set your syncing schedule plus the objects/streams you would like to sync (Note: All objects are based on the tab names you have in your Google Sheet)
• To begin sync, select “Sync Now.” This will take a few minutes. 

Sync Data to a Compensation Plan

Once the Google Sheet is connected, you can navigate to Home or Plans to sync data to a compensation plan in QuotaPath.

Start by heading to the Plans page from the navigation bar. Find the plan you’d like to sync and click the plan component to expand it. A plan component represents any avenue to which your rep can earn commissions, such as an accelerator.

Note: You’ll need to sync each component under the plan one at a time.

Click “Sync to CRM” to sync the first component, or path, to your Google Sheet.

When the modal appears, select Connect to “Google Sheets.” Then, on the following screen, choose which tab in the Google Sheet to sync. If you do not see a tab, return to Settings, then Integration, and edit the integration settings for Google Sheets to sync to another “stream” or tab in your Google Sheet.

Now you’re ready to align and map the QuotaPath fields required to calculate commissions to the fields in your Google Sheet. 

• Use the dropdown to select the field in the Google Sheet to define the 3 deal stages: closed won, pipeline, and closed lost. (Note: It’s only required to define closed won.)

Upon the last step, two filters will appear. The first “Member Email field name” equals the person on your team who follows that plan. The second “Deal Date field name” means one year ago today, which will filter out data from more than a year ago.  

Lastly, add any additional filters necessary for the relevant deals for this plan’s component — for example, a ‘Contract Term’ field.

Once complete, hit “Sync” to set up the data sync for this plan component. For additional components of the plan, repeat the above steps. 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

While Google Sheets offers a valuable tool for sales commission tracking, navigating its intricacies requires attention to detail and careful execution. Failing to recognize potential pitfalls can lead to inaccuracies, inefficiencies, and a less-than-optimal compensation framework. 

Below, we dive into five crucial missteps to avoid in your Google Sheets commission calculations:

1. Manual Data Entry: While seemingly straightforward, entering sales figures and deal details manually introduces vulnerability to human error. Inaccuracies in data can ripple through calculations, ultimately resulting in miscalculated commissions and potential discrepancies. Consider integrating with your CRM or other data sources — QuotaPath — to automate data entry and ensure maximum accuracy.

2. Overcomplex Formulas: We love an intricate formula and the Excel wizards behind them, but these formulas can create a tangled web of confusion. Complex calculations are difficult to maintain, troubleshoot, and share with others. 

Instead, opt for clear, concise formulas utilizing built-in functions and straightforward logic. 

Remember, clarity and efficiency are paramount in effective commission tracking.

3. Inconsistent Data Management: Inconsistency in units, formats, and definitions across your spreadsheet can spell disaster. 

Ensure consistent application of date formats, currency units, and terminology to avoid data interpretation errors and misleading calculations. Remember, consistent data hygiene is the foundation of reliable results.

4. Omission of Quota Frequency: Neglecting to consider the specific quota frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.) can lead to significant miscalculations. Basing calculations solely on a single quota figure paints an incomplete picture and hinders accurate performance comparisons across different timeframes. Adapt your calculations to align with the relevant quota period for transparent and meaningful analysis.

5. Lack of Transparency: Keeping commission calculations shrouded in mystery can erode trust and breed confusion. Implementing clear breakdowns of earnings details and sharing them with relevant stakeholders fosters transparency and promotes a positive, collaborative environment. 

Communication is key to building confidence and satisfaction within your sales team.

By prioritizing these essential considerations, you can elevate your Google Sheets commission tracking from a tedious exercise to a reliable and insightful tool. Embrace automation, maintain data integrity, and prioritize transparency to create a streamlined and accurate compensation system that empowers your sales team to thrive.

Future Trends: The Evolution of Commission Automation

So, what’s next?

We pulled three future trends we should pay attention to regarding the evolution of commission automation.

1. AI-powered insights: This one should be no surprise. QuotaPath is already implementing sales compensation reporting tools that pull predictive analytics to show you how changes to your compensation structures impact total compensation costs and the performance of plans. 

2. Integration with broader performance management systems: Instead of existing in silos, commission automation will seamlessly integrate with broader performance management platforms. This holistic view will enable managers to connect sales performance directly to other key metrics like customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and overall business goals.

By viewing commissions as part of a larger performance ecosystem, companies can make data-driven compensation decisions that align with individual and organizational objectives.

3. Increased focus on non-monetary rewards and gamification: While financial incentives remain important, future commission automation might incorporate total incentive rewards like recognition badges, skill development opportunities, or social currency within the sales team. This can cater to diverse motivators and foster a more collaborative and motivating environment.

These are just a few examples, and the future of commission automation will likely be even more dynamic and innovative. Staying informed about these trends will help ensure your compensation strategies remain effective and engaging for your sales team in the coming years.

About QuotaPath

Through automated commission tracking, plan modeling, and comp plan performance measurement, QuotaPath enriches the sales compensation management process. Increase payout accuracy, forecast compensation spending and team performance, and eliminate the guesswork when creating impactful compensation strategies that align with your business objectives. 

Learn more about QuotaPath by scheduling time with our team today. 

Commission Sheet Template FAQs

How do I build a simple commission tracker?
Start by listing your sales reps, their base salary, commission rates, and quotas in a Google Sheet. Add a deals tab to track closed deals, including revenue and payment status. Use built-in formulas to calculate commissions automatically.

How does this commission template compute commissions?
The template applies your commission rate to deal revenue, factoring in quotas, accelerators, and any special payout rules. It uses formulas to calculate commissions based on sales performance and updates automatically as new deals are added.

Can I use this template to create a commission report?
Yes! The template organizes commission data into a structured format, making it easy to track payouts, analyze earnings, and generate reports for leadership or payroll processing.

As the dust settles and we reflect on the ups and downs of 2023, one thing remains crystal clear: effective customer retention strategies marked one of the hottest topics. 

Following a year characterized by economic uncertainty and intensified competition, businesses realized that retaining existing customers is not just a good idea; it’s one of the most critical metrics to ensure company longevity.

The numbers speak for themselves. 

Studies show that acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one. Moreover, loyal customers spend more, are more likely to advocate for your brand within their professional networks and communities, and can even help attract new customers.

Additionally, with a 2023 fundraising market valuing “efficiency” over “growth,” customer retention allows organizations to forecast the financial model better than the unpredictability of relying on new business. 

Webinar: Results of the 2024 Sales Compensation Report

In this webinar expert panelists review key findings from the report and offer best practices to avoid similar challenges around comp plan design, compensation management, and aligning plans to biz objectives.

Watch Now

We saw businesses prioritize retention strategies last year like:

• Building stronger customer relationships through active listening, personalized communication, and exceeding expectations at every touchpoint
• Creating data-driven insights to identify at-risk customers and proactively address their concerns
• Prioritizing (and incentivizing) multi-year renewals
• Shifting the role of the Customer Success Manager from a service mindset to one focused on retention and upsells
• Optimizing the customer journey by streamlining processes and removing friction points to ensure a seamless customer experience.
• Increased attention to net promoter scores, review sites, and community referrals

But as Big Tech rallies back, will retention reign supreme again as the most precious business objective?

So far, it seems likely. 

Just last week, on a webinar in partnership with RevOps Co-Op, four leaders shared the key areas they’re focused on this year.

And guess what they all shared in common? 

Ensuring customers re-up their contracts upon seeing value fast.

“How do you make sure your customers love your product to continue to keep your tech in their tech stack?” said Go Nimbly CEO Jen Igartua, speaking to delivering fast time-to-value. “Finally, teams are having the a-ha moment of ‘Okay, we need to make sure we’re keeping our customers happy.” 

QuotaPath VP of RevOps Ryan Milligan added that to help our team rally around net revenue retention (NRR), our north star metric is a specific action customers take in our product. This action helps customers realize value quickly once QuotaPath is implemented, which enhances the chances of an early renewal commitment. 

Rosalyn Santa Eleana, Founder and CRO of The RevOps Collective, supports strategies for customer retention by investing in her customer success teams. 

“We’re focused on customer value and helping our customers understand the return on investment before the renewal happens,” Rosalyn said. “From a RevOps perspective, we can help the CS team succeed in this NRR world by helping them identify white space. We’re good at books of new business but not as good as developing our existing business. RevOps can shift to this area of focus to enable the team to do better in these areas.”

What customer retention strategies is your team adopting this year?

For inspiration, check out the five below. 

5 Customer Retention Strategies

5. Incentivize Retention 

You could incentivize customer retention in two ways. The first is incentivizing your go-to-market team to rally around retention through tailored sales and account manager compensation plans. The second is incentivizing your customers to keep your services. 

Incentivizing your team around retention

Traditional sales comp plans often prioritize new acquisitions, pushing for a “get it while it’s hot” mentality. But in today’s market, focusing solely on acquisition without nurturing existing relationships is a recipe for churn. 

This is where incentivizing customer retention through your GTM team’s sales compensation plan comes in. 

Here are a few strategies to consider:

1. Retention Bonus: Implement a separate bonus structure tied directly to customer retention metrics like renewal rates, net promoter score (NPS), or annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth.This rewards the team for actively nurturing existing relationships and preventing churn, sending a clear message about the importance of retention.

2. Early Renewal Bonus: Inspire your customer success teams to secure early renewals, which makes it easier to forecast retention, by offering a single-rate bonus applicable to every early renewal. The farther out the renewal, the bigger the bonus.

3. Multi-year accelerators: Apply multi-year accelerators on every new-business deal that signs for multiply years, as well as accelerated commission rates on renewals that convert from single-year contracts to multiple years. 

Incentivizing the customer

This one is a little trickier, depending on your product and service. But one thing you could consider to drive retention is rewarding your customers for hitting usage milestones.Unlock tiered features based on usage milestones or reward long-term commitment with dedicated account managers and priority support. Make your contacts feel like C-Level VIPs and not just another subscription number.

For example, let’s say a marketing automation newbie unlocks advanced features after consistently hitting email campaign goals. Or, John, a loyal power user, enjoys a dedicated support line and personalized onboarding for new team members. 

Show them it pays to stick around.

4. Leverage Data to Rank Renewal Probability

Another retention strategy involves analyzing user activity, feature adoption, and support interactions to reveal who’s on the verge of jumping ship. 

“This helps flag accounts that fall out of that track,” said Ryan. 

In doing so, you alert your team to reach out with targeted in-app prompts to offer assistance proactively, suggest relevant resources, or address potential roadblocks.

Example: Imagine John, a once-active project management user, suddenly stops logging in. An AI alert flags his declining activity, notifying the CSM. What’s more, a friendly in-app message offers a quick tutorial on a feature he hasn’t explored, reminding him of the platform’s potential.

These proactive nudges can bring him back into the fold and mark a career-defining project for RevOps professionals looking to make an impact.

3. Target Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Accounts for New Biz

Ideal customer profiles, more commonly referred to as ICPs, were the talk of the tech town last year and will remain important in 2024. 

ICPs embody shared patterns, behaviors and commonalities between accounts that see the most value from your product and are most likely to renew. They represent everything you seek in a long-term, profitable relationship. 

Understanding your ICP is crucial for focusing your marketing, sales, and renewal efforts to drive business efficiency and profitability. 

Here’s what goes into crafting your ICP:

1. Organization Demographics: Company size or stage, location, industry, etc. 

2. Needs and Challenges: What are their pain points and goals? What problems does your product/service solve for them?

3. How do they make purchasing decisions? What channels do they use for research and discovery?

4. Values and Culture: What drives them? What are their company’s values and priorities?

5. Data and Market Research: Gather quantitative and qualitative data from existing customers, industry reports, surveys, and competitor analysis.

Use data to validate your assumptions and refine your ICP over time.

Remember to: 

• Be specific and avoid overly broad descriptions.
• Focus on qualifying factors, not just demographics.
• Create multiple, nuanced ICPs if your target audience is diverse.
• Get buy-in from different departments for a holistic view.
• Regularly review and update your ICP as your market evolves.

2. Create Feedback/Product Requests Channel 

Your CSM team likely shepherds many product requests and customer feedback from their ongoing customer calls. 

However, if you have no system to manage and track these requests, this feedback will go nowhere. This leads to customers not feeling heard and, more importantly, a low chance of renewal. 

Instead, give your users a platform to influence your product roadmap. 

Set up dedicated feedback channels within your app – forums, surveys, chatbots – and actively solicit their input on features, workflows, and pain points. Log these. 

That way, when you release a feature that resulted from customer feedback, your team can send a happy note that it’s now live — which also works well with closed/loss campaigns. 

This is such an impactful way to make your customers feel heard. 

1. Communicate regularly and often with Customers

Lastly, and this may be a “duh” strategy but communicate often and consistently with your customers.

Keep your users engaged with personalized in-app notifications, tactical blog posts, and relevant case studies. You can include these in monthly customer newsletters or by regularly arming your CS team with new content to send directly to their contacts (in addition to their monthly or quarterly calls). 

Showcase new features, highlight success stories, and remind your customers of your platform’s ongoing value. Invite them to in-person and virtual events and host user-focused workshops to enhance learning and understanding of your product and build adoption. 

The moral of this strategy is: Don’t be a stranger to your customers. 

They should know who they contact for help, where to access resources, and when they can expect to hear from your organization. 

Conclusion

Implementing these strategies and genuinely listening to your users will cultivate a loyal SaaS community that fuels your business growth. Remember, retention isn’t a one-time fix, it’s a constant conversation.

So keep the lines open, embrace these tactics, and get ready to get wild over retention.

About QuotaPath

QuotaPath is your sales compensation partner from comp plan design through commission payouts. We help leaders build, model, and measure the performance of overall sales compensation costs according to plans while delivering transparency and understanding to every commission stakeholder. 

Learn more by scheduling time with our team. 

The importance of a masterful compensation plan rollout cannot be understated.

It’s essential to use clear and effective communication throughout the process so reps fully understand the comp plan design and any changes. This builds trust and helps avoid any surprises while creating enthusiasm and acceptance around their new plan.

Timing is critical too.

Avoid waiting until your SKO to share a new comp plan with reps. You take a huge risk when reps hear about their new comp plan for the first time just at the SKO. There is too much going on at this event for them to fully digest the information, increasing the chances of misunderstandings and unanswered questions that leave reps frustrated and demotivated. This is especially true if reps feel that the plan will negatively impact their paychecks or don’t see how it relates to their new goals.

SKO Guide

For suggestions and best practices around planning, setting the agenda, and filling your event with meaningful messaging and team-building experiences, read our latest guide.

Access Full Guide

This blog unveils the pre-SKO steps to take to ensure your team understands the incoming changes, as well as what to cover during the compensation plan-dedicated session at the SKO and what to do after.

Rollout and Communication Best Practices

Keep these best practices in mind to boost the success of your comp plan rollout.

1. Communicate the same message every time you review the plan. This prevents uncertainty and misinterpretations.

2. Use multiple formats to explain the new plan. These might include written documents, an explainer video, 1:1 conversations, and group presentations. This increases understanding while allowing multiple opportunities for reps to present their questions and receive immediate responses.

3. Proceed from general to detailed messaging. Begin with a broad overview of the plan as you introduce it to the whole sales force. Then share more specific details as you speak with increasingly smaller groups or 1:1.

4. Produce a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) document. Share it with plan documents to answer common questions and accelerate plan understanding.

5. Share various calculation examples. Include this information in your plan documents or give the sales team forecasting software that calculates earnings for each opportunity in the pipeline. This type of tool answers questions while boosting clarity and understanding of the plan.

6. Communicate the reasons for plan changes and how the company plans to support reps through these changes. This information helps reps understand, accept, and become enthusiastic about the new plan.

7. Highlight the advantages of the new plan. Your reps want to know how to optimize their earnings and why they should be excited about the new plan. If you’re a QuotaPath customer, you can model how much they’ll make and accelerator tipping points.

8. Plan documents need to balance detail with clarity and brevity. Keep comp plan documentation as brief as possible but clearly provide sufficient details.

9. Avoid confusing jargon. Plan documentation must be understandable so reps don’t feel you’re concealing information. This can reduce trust in the plan and management.

10. Explain how achievement relates to earnings. For example, show reps how you will gauge performance, weighted elements, and how to calculate commissions. Better yet, use QuotaPath to automate commission tracking and give your reps visibility into their earnings and attainment.

Pre-SKO communication

Give reps a preview of upcoming changes ahead of the SKO so they don’t hear about them for the first time at the event. Reps will be more enthusiastic about the new plan when they have received more details and answers to their questions.

Here’s an example of the steps you can take to introduce the new plan before the SKO.

First, senior sales management should provide a high-level review of the new plan and the roll-out process. The goal of this presentation is to create initial excitement as the entire sales force engages in the first steps of the roll-out process. Send a follow-up email to the sales organization recapping what was covered.

If time permits, one-on-one plan reviews should follow the organization-wide high-level review. Ensure your reps understand how the new plan affects them and give the reps an opportunity to ask their questions.

Finally, consider launching a Slack channel or forum to host questions and feedback directly from reps. This allows reps to present their lingering questions and input concerning the new plan. Be responsive in the comments and watch for good ideas while explaining why you can’t implement the bad ones.

SKO Comp Session

Once the sales team has previewed the new comp plan collectively and individually, it’s time for the next step in the rollout process.

This is a dedicated session at the SKO, which we recommend should be led by your VP of RevOps or Sales. The purpose of this presentation is to deepen the reps’ understanding and alignment with your organization’s goals and how they relate to their performance and compensation.

This method creates a seamless transition to a successful SKO and enables your sales team to get the most from the learning, cooperation, and motivation ahead.

This session should touch on: 

• Your North Star metric or focus goals
• Discuss how your team’s work connects to and supports those metrics or goals
• Share comp plan calculation examples
• Tie specific rep/team goal achievements to organizational goal achievements
• Highlight types of support being provided to support the team in hitting those targets
• Resources
• Enablement
• Training
• Allow time for a Q&A
• Establish and share well-defined timelines of the comp plan start date
• Review the commission payment process

Following SKO

Remember, it’s important to continue communication around compensation following the SKO to answer remaining rep questions, ensure understanding, and continue building enthusiasm for the new comp plan.

Here are some key steps you can take to accomplish these goals.

Collect sign-off on compensation structures: Plan verification or re-verification is an essential step where reps confirm their understanding of the plan by signing off on it. This step can be completed by using DocuSign, via email, in person, or with our in-app Plan Verification feature.

Provide visibility into the reps’ compensation structures: Give reps a way to reference plans, calculate commissions, and see progress toward goals. You can create the plan in QuotaPath for free and share it with reps to boost and accelerate their understanding of how to optimize their earnings.

Continue to foster feedback and host one-on-ones with reps: For example, our VP of RevOps, Ryan Milligan likes to use the following questions during one-on-ones to invite comp plan feedback:

• Do you feel this comp plan is fair? Why or why not.
• Are you incentivized? Why or why not.
• Do you understand how you’re paid?

Pro tip – as a revenue leader, ask yourself the same questions as if you were a rep.

You should also encourage reps to present additional questions via private chat, email, or phone. Taking these steps is essential to ensure reps understand the plan.

Lastly, ask reps to tell you how they are paid: Another way to confirm or reinforce rep understanding of the new comp plan is to provide specific deal examples and have them calculate their earnings. For instance, if you sell a 2-year agreement worth $20,000 but haven’t hit your accelerator yet, how much would you earn in commissions?

Achieve comp plan rollout success

Your compensation rollout directly affects how effectively it drives business goal achievement. When the rollout is successful, your team understands the new plan, why the previous plan was changed, and how the plan aligns with North Star metrics and business goals. When reps understand and embrace the new plan, it motivates and excites them to drive desired results.

By contrast, a rollout done poorly has the opposite impact, resulting in confusion, misunderstanding, demotivation, frustration, and missed goals.

For comp plan rollout success, use consistent messaging and various forms of communication, and start with a broad overview, transitioning to more details as the group you’re addressing becomes smaller. The more information you can provide in a clear and concise method, the better your reps will understand the plan and embrace it.

See how QuotaPath deepens plan understanding and provides insights into how your team and compensation strategy are performing. Schedule time with our team to learn more, or sign up for a free trial. 

Finally, a way to analyze and predict the impact and cost of your sales compensation structures.

QuotaPath’s new compensation reporting and modeling tools enable leaders to measure and model the business value and performance of their revenue teams’ comp plans. 

See real-time attainment health, identify performance anomalies, and predict new plan costs in one place to optimize your team’s success and gain confidence in your compensation structures.

Instead of scenario modeling through a series of compensation spreadsheets and reporting on deal, earnings, and attainment data from your CRM and payroll platforms — leaders can now reference, report, and predict plan performance directly in QuotaPath.

Measure and Predict Compensation Costs

QuotaPath’s new reporting and modeling tools arm Finance and Revenue leaders with the insights they need to analyze and predict the cost and performance of comp plans.

Learn More

Need to double-check if your senior account executives deliver payback compared to your junior reps to justify their larger on-target-earning packages? We got you. 

What about the health of your team’s attainment? Are reps closing deals evenly throughout the year or sandbagging until the end? Our attainment reports and visualizations make it easy to quickly identify and act on problematic or questionable performance. 

Then, when making plan adjustments or introducing a compensation plan (new territory, role, product, or service), leverage QuotaPath’s modeling tab to estimate how much your proposals would cost the business based on your team’s previous performance. When you’re ready to collaborate with Finance to test and finalize your structures, export your proposal to Excel to further evaluate.

Below, learn more about these huge enhancements in QuotaPath.

Custom Reporting

Historically, it’s been a challenge for revenue leaders to measure the impact of their compensation plans, often leading to misalignments between comp plans and business objectives. That’s because the data typically lives disparately across spreadsheets, in CRMs, and in payroll systems. 

39% of revenue leaders admit comp plans fail to align to biz metrics

From our 2024 Sales Compensation Trends Report

This disconnect has made it hard to calculate and show the overall commission costs relative to the business value of your sales team. 

That is — until now. 

Our new custom compensation reporting pulls your deals and earnings data and organizes it into digestible visuals, so you have what you need to inform and drive sales performance. 

For instance, using our reports, you can evaluate trends affecting quota attainment to optimize your sales strategy by looking into: 

• Changes in attainment over time (any seasonal fluctuations?)
• Earnings over time by person, by quarter, and by plan component (How much did you pay a rep during this quarter last year according to a specific avenue to earn commissions?)
• Distribution of attainment levels (is there a recommended bell curve of performance or clusters of high and low performers?) 
• Overall attainment over time (are attainment levels trending up or down?)
• Identify quota consistencies and inconsistencies across performers
• Which products or services are easier or harder to sell, what is their impact on attainment levels, and does this change over time?
• Are high-attaining products also the most profitable to your org. and your reps?
• Do your high-performers generally close larger deals? 

This data will help you determine coaching opportunities, incentive strategies, product and pricing prioritization, quota and territory planning, and more. 

Identify outliers between deal earnings and value; measure how a plan component performed (for example, did that SPIF you added last month deliver results?); and understand how much your organization compensates by deal to get a pulse on customer acquisition costs (CAC). 

One of the most meaningful reports for Sales and Finance Leaders is the ARR vs. Deal Earnings one, which compares the two, plus the number of people being paid, and the sum of their payouts. This helps leaders determine if they’re paying too many people on one deal.

Manipulate and visualize the data that’s most important to your organization. Similar to what you see in Salesforce and Excel, our flexible reporting options enable you to set different measures, filters, and distances and select from more than 15 visual graphs to inform your analysis. 

Plan Performance Modeling

The reporting functionality is great for existing and past compensation plans, but what about future ones? QuotaPath now offers plan modeling through a dedicated tab called Plan Performance Modeling (PPM) to support and test your comp plan design process.

That’s right. 

Model plans or upcoming adjustments to plans without building a formula-filled spreadsheet.

PPM allows QuotaPath users to forecast your new plan’s potential cost and revenue value dynamically based on attainment within our app. 

With PPM:

• Estimate the annual incentive earnings for your team on their new plan and annual recurring revenue (ARR)
• Calculate revenue potential and cost of commissions for different attainment levels of the plan
• Display graphs to see tipping points for accelerated earnings 
• Set up different attainment scenarios without adjusted formulas using slider visuals to estimate earnings and ARR
• Test quota attainments and plan components (kickers, accelerators, decelerators) to see what impacts the total costs of commissions and revenue

Be confident that your new plan structure is fair and logical — and won’t break. 

Learn more about QuotaPath’s Compensation Reporting and Modeling

Ready to ditch the spreadsheet swamp and dive into data-driven compensation? QuotaPath’s new custom reporting and modeling features take the guesswork out of your sales incentive strategy.

Stop settling for misaligned plans and questionable performance. 

See it all in one place: real-time attainment health, performance anomalies, and new plan costs. Optimize your sales engine, motivate your team, and gain confidence in your compensation structures.

See QuotaPath in action by booking a demo and witnessing the power of these new features firsthand.

Or, experience it yourself: Sign up for a free trial and start building smarter compensation plans today.

Don’t just manage comp; master it. Embrace the future of sales incentives with QuotaPath.