Let’s talk about the impact incentives have on seller motivation.

Sales compensation is one of the most powerful behavioral tools in your revenue engine. Unfortunately, many revenue leaders overlook its full potential, focusing attention elsewhere, on pipeline health, forecast accuracy, sales onboarding, deal velocity, hiring plans, and CRM hygiene.

These are all essential priorities. But when comp is treated as a back-office function instead of a front-line lever, teams miss a massive opportunity: seller motivation in real time.

Your reps don’t live in dashboards or strategy docs. They live in the question: “What will I earn if I close this deal?”

That’s why visibility into earnings actually serves as a performance driver. 

…when comp is treated as a back-office function instead of a front-line lever, teams miss a massive opportunity: seller motivation in real time.

Compensation isn’t something you report on. It’s something you use.

Our blog below highlights how real QuotaPath customers have leveraged the power of comp plans paired with visibility to drive sales motivation and selling behaviors. 

Enjoy the read!

Visibility is Motivation in Motion

First, let’s call out that reps won’t chase what they can’t see. 

When sellers understand not just what they’ve earned, but what’s possible, it creates energy and focus.

This was exactly the challenge Augury set out to solve. 

Augury is a machine health and diagnostics platform that helps manufacturers predict and prevent equipment failure using AI-driven insights. With a GTM team of 20+ and a nuanced compensation plan designed to drive specific selling behaviors, visibility into earnings was essential.

“My reps love the forecasting earnings feature… they know our compensation plan and how the math works. That’s really an invaluable driver of morale,” said David Thai, Revenue Operations Team Lead, at Augury, in an interview.

Before implementing QuotaPath, commissions lived in spreadsheets, and quarterly payout cycles could take up to 45 days to complete. The process was manual, error-prone, and time-consuming. 

Worse, reps had a limited understanding of how their payouts were calculated.

Augury turned to QuotaPath after a referral through their VC network. From day one, the buying decision was rooted in the need for transparency, automation, and a better experience for reps and finance alike.

“The biggest intangible is that [reps] feel like they know our compensation plan and how the math works behind the scenes of how they get paid. That’s really an invaluable driver of morale and understanding,” said David.

With QuotaPath, reps now log in regularly to forecast potential earnings, compare deal scenarios, and understand the upside of closing more—faster. And on the ops side, David and his team cut their commission cycle time from 45 days to under 15, while also unlocking deeper visibility into budget forecasting and accruals.

This results in stronger morale, faster adoption of comp plans, and a go-to-market team that’s selling with purpose and clarity.

From Deal Closer to Deal Strategist

Next, when you leverage comp plans to inspire motivation, you end up shifting selling behaviors. 

At Rootly, for example, showing reps their real-time earnings led to a re-prioritization on extending contract lengths.

“Visibility into their earnings has changed what the reps are pushing for… showing your reps how much more they can make on longer contracts changed how they sell,” said Andre King, Director of Sales, Rootly.

That’s because Rootly’s comp plans incentivized multi-year deals. 

By making those incentives clear in QuotaPath, reps began proactively selling longer-term contracts, leading to a 10% YoY increase in multi-year agreements. Comp plans become powerful when reps understand not just what’s rewarded, but why, and how to adjust strategy to win more.

Real-Time = Real Trust

Trust is built when nothing is hidden. And, in sales, trust is a performance driver. 

When reps believe in the systems around them, they spend less time questioning their pay and more time closing deals.

Yet, when commission calculations live in spreadsheets and Slack threads, it creates a black-box experience that erodes confidence and fuels friction between sales and finance.

Commission tools like QuotaPath change that dynamic by making trust operational.

Warmly is a prime example. 

As their team scaled from three to over 30 reps, leadership knew the old spreadsheet system couldn’t keep up—and more importantly, it couldn’t foster the confidence reps needed to stay focused.

“QuotaPath helped us create a culture of trust. Reps can see exactly what they’ll earn as they close deals,” said Keegan Otter, Head of Revenue, Warmly

With QuotaPath’s real-time dashboards, reps now have full visibility into earnings, down to the deal level. They no longer rely on backchannel conversations or end-of-month surprises. This clarity builds alignment with finance and the business outcomes leadership wants to drive.

And at Whistic, transparency unlocked efficiency. 

Their team previously toggled between tools and fielded constant questions from reps. QuotaPath streamlined the experience with intuitive rep dashboards and built-in flagging tools.

“Reps don’t have to ask constant questions, and they can flag discrepancies directly in the system,” said Taggart Befus, Revenue Operations Manager, Whistic.

This led to reps trusting the system, the calculation of their earnings, and of leadership as a result. 

Additionally, Whistic leadership gained some newly found free time when they reduced commission processing time from seven hours per cycle to just thirty minutes.

Trust, in this context, isn’t abstract. It’s measurable. It’s scalable. And it starts with visibility.

Seeing the Finish Line, Selling to Win

Sales momentum and seller motivation often hinge on the final stretch, those last days of the quarter when every rep is weighing whether to chase one more deal. With QuotaPath, they don’t have to guess whether it’s worth it…they know.

Real-time earnings forecasting brings clarity to crunch time.

“It gives the team that extra bit of juice they need at the end of the quarter to hopefully go sell one or two extra deals,” said James Hall, EVP of Revenue, Gappify

Gappify’s sales team uses QuotaPath to model earnings dynamically as they move through the quarter. Reps can see how close they are to hitting accelerators or unlocking spiffs, and they push harder because they understand the payoff.

At NeuroFlow, the impact has been similar. Reps don’t just see what they’re making, they see why and how.

“They love… seeing their pipeline, forecast potential commissions, and understand exactly how payouts are calculated,” said Genevieve Moss-Hawkins, Systems Operations Manager, NeuroFlow.

By combining pacing visibility with earnings modeling, QuotaPath helps sellers focus their time where it matters most. That means stronger quarter-end pushes, fewer surprises, and more reps selling to win through the end of quota cycles. 

Scaling Visibility Across Teams & Geos

The final point we want to discuss involves scaling. 

As organizations grow, so do the variables: more roles, more currencies, more geographies, and more ways reps can (and should) earn. Without the right infrastructure, this complexity can erode clarity and trust.

Wazoku is proof that visibility scales.

“We want people to see their projected earnings. We want to make it competitive,” said Sarah Counts, COO, Wazoku

Operating across both the U.S. and the U.K., Wazoku manages 30 users, 13 comp plans, and multi-currency payouts, all through QuotaPath integrated with HubSpot. With clean workflows, customizable team views, and centralized data, Wazoku ensures every rep, regardless of location, has the same access to motivation-driving visibility.

“QuotaPath has made my job way easier. It’s made things more transparent, and our comp plans are way more organized,” said Sarah.

That’s what you get with QuotaPath:  flexible architecture that supports regional nuances while keeping the bigger picture aligned. This is important because whether you’re running one team or five across continents, sales transparency shouldn’t get lost in translation.

The New Standard of Seller Motivation

Thanks for reading. QuotaPath customers are transforming the way their teams sell.

Visibility isn’t a perk. It’s the new standard.

When sellers understand how their pipeline translates to earnings, they take ownership of their goals. They forecast smarter, ask fewer questions, and work the deals that make the biggest impact, not just the ones that close fastest.

From startups to scale-ups, the message is the same: Transparency drives trust. Trust drives performance.

Ready to transform your team’s motivation with real-time commission tracking? Schedule a demo to see how QuotaPath drives performance through visibility.

For the third year in a row, QuotaPath has been named to HubSpot’s Essential Apps for Sales, a curated collection of must-have integrations designed to help HubSpot users sell smarter, faster, and with more confidence.

Read Full List

This recognition is a badge of honor and proof that our customers are seeing real impact from how we help unify their sales process inside HubSpot, eliminating fragmented tools and giving teams a complete view of their pipeline.

“Our sales managers and reps are more productive, our accounting is error-free, and the whole system flows better,” said Eric Baum, CEO of Bluleadz, a customer of QuotaPath and HubSpot. “The QuotaPath integration with HubSpot has transformed our operations.”

We continue to build on this momentum with two powerful new product launches that will further enhance your HubSpot experience: the Attainment App Card and Earnings App Object.

Watch our video below and read on to learn more.

Earnings App Object: Centralized Commission Insights

Our first big launch, the Earnings App Object, brings component-level earnings data into HubSpot as a native object.

This means you can now:

• Track commissions spend and trends: Report on total earnings by deal, rep, or team and monitor commissions as a percent of revenue over time
• Evaluate incentive impact: Compare earnings by deal size, type, or product sold. See which compensation components drive the most performance, and track manager comp based on rep earnings.
• Prioritize high-impact deals: Identify high-efficiency deals by earnings per dollar sold and analyze cost of sales by contract length or segment

Attainment App Card: Quota Progress Where You Work

In addition to our Earnings App Object, we also launched a new app card.

Now, with our Attainment App Card, reps can see their quota progress in real time, directly on deal pages.

No switching tabs. No manual tracking. 

Just a clear, visual bar graph showing overall attainment against quota in real time.

This instant visibility helps reps self-check progress, understand how each deal impacts their goals, including forecasted views, and course-correct faster. Managers can use the same view to coach more effectively and improve forecasting accuracy.

Our Attainment App Card joins our existing Earnings App Card, which gives reps and managers instant access to commission data without leaving HubSpot. Together, these app cards provide a complete performance view, earnings and attainment side by side, right where your team works.

With earnings data centralized in HubSpot, RevOps teams can analyze commission trends, evaluate incentive impact, and prioritize the deals that drive the most performance—all without leaving the CRM.

Why This Matters for You

With Essential Apps recognition and these two new capabilities, QuotaPath is doubling down on our mission: helping sales teams stay focused, motivated, and aligned with company goals.

• Reps get clarity on where they stand and what’s needed to hit quota
• Managers get better coaching tools and forecasting accuracy
• RevOps leaders get richer data to optimize comp plans and drive revenue growth
  

We’re adding features, yes, but most importantly, we’re removing friction from your workflow so you can move faster and sell smarter.

See It in Action at INBOUND

Both the Attainment App Card and Earnings App Object are making their debut at HubSpot’s INBOUND conference. If you’re there, stop by our booth (#22) to see why we’re a 2025 HubSpot Sales Essential App. Ask questions, get hands-on with the new tools, see a live demo… and maybe play a round of roulette!

For everyone else, you can book a demo here to see how these launches and our award-winning HubSpot integration can impact your team.

Commission cycles and burnout for RevOps teams?

Name a better duo.

How “fondly” we remember those long nights spent untangling spreadsheets. Endless back-and-forth with finance. A string of rep payout questions when the check drops.

All for a process that’s more reactive than strategic.

But for a growing group of RevOps leaders, that story is changing. 

With commission automation, they’ve moved from burnout to buy-in, reclaiming their time, restoring trust with their reps, and turning compensation into a lever for growth instead of a source of stress.

At Augury, for example, commissions once stretched across 45 grueling days after each quarter.

“Now, on average, it takes us about 15 days, maybe even less,” said their RevOps Team Lead David Thai. With around 20 GTM employees, that’s a full month of time back…every quarter.

Whistic, too, went from 5 to 7 hours per commission cycle down to just 30 minutes. 

“Taking that from 5, 6, 7 hours every commission cycle down to half an hour has been an immense time savings,” said Taggart Befus, Revenue Operations Manager. That’s not just time saved, it’s operational breathing room.”

And at Warmly, the ROI has shown up on the balance sheet. 

“If you take my salary, plus our CEO’s and BizOps lead’s, and factor in the time we used to spend troubleshooting commissions, QuotaPath has saved us thousands of dollars each month,” said Keegan Otter, Head of Revenue.

The takeaway: Commission automation delivers efficiency while giving RevOps leaders their time back, creating alignment with finance and sales, and finally shifting comp from a pain point to a performance driver.

How This is Possible

Time savings don’t just appear out of thin air, however.

The shift from chaos to clarity happens when the right tools remove the manual work, adapt to your team’s structure, and scale alongside your business. 

Here’s how QuotaPath customers made that possible:

Flexible, Self-Managed Comp Plans

At Core Imaging, President Randy Laufersky went from spreadsheet mayhem to fully managing comp plans in under an hour.“Before, I used to always go to our CSM and say, ‘Here’s what I need changed.’ But now I can update all the comp plans myself.  I think I had everyone done inside a half hour,” he said. “What used to take days now takes less than an hour.”

Supporting Complex Team Structures

Wazoku operates across the U.S. and U.K. with 30 commissionable users, 13 comp plans, and multi-currency payouts. QuotaPath handled all of it, no spreadsheet wizardry required.

“Our CFO is a whiz with Excel. He can do it all. The problem is that spreadsheets aren’t scalable,” said COO Sarah Counts. “QuotaPath made my job way easier. It’s made things more transparent, and our comp plans are way more organized.”

Scalable for Rapid Growth

At Warmly, what started as a manageable process for three reps ballooned into an unmanageable one for 35. QuotaPath made it easy to scale comp structures as headcount grew, without adding complexity.

“We needed something built for early-stage companies that would scale with us,” said Keegan. “QuotaPath became a ‘set and forget’ tool that we trust, even as we’ve added new plans and reps.”

Fast Onboarding and Responsive Support

Of course, none of this is possible without an effective onboarding and implementation process.

At Actabl, their RevOps leader Kenza onboarded with six comp plans and a looming deadline to finalize both current and next year’s plans. With hands-on help from QuotaPath’s team, they built, launched, and iterated quickly.

“We had November to finalize 2023 and build 2024. Our CSM helped us strategize and adjust,  and that made all the difference,” Kenza shared. “Now, I only think about commissions when it’s time to submit to payroll or plan for next year.”

It’s Not Just RevOps Benefitting

While RevOps may feel the most immediate relief from commission automation, they’re far from the only team that gains. 

Sales, Finance, and even Leadership have benefited from faster, more accurate, and more transparent processes. 

Here’s what changes when QuotaPath replaces spreadsheets:

“QuotaPath helped us create a culture of trust. Reps can see exactly what they’ll earn as they close deals, which keeps them motivated and focused on the right outcomes,” said Keegan.

Your Turn

We know you’re experiencing burnout. So let us help you alleviate this area while also helping your team gain trust, visibility, alignment, and motivation when it comes to commissions and incentives.

To learn more, schedule time with our team. 

When designed well, a sales comp plan is a powerful tool for motivating AEs, aligning behavior with company goals, and driving predictable revenue growth. 

When a bad comp plan is, well… bad… it can do the opposite… encouraging gaming, demotivating your team, blowing up budgets, and even driving your best reps to competitors.

Over the years, we’ve seen our fair share of head-scratcher comp plans, some of which seemed like they were built to frustrate reps rather than reward them. To save you the pain, we’ve compiled five of the most problematic AE comp plans we’ve ever seen, complete with examples and the math behind why they don’t work.

If your plan looks anything like these, it might be time to make some changes.

1. Capped Commission Comp Plans

First up is a capped commission plan, or as we like to call it, a rep turnover machine. 

Imagine telling your top performer that no matter how much they sell, they’ll stop getting paid commissions after a certain point. That’s exactly what happens with capped commission plans.

Example: An AE earns 10% commission on all closed-won deals, but commissions are capped at $25,000 per year.

• Scenario:
  
  • Quota: $500,000 ARR
  • 10% commission rate → Uncapped, they’d earn $50,000 at 100% quota.
  • Cap: $25,000 means they stop earning commissions after $250,000 in bookings.
  • If they sell $800,000 ARR, they still earn only $25,000 in commissions instead of $80,000.
    
• Why it’s problematic:
  
  • Disincentivizes selling after the cap is reached.
  • Encourages sandbagging deals into the next comp period.
  • Top performers feel punished instead of rewarded.
  • Can cause attrition of your best AEs.

Caps don’t just hurt motivation; they hurt your company’s bottom line by removing any reason for reps to keep pushing once they’ve hit the ceiling.

You can bet they’ll be on the hunt for an uncapped sales role. 

2. Cliff at 60%

Up next is a cliff, or commission floor.

A cliff is meant to drive performance, but when it’s set too high, it becomes a brick wall.

Example: An AE only earns commission if they reach 60% of quota.

• Scenario:
  
  • Quota: $600,000 ARR
  • Commission rate: 8%
  • If they sell $350,000 ARR (≈ 58% of quota), they earn $0 commission.
  • If they sell $370,000 ARR (≈ 62% of quota), they suddenly earn $29,600 in commissions.
    
• Why it’s problematic:
  
  • Creates massive pressure at the end of the quarter to cross the cliff.
  • Makes earnings volatile and unpredictable for reps.
  • Can demotivate reps early in the year if they fall behind.
  • Leads to desperation discounting to push deals over the cliff.

Instead of inspiring hard work, high cliffs often push reps to make bad decisions just to survive the quarter.

3. Overly Aggressive Accelerators with No Threshold

Now, this one would have your reps singing your praises. Your Finance team? Not so much.

Accelerators can be powerful motivators, but without the right guardrails, they can break your comp budget in a single quarter.

Example: AE earns 8% commission normally but jumps to 30% commission on every dollar sold above 100% of quota — with no minimum performance threshold.

• Scenario:
  
  • Quota: $600,000 ARR
  • Commission rate: 8% until 100% quota → 30% afterwards.
  • If they close a $300,000 deal early in the year, they’re already halfway to quota.
  • Then, if they close a $400,000 deal next, $100,000 of that is at 30%, giving them $30,000 in one shot.
    
• Why it’s problematic:
  
  • Can cause “quota gaming” — AE front-loads or lucks into one big deal, then coasts the rest of the year.
  • Unfair to reps in territories without mega-deal potential.
  • Can blow up your comp budget unexpectedly.

Without thresholds, aggressive accelerators risk rewarding luck over skill and leave finance teams scrambling to cover unplanned payouts.

4. Single-Rate Comp Plan with No Quota

Ever hear of a plan with no quota? This is more common for a startup’s first comp plan because there’s no historical data to build a quota from. But for any other stage, a comp plan without a quota is like driving without a speedometer.

Example: AE earns a flat 12% commission on all closed-won ARR, no quota, no accelerators, no decelerators.

• Scenario:
  
  • One AE closes $200,000 ARR → $24,000 commission
  • Another closes $900,000 ARR → $108,000 commission.
  • No target, no performance benchmarks — just pay on whatever comes in.
    
• Why it’s problematic:
  
  • No performance expectations tied to pay
  • Rewards “order takers” the same as hustlers.
  • Impossible to forecast OTE payouts and budget.
  • Can mask underperformance.

Without quotas, there’s a lack of accountability and no way to tell whether your team is truly delivering against business goals.

5. “Winner Takes All” Tournament-Style Plan

Last up is a “winners” comp plan.

Turning sales into a high-stakes game might seem fun, until you realize how many good reps it drives away.

Example: The top AE each quarter earns a $50,000 bonus, everyone else earns nothing in bonus commissions.

• Scenario:
  
  • All AEs have a $700,000 ARR quota.
  • Q1 Results:
    
    • Rep A: $800,000 ARR → Wins $50,000 bonus.
    • Rep B: $790,000 ARR → No bonus.
    • Rep C: $780,000 ARR → No bonus.
      
• Why it’s problematic:
  
  • Breeds resentment and kills collaboration.
  • Can cause extreme short-term behavior: discounting, territory poaching, deal stealing.
  • Demotivates solid performers who narrowly miss first place.
  • Leads to rep attrition after repeated near-misses.

Healthy competition is good, but in a winner-takes-all world, you lose far more than you gain.

FInal Thoughts

Sales comp plans should reward consistent performance, motivate reps to keep selling, and align with company goals… not create chaos, resentment, or financial unpredictability. 

The five examples above illustrate how poorly designed plans can backfire, even when they seem enticing on paper.

If your AE plan has caps, cliffs, extreme accelerators, no quotas, or “winner takes all” elements, it may be time to rethink the structure. Your goal is to create a plan that’s simple, fair, transparent, and motivating, and that drives both company growth and rep satisfaction. To learn more, talk to our team today.

Tracking commissions manually may work initially, but it doesn’t scale well. For many sales teams, spreadsheets are the default solution. However, they quickly become time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to manage as compensation plans become more complex. If you’ve ever spent hours updating a sales payout calculator spreadsheet, cross-referencing CRM data, or resolving payout disputes, you’re not alone.

That’s why QuotaPath has created a free, downloadable commission tracker. Designed with small teams in mind, this Google Sheet template streamlines the capture of deal data, calculation of earnings, and tracking of attainment.

Download Your Sales Commission Tracking Template

Using a sales commission spreadsheet offers several benefits. It simplifies payout tracking for small teams, especially when you’re managing just a handful of reps or compensation plans. The template is easy to customize and scale as your team, products, or plan structures evolve. It’s also a great starting point before moving to automation, allowing you to get organized and establish a foundation before upgrading to a dedicated platform.

This template is versatile enough to support a range of use cases, including sales rep commission logs, manual commission tracking, and sales incentive tracking.

Understanding the Template’s Structure

The spreadsheet includes three key tabs that organize your commission data and calculations:

• Deals tab: includes close date, rep name, deal value
• Monthly Totals tab: aggregates commissions
• Home tab: shows total earnings vs. quota

Definitions of key terms:

Base Salary: A fixed amount paid to a salesperson regularly, typically bi-weekly or monthly, regardless of performance.

Commission Rate: The percentage of sales revenue a rep earns as variable pay for closed deals.

Quota / Quota Frequency: The sales target a rep is expected to hit within a defined timeframe, such as monthly, quarterly, or annually. Quota frequency determines how often performance is measured and commissions are calculated.

On-Target Earnings (OTE): The total compensation a rep can expect if they achieve 100% of their quota. OTE includes both base salary and projected commissions and is often used to communicate a role’s full earning potential.

How to Customize for Your Team

This template is designed to be flexible and easily adapted to match your team’s compensation structure. Start by adjusting the quota period to (monthly vs quarterly). If you use monthly quotas instead of quarterly, update the column headers and any related formulas in the Home and Monthly Totals tabs to align with that time frame.

If your team earns different rates based on the products or SKUs they sell, adjust the commission rates per product or SKU by adding new columns to the Deals tab. Input the appropriate rate for each product type and update the formula used to calculate commissions to pull from the correct field.

Build performance incentives into the spreadsheet, such as accelerators and bonus logic, by inserting conditional logic that increases a rep’s commission rate or creates a bonus payout as designated milestones are hit. These can be customized using IF statements and lookup tables within the existing worksheet structure.

These tips for keeping your sales commission tracker up to date will increase accuracy and ease of use.

Use data validation and dropdowns to limit free-form inputs and ensure consistent formatting across fields, such as product names, quota periods, or rep roles. Freeze panes for better UX, allowing key headers and identifiers to remain visible as you scroll through growing datasets. To quickly surface performance insights, add conditional formatting to highlight top earners.

How to Integrate

Connecting your CRM or spreadsheet to QuotaPath can significantly reduce manual work and streamline the commission tracking process. If you’re currently exporting deal data from a CRM like Salesforce or HubSpot, you can import that data into the template for commission calculations and performance tracking.

Another Template: Commission Payment Agreement

We’ve also got a free download to borrow for your commission payment agreement, a document that you and your reps sign acknowledging thecompensation plan, commission payment terms, sales targets and commissions, dispute resolution procedures, and legal considerations.

Download Commission Payment Agreement Template

For a more automated experience, QuotaPath’s Google Sheets integration enables you to sync deal stages and payout data automatically from your spreadsheet. To get started, navigate to the Integrations section within your QuotaPath workspace. Select the Google Sheets integration card, connect your Google account, and share your spreadsheet link. Then, you can set your sync schedule and map your deal data.

Mapping deal data from your CRM into the appropriate fields, such as deal amount, close date, and rep email, is as easy as selecting from drop-down menus. This tells QuotaPath where to pull data for each field. For more detailed instructions, visit the Google Sheets integration help page.

Tips For Accurate Commission Tracking

Even with a solid template in place, it’s easy for manual errors or process gaps to throw off your commission calculations. These best practices will help spreadsheet users maintain accuracy and avoid common pitfalls.

Use data validation and dropdowns: Prevent formatting issues and inconsistent entries by limiting input options in key fields. Dropdowns make it easier for users to follow naming conventions and reduce the risk of typos or duplicate values.

Freeze headers for easier navigation: Errors may increase as your deal data grows. Freezing the top row helps keep field names visible while scrolling, reducing confusion and mistakes during updates or reviews.

Avoid overly complex formulas: While commission tracking Excels and Google Sheets support advanced logic, complicated formulas can be hard to audit and easy to break. Keep calculations simple and well-documented, especially if multiple team members are managing the sheet.

Maintain version control: Create regular backups and clearly label versions of your spreadsheet to track changes over time. This helps prevent data loss, facilitates easier troubleshooting of errors, and provides a paper trail for audits or approvals.

Highlight errors or missed commissions with conditional formatting: Use visual cues to flag blank fields, missing data, or unusually high or low commissions. This makes discrepancies easier to spot and correct before payouts are finalized, avoiding the consequences of payroll errors.

Managing Payouts

Once commissions have been calculated, the next step is processing payouts, which can often become complicated. Using a spreadsheet for end-of-month commissions typically involves locking the file to prevent changes, duplicating individual tabs or files for each rep, and creating a master version for leadership and finance to review.

To ensure accuracy, each payout must be cross-checked against CRM data, deal records, and other spreadsheets used by RevOps or Finance. This often requires reconciling discrepancies, verifying close dates and payment statuses, and manually approving each line item. Add in layers of leadership sign-off, and what started as a simple spreadsheet becomes a multi-step, time-consuming workflow.

Even for small teams, this process can eat up hours. However, for growing organizations, the manual steps increase the risk of overpayments, missed commissions, and delays. One formula error or version control mishap can have ripple effects that impact rep trust and payroll accuracy.

This works, but there’s a better way…

How to Achieve Commission Tracking Automation

If your manual process has become too time-consuming and prone to errors, it may be time to consider commission tracking software. QuotaPath’s automation platform eliminates the headaches of spreadsheets with a centralized, transparent, and scalable platform built for accuracy and efficiency.

With QuotaPath, you get accurate, real-time commission tracking from your CRM. No more chasing down deal details or manually updating totals. As deals progress through the funnel, earnings and attainment automatically sync to your compensation plans.

Your reps also gain visibility through transparent dashboards, where they can track commission earnings and quota progress, and understand how each deal contributes to their earnings. This clarity reduces questions and builds trust.

For operations and finance teams, QuotaPath supports multi-tiered approvals and payout workflows, streamlining the handoff between departments and reducing the risk of errors. And when it’s time to process payroll, you can sync directly to your payroll provider, closing the loop with speed and accuracy.

See how QuotaPath’s compensation automation software helps growing teams automate sales commissions with confidence. Book a demo today.

Benefits of a Commission Platform

There are benefits to automating your commission process with a platform like QuotaPath. 

• Cleaner handoff between RevOps, Finance, and Sales.
• Reduces payout errors and manual work.
• Empowers reps with live visibility into earnings.
• Flexible for different compensation models.
• Audit-ready reporting and compliance.

Check out QuotaPath to start automating your commission process, or download your free commission tracking template until you’re ready.

At QuotaPath, we believe in building fair and logical compensation plans that drive growth for the organization and increase earnings for reps.

Fair plans give reps a true shot at hitting on-target earnings (OTEs).

So, what happens when reps go out on parental leave? Are they earning any incentive pay while they’re out with their new baby, like a percentage or an average? Is anyone keeping their pipeline warm, so it’s not empty upon their return? Are they coming back to a full quota while staring up at their team’s leaderboard from the very bottom?

Unfortunately, we found that the answers are often “No.”

That is why QuotaPath recently hosted the webinar, “Creating Fair Sales Leave Policies,” in collaboration with Women in Sales, so that every organization will eventually say “Yes” to all of those questions.

Our panelists included Kelly O’Halloran, Director of Content at QuotaPath, Allison Whalen, CEO and co-founder of Parentaly, Jessi Johanson, VP of Sales at Tilt, and Ryan Milligan, VP of RevOps, QuotaPath.

The panel discussed topics like best practices for sales leave policies, creating an effective return process, managing time off, and the importance of establishing clear and transparent policies.

Best Practices for Sales Leave Policies

The conversation began with the panelists discussing tips on developing effective sales parental leave policies and how to navigate related challenges.

How to Determine Incentive Pay During Leave

Ryan outlined best practices for determining incentive pay during leave, emphasizing the importance of clear policies and documentation.

“You want to have a completely clear policy for what is going to happen to pipeline based on stage, depth, and time to close. You have two types of pipeline: pipeline you expect to close while you’re on leave and pipeline you don’t expect to close but need to continue nurturing,” Ryan said.

“Typically, you want to give the bulk of the credit to the rep who did the work to prepare the pipeline to close. I advise senior leaders such as sales managers, directors, and CROs to step in and support the closing of that handful of ops. Then give your rep full credit for the work that they did to prepare those opportunities to close while they are on leave.”

Ryan continued, “For upstage pipeline, use a split policy where the rep going on leave gets a clear and determined amount of credit based on the depth of that pipeline before they go on leave.”

Conduct a review with the rep a month before they plan to go on leave, where you clearly document the open ops, their stage, and how compensation for each will be handled during leave, as well as what will happen when they return from leave.

Ryan also explained, “You should have a clear existing pipeline policy as well as a guaranteed variable component. Typically, orgs pay anywhere from a third to half of the variable guaranteed while a seller is on leave. That pairs with the commission the seller expects to receive on the deals forecasted to close while they’re on leave. This should get them as close as possible to full OTE based on the work they did prior to going on leave.”

According to Ryan, your leave policy is “a ramping plan in reverse. It’s a very clear, documented, and mutually agreed upon policy that both protects the cash needs of the business while protecting the relationship with the seller and preparing them to be successful when they return.”

Jessi shared her innovative approach of opening up a stretch assignment for her team to cover for an employee on leave, which worked well for her team.

“My Account Manager took a leave of absence for a full quarter. Gone are the days when Jessi is everyone’s backfill. We’re too big now, and I have too much going on. Things will fall through the cracks. So, we decided to try opening up a stretch assignment for anyone in the organization who wanted to apply.”

Jessi continued, “They were essentially her backfill, and we took away most of her other duties, except getting contracts renewed. We estimated it was half a day to a full day a week, and we would do a commission split. We posted the job internally, and I received six applications. I interviewed everyone and hired someone from my marketing team. It was super unexpected. He absolutely crushed it, and we have all on time renewals so far this quarter.”

Source Data/Examples from Like Companies

Allison discussed the importance of having a clear policy and using data from other companies to advocate for better leave policies.

“If you’re advocating that your company needs an explicit policy, try using information about what other companies are doing. Then you can say, Hey, this is something that we need to have as an organization,” Allison said. “There are enough examples from other companies that you can bring forward to say, which one do we think we want here? Although leadership at companies may want to do the right thing, it seems too difficult. So, using data and showing what other companies are doing is powerful.”

Jessi emphasized the need for managers to be educated on leave laws and to support their teams effectively during and after leave.

“Managers tend not to say anything if they don’t know what to say. And the worst way for your manager to show up is not to say anything to you. The worst-case scenario is they actually say something that they shouldn’t,” Jessi said.

“Consequently, some education on what they can and can’t say, some leave laws, what job protection means, and if they can communicate with an employee while they’re on leave. Things like that will help a manager know what the guardrails are and what they can and can’t do, so they can have these conversations with the employee, know they’re saying the right thing, or at least doing their best and not saying anything they shouldn’t.”

Returning to Work After Leave

After a thorough discussion about creating fair sales leave policies, the panelists’ conversation turned to best practices for successful return-to-work experiences that boost retention.

Jessi and Ryan discussed the importance of a clear ramp-up period for employees returning from leave, including the emotional support needed.

“You treat a person returning from leave in the same way you would when ramping a new hire,” Ryan said. And that needs to include the same quota credit, quota relief, training, and enablement for those returning from leave.

“We have a four-week ramp-up period for all employees that’s full-time pay for a part-time schedule,” according to Jessi, to ease the transition after parental leave. She continued, “One of the hardest things is emotionally supporting the employee when they’re back. The return isn’t hard because they’re returning, it’s hard because they’re scared that they’re not going to be able to get their pipeline back where it needs to be, close deals, and make money again.”

“I have not had a single person who couldn’t do it, but it’s so scary, especially when you’re great at your job, you’ve taken a break for the first time, and now you’re back. So, I spend a lot of my one-on-ones reassuring, supporting, talking through it, and really advocating for that person,” Jessi shared.

The Manager’s Role

Allison highlighted the role of managers in ensuring a smooth return to work, including setting up opportunities to maintain momentum and confidence.

The return-to-work experience is the most important thing for any manager. The worst feeling when you return to work in sales is that you’ve got this stale pipeline, like starting over.
At Parentally, we start preparing a month before a rep’s return from leave. “They’ll be so stressed if they have nothing. However, there are some great ways for sales managers to tee up opportunities, depending on the context and your sales cycle,” said Allison.

“For example, we just had someone return from leave,” Allison continued, “We had prepared by having our Head of Marketing set a bunch of meetings and conduct early-stage meetings so that when she came back, we were able to give her some new opportunities.”

Every manager should consider how they handle the return-to-work experience to help the rep get excited, feel like there’s momentum, and have something to work on. “It doesn’t need to be, here’s an entire beautiful pipeline for you to come back to,” Allison said. “But it should be here are a few exciting deals that we started that I’m giving to you as a confidence builder, an exciting thing. I think that goes a long way in helping people get their groove back.”

Ryan added, “If you have a faster sales cycle, like we tend to, and you have a mid-market or enterprise rep who’s coming back, give them a couple of quick SMB wins to get their confidence back.”

Transparency is Key

The panelists discuss the challenges of managing time off and the importance of transparency and flexibility in policies.

According to Allison, “Oftentimes, non-birth parents will game the system. For example, a rep knows a huge deal will hit while they’re on leave. If based on the numbers, they’d earn more by being in the seat when that deal hits, non-birth parents often come back for a week, so they are in the seat when the deal closes, so they get full credit. Then they go back out on leave, which creates cultural issues.”

Since non-birth parents aren’t usually able to do that because they’re on short-term disability,” Allison continued, “I still see it happen more often than you would expect.”

To avoid having this happen, Allison shares, “We see a lot of companies say you can’t split your leave, or you can split your leave, but it needs to be in chunks of four weeks at a time to limit its occurrence.” This prevents people from coming back for one week when the deal is going to close. However, it becomes a judgment call of whether it’s worth optimizing for that.

“The clear split policy is the best way to approach it as long as you, as the leader, and the employees are on the same page about when the splits are going to happen, how long they’re going to happen, and why. A lot of families use split leave to extend leave policies naturally until they have other paths to childcare,” Ryan added. “The rep must be back for long enough to get fully back in the seat before going back on leave again, due to ramp-up and ramp-down time. You must be clear about maximum splits or designated length of chunks.”

This is a Retention strategy

Additionally, Kelly and Ryan emphasized the need for organizations to prioritize leave policies as a way to retain top performers and ensure long-term success.

Sales teams are being asked to do more with fewer team members. For instance, the team that used to be 40 reps might now be 10, trying to drive as much revenue as possible. This is a reason why leaders should prioritize leave policies. Ryan suggests that they consider, “What if your top performing seller left tomorrow? It’s so much more painful for a 10-person team than a 40-person team.”

“That moment of returning from leave is a massive point of reflection for a person as to whether they think this company is the right fit for them in the long term, Ryan explained. “There’s a lot of emotion in that process since you’re potentially leaving your child, who you’ve been with for a while, in a different body of care. Plus, you’re staring at that leaderboard that you’re at the bottom of while you might have major confidence issues.”

That’s why it’s essential that you communicate to the seller that you have confidence in their ability to be very successful upon their return, and that you have a clear process in place to get them back up and running.

On the other hand, “if you want to be super pragmatic about it, it’s a math equation,” Ryan explained, “If you just stripped out half of your top performing sellers who all, went on leave in the next three or four years, what would that mean if you lost all of them because of a terrible leave policy? What would that mean for revenue, for performance, for Board reporting?”

Ryan added, “This makes it a smart, quantitative business decision to have a good leave policy for strong rep retention, long-term success of the business, and predictability of revenue.”

Kelly shared that she loved the mindset shift that occurred during the conversation, from less focus on let’s not have the sales rep be scared. The focus shifted to “Let’s have the sales leader be scared that they’re going to lose that sales rep for having a poor policy in place,” as Kelly described, “versus someone being scared to come back or to have a child, while being a sales professional.”

Recommended Reading

How to Support Your Moms Returning From Leave in Sales

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Q&A with Attendees

Next, the panelists responded to questions from attendees and wrapped up with additional comments.

The panelists addressed questions from the audience, including best practices for early-stage companies and ways to empower managers.

“Best practices across industries right now are typically 12 weeks and giving non-birthing parents as much time as well,” Jessi shared in reference to early-stage companies. “Then consider how the policy applies to OTE compared to base, and if you plan to have any guaranteed commission or variable comp.”

“I would be more focused on what to do, especially if they’re the only salesperson. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to define a policy forever,” Allison added. “You are small, and you need to consider what’s best for the business, for this person, and what’s realistic.”

According to Ryan, you can empower managers with messaging about supporting new parents with a strong leave policy for their benefit and for retention to protect the business, which trickles all the way down to the person going on leave.

The panelists discussed the importance of top-down support for leave policies and the need for clear communication and education for managers.

“Your thoughts on parental leave must be top down from a CRO or management level to be successful and supported in terms of how a VP of sales, for example, could support her manager who has a team member going on leave,” Ryan said. “The conversation should come from a VP of sales or CRO to say we have these policies in place, because I know that if I don’t have a policy, I run the risk of losing a top performer tomorrow. This is especially true at an incredibly lean growth startup and hyper hyper-damaging to revenue predictability.”

“Managers also need help with things like, what am I supposed to do if I’m a person down? Sometimes we forget that most managers want to support people, but wonder, ‘Am I being held accountable to a team goal when my headcount is being cut?’ That’s when they need their manager to help with this,” according to Allison.

“For instance, they need more budget to bring in a backfill or spend more money on marketing. So, managers are also scared. They want to know, ‘How am I supposed to deliver business results?’”

Jessi added that support for managers includes “any kind of education, on leave, laws, things like FMLA, so they know how to effectively communicate with and support their teams before, during, and after leave.”

Importance of Flexibility & Support Upon Return

Lastly, the panelists share final thoughts on the importance of flexibility and support for new parents in sales roles.

Jessi talked about both flexibility and support for new parents as they return from leave. She explained, “The reasons you need time off as a parent are changing. It’s probably going to be because daycare is closed, your kid’s sick, or you have a doctor’s appointment.”

Reps get anxious because they’re new parents and didn’t know they would need all this random time off. “I tell my team, you are going to have days where you’re going to call me and say, I have to go pick up my kid from school, or they were up all night and have a fever, so they can’t work today,” Jessi said. “That’s okay. I know this is going to happen. I’m here for you. We’ll figure out coverage. I can jump on a call for you if I need to or somebody else can.”

“We got it,” Jessi continued, “but I don’t want them to suffer with that in silence and not be open with me about what they’re going through. So, I have those conversations early and often in the beginning, until they get comfortable with being super transparent with what’s going on and how I can help.”

Ryan explained that there are two ways to look at support in terms of parental leave. “I am supporting you because I care about you as a person and want you to have a great and fruitful pregnancy relationship with your child. I also think you are key to the success of this business quantitatively, so I’m investing in your leave and your return from leave, because it makes financial sense for this business.”

For support in building fair compensation plans, book a time with Ryan for a compensation plan consultation. To learn more about how QuotaPath automates commission tracking and payouts, schedule a demo.

For years, Augury’s RevOps team calculated commissions for 20 quota-carrying GTM employees the old-fashioned way: sprawling Excel spreadsheets.

The process involved countless manual checks that stretched 45 days each quarter. As RevOps Team Lead David Thai recalls, the lack of automation wasn’t just time-consuming; it created gaps in transparency for both sales leadership and finance.

Implementing QuotaPath changed that overnight.

By automating workflows and centralizing commission data, Augury condensed its commission preparation from a six-week slog to just 15 days (sometimes less), while giving account executives and CSMs real-time visibility into their earnings.

The result? A streamlined, auditable process that saves the team 25 days each quarter, drives rep engagement, improves forecasting accuracy, and elevates the overall compensation experience.

Give & Gets of Comp Plans

Learn how to maintain sales rep engagemen while making adjustments to your comp plan.

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The Challenge: Manual Processes and Limited Transparency

Managing commissions for 20 reps, of course, came with its challenges, especially due to the complexity of their compensation plans and the team’s limited Excel expertise.

Processing commissions was a huge time sink.

As David explained, “It originally took 45 days to do our quarterly commissions from start to finish due to all the processes and workflows we had to trigger, creating a lot of manual pains.”

“We had payment eligibility rules on a clunky master spreadsheet. Consequently, it took a long time for new team members to understand these calculations,” according to David. This limited their visibility into commission eligibility, budget forecasting, and finance alignment.

The Search for a Better Way

That’s when they turned to automation.

Augury’s VC portfolio partner recommended QuotaPath to David when he started investigating potential solutions. QuotaPath used a detailed process, “really mapping out the complexities of our comp plan, and showcasing nuanced and specific demos that fit our use-cases,” David said.

QuotaPath offered the flexibility necessary to match Augury’s complex compensation plans with robust modeling, workflows, and eligibility tracking. David said QuotaPath’s collaborative, customer-first mindset sealed the deal, as they worked together to ensure alignment across people, processes, and priorities.

Watch David’s full interview above.

The Solution: QuotaPath to Scale

David had explained the problems he wanted to solve as “twofold—a time problem, spending 45 days to do quarterly commissions, and a transparency problem for the finance and RevOps teams.”

Implementing QuotaPath addressed these issues.

Augury saw significant time savings.

“Now it takes 15 days or less,” said David.

Plus, he and his team have improved visibility into commission data and eligibility by eliminating the numerous steps required when payment eligibility data was maintained in a master spreadsheet.

Unlocking operational metrics provided easier audit-readiness and more streamlined collaboration across finance and RevOps.

“These were metrics we couldn’t even track before. Now we have transparency and reportability,” David said.

Augury also gained clearer visibility into forecasts and accruals after adopting QuotaPath.

“Now we have greater line of sight between budget forecasting and commission forecasting, both monthly and annually, when it comes to accruals,” said David. “QuotaPath truly unlocked capabilities that had been gaps for us in the past.”

Additionally, QuotaPath provided Augury with a platform that would also scale with them.

Sales Team Reception

How does sales feel? Pretty damn good.

The reps prefer QuotaPath over spreadsheets. 

“When you ask them, would you take this or an Excel sheet? They’ll say, QuotaPath 100% of the time,” David said. The reps enthusiastically adopted the forecasted earnings feature.

“They love being able to see how much they stand to gain,” David added.

This better understanding of their comp plans and incentive math boosts morale and motivation.  “They understand how they get paid, and it’s a huge morale driver. It motivates reps to differentiate and pitch harder,” said David.

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ROI & Results

Augury’s ROI includes time savings, increased operational capacity, and greater accuracy and confidence.

“We’ve saved 25 days per quarter,” David reported.

These time savings translate to what David calls “opportunity costs.” This additional operational capacity has been reallocated to strategic GTM tasks such as “scaling the business or developing GTM strategy to drive revenue bookings,” David shared.

Augury also gained improved accuracy and confidence as “QuotaPath helped us get line-of-sight into commission and budget forecasting monthly and annually,” David said. Additionally, better operational metrics visibility helped. “These were metrics we couldn’t even track before.”

David employs a holistic approach to measuring ROI, considering both tangible savings and the broader impact on team satisfaction and performance.

“We combine subjective and objective measures like rep feedback surveys and operational costs we’re reclaiming,” David said.

Support and Partnership Experience

David voiced high praise for QuotaPath’s support team, especially Tyler Rody (Account Manager), and Matt Kerlin (Customer Support Manager). “Tyler and Matt are phenomenal,” said David. “I’ve asked a million questions, and their response time, real-time support, and product knowledge have been incredible.”

Strong implementation support helped translate a nuanced comp plan into a working system “by providing efficient, solution-oriented suggestions,” as described by David. “They would hop on a call, do screen recordings, and walk me through everything in my instance of QuotaPath. It was immensely helpful!”

Looking Ahead

QuotaPath has become a critical part of Augury’s infrastructure. David said that he’d be “hard pressed to go back to spreadsheets.” And he added, “QuotaPath is a massive improvement in quality of life over here.”

QuotaPath has proved that it can support Augury as they grow and evolve. As David explained, “In the past two years we have added head count and the number of people on the variable compensation plan, and are seeing the scalability of QuotaPath in real time…our ability to do approval workflows, vet by plan, and break things out by component means we can be as open or granular as we want,” David said. 

To learn how QuotaPath can support your incentive management process, book time with our team here.

Gathering leads is one thing, but turning them into paying customers is another.

One way to do this is through crafting a sales email sequence that can lead them from interest into action. When done well, a well-designed sequence can help you connect with your target audience on a personal level and guide them towards choosing you.

So, the question is: how do you create a sales email sequence that converts? We’ll look at the steps to follow, some top tips, and provide some templates to get you started.

7 Steps to Create an Email Sequence

1. Define the Goal of Your Email Marketing Sequence

Before you start writing and sending out emails, you need to establish your purpose. What do you intend to achieve at the end of the exercise? The answer will impact your entire strategy as each goal requires a different approach.

Obviously, one main goal is to convert leads to customers, but you might have other goals too. For instance, you might want pre-launch signups for a new product, or to re-engage previously active customers.

You should also consider secondary goals. Let’s say you’re emailing new subscribers. Your primary goal is to encourage them to renew their subscription. But your secondary goal might be to help them understand how to use your product. This would lead to a different sequence than one with a secondary goal of getting them to download and engage with a recent whitepaper.

2. Identify and Set Up Triggers

Triggers are points at which automated emails are sent out. They’re usually based on leads taking a specific action, but can also be based on time. Common triggers include:

• Signing up for a newsletter
• Downloading a free resource
• Adding something to their cart, but then leaving
• Three months passing since their last purchase
• Two weeks before their subscription renews

Once you’ve pinpointed the best ones for your offering, you can set up automated email sequences to be sent out after a trigger event. This ensures that your emails are timely and relevant to the recipient’s recent interactions with your business. As a result, your emails are personalized and more effective.

For example, say a customer abandoned their cart. A trigger message could be sent the following day to remind them of what they left behind. It could also include a limited-time discount to encourage them to complete their purchase.

3. Map Out the Sequence

Now, you need to decide on the number of emails you want in your sequence and their timing. 

A well-crafted sales email sequence eases leads towards becoming paying customers. They don’t feel bombarded, but your products and services remain at the forefront of their mind. For a re-engagement sequence, you might start with a gentle reminder of your value proposition. Then, follow it up with a nudge highlighting new features. And, finally, a compelling offer, like a discount, to win them back.

That said, how you structure your sequence will depend on your goal and rapport with your audience. A B2B company selling small business phone systems will need a very different approach to a B2C skincare brand – the former will be looking for subscriptions, while the latter might want small, regular purchases. 

4. Create Engaging Content

All that planning and effort will be wasted if the content of your email is irrelevant to recipients. Every part of your sequence should be carefully considered, from the subject line to the color scheme.

Consider your goal with each individual email beyond the overarching sequence aim. Are you trying to be educational? Sales-focused? Is the focal point user-generated content (UCG), or are you highlighting some new research?  

Let’s say you’re a communications company, and you’re writing an email sequence designed to turn free trial members into paying customers. Your early emails might be educational, highlighting particular features they may not be aware of or discussing VoIP benefits and drawbacks. Later emails turn to UCG, showing a couple of specific case studies in the same industry as your lead. Finally, you craft the perfect sales pitch and call to action (CTAs) to guide them towards the desired action.

You should also personalize your messages by addressing recipients by their first name or business name, referencing their recent actions, and focusing on what you can do for them specifically.

5. Automate with the Right Tools

The sales tools you use can make or break your email sequence campaign.

Invest in an email marketing software that provides automation, personalization, and analytics. The program should allow you to segment your audience based on their demographic and behavioral data.

It’s also worth checking for A/B testing capabilities. This feature enables you to try out different versions of your email to determine what works best. For example, you can test subject lines, different CTAs, or content formats to optimize your campaign’s performance.

Having software that supports automated email triggers is key to your campaign running smoothly.

6. Test and Optimize

So your strategy and content are ready. Great! However, don’t roll out your email sequence just yet. You need to test different elements first to see what works best. In particular, make sure it’s mobile-friendly as 92.3% of people access the internet via their phone, and 60% of web traffic comes from mobile devices.

Image from Exploding Topics

Take the time to trial your new strategy on a small audience segment. Experiment with different email subject lines and content, and even sending times, to see which has the highest email open rates. This data will then help you optimize the campaign before a full launch.

Keep in mind that testing and optimization are continuous processes. Monitor the results, listen to customer feedback, and pay attention to wider market trends. Additionally, make sure your emails work with any new OS updates or other major changes.

7. Iterate and Refine

Email sequence, like other aspects of email marketing, isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it process. For it to be successful in the long run, you need to monitor its performance. We’ve mentioned regular testing, but make sure to track key metrics like open rate, click-through rates, and conversion rates. These indicators reveal how well your emails are received by your audience and areas for improvement.

You can then use this data to make adjustments and iterate on your strategy to achieve better results.

Tips for Crafting an Email Sequence that Converts

Understand Your Target Audience

The most successful email campaigns begin with knowing who you’re writing to. For B2B brands, this means knowing their industry and their role within their organization. For B2C businesses, you want more personal insight into things like income bracket and demographic details. In both cases, you need to know their main pain points and what they value.

Taking the time to know your recipients can make a major difference. Consider a communications solutions company approaching SMEs and enterprise leads. When introducing their solution to a small family-run bookkeeping business, the lead-nurturing sequence might start with a common business challenge: outdated phone systems. The subsequent email could then introduce a modern communication solution by answering the question what is voice over IP and how it can revolutionize business communication.

However, when addressing a Head of IT at a large business, they can skip that elementary bit and go straight into highlighting their enterprise-level features.

Understanding your audience ensures you only send them emails they care about, which is crucial for engagement and conversion.

Write Attention-Grabbing Subject Lines

You’re one one of hundreds of businesses fighting for a prospect’s dollar. Standing out is key, especially if you’re using cold email services and approaching with no warm-up. The content of your emails might be amazing, but if no-one ever clicks through, it’s all for nothing. 

That’s why writing attention-grabbing subject lines is vital. 

That doesn’t mean you should rely on things like ALL CAPS or lots of exclamations!!! All that does is make you look like spam. Instead, focus on crafting a line that’s relevant and specific. It should spark curiosity or create a sense of urgency.If it fits, you could include the recipient’s name, business name, or industry.

Taking the above points into consideration, a compelling subject line will look something like this:

Is [company] still using traditional phone systems? Let’s change that!

Focus on Benefits Over Features

It can be tempting to go on about that shiny new feature you’ve just added to your product. After all, it took your team long hours to get it right. However, the reality is that all customers care about is what is in it for them.

How does your shiny new feature make their life easier? That’s what you need to focus on. For instance, don’t say “our VoIP system has call analytics.” Instead, say, “ monitor every call and get actionable insights to improve customer service and boost sales performance.” 

Leverage Social Proof

Say you are contemplating doing business with a company. Then you learn that prominent organizations in your field have worked with them in the past, and left positive testimonials. That automatically increases your trust levels and makes you more inclined to patronize them.

That’s social proof, and humans value it. Humans often look to the actions and opinions of others to guide their own behavior.

For an email sequence, this can be in the form of highlighted reviews, a brief case study, or even aggregate performance metrics (companies like [brand] see a 45% reduction in packaging with our solution).

The idea is to show that others have succeeded with your product, which suggests they can too.

Include Compelling CTAs

Make it easy for readers to know what to do after every step in your sales sequence. That means every email needs an easy-to-identify call to action. If you want them to download something, end with ‘Want to learn more? Download our whitepaper now. Your language should be action-oriented and create a sense of urgency.

To ensure your CTAs stand out visually, you can make them a different color or turn them into clickable buttons. Again, make sure to test this on mobile devices — if the button is too small, it’ll lead to frustration rather than engagement.

Employ Copywriting Frameworks

AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) is one copywriting framework that can provide structure for your emails.

Let’s say you provide payroll automation.

You might grab the attention of small businesses by mentioning that automation can free up their time to focus on other things. Then, you pique their interest by highlighting that it can help them remain compliant and make tax season easier. As the company showcases how easy it is to set up and use, it creates desire. Finally, it prompts action with a clear CTA to schedule a demo.

AIDA helps guide prospects through the buyer’s journey, ensuring each email serves a specific purpose in moving them closer to conversion.

Types of Sales Email Sequences with Examples

Welcome Email Sequence

A welcome sequence is the first communication you will have with potential customers. It is where you make a first impression and make a case for your product or service.

Keep it short and to the point, but ensure recipients have all the information they need regarding the next steps.

Here’s an example of what a good welcome email aimed at someone in the ‘free trial’ stage of a small business phone systems service might look like:

Subject: Thank You for Trying Out [Product Name]

Hi Recipient’s First Name,

Thank you for taking [Product Name] for a spin. Just checking in to see if everything is going well so far. Let us know if we can help in any way, or take a look at our knowledge base [here].

For most of our customers, [Product Name] is helping them save time and money. Here’s what one of them had to say:

[Customer Testimonial]

Still on the fence about joining the [Product Name] family? Use coupon code JOINTHEFAMILY to get 30% off on your first month subscription.

Don’t hesitate to chat with us if you have any more questions.

Enjoy your trial!

Cheers,

[Product Name] Team.

Lead Nurturing Email Sequence

A lead nurturing email sequence helps you build relationships with prospects and guide them towards making a commitment. It makes the entire sales process feel more natural and less pushy, while providing value at every step of the journey. You can also link them to other resources – for instance, if they’ve downloaded one ebook, why not point them towards the rest of your learning content?

Take this reminder to download a lead magnet, for example:

Subject: Reminder: 100 Leads in 30 Days are Waiting for You

Hey Recipient’s First Name,

Thank you for downloading 100 LEADS IN 30 DAYS.

Click here to access the eBook + all bonuses. 

Then why not let us know at [social media link] how you found it?

Best wishes,

[Brand Name].

Re-engagement Email Sequence

As the name suggests, a re-engagement sequence is designed to help you re-engage inactive subscribers. These emails usually include incentives, such as special discounts or exclusive offers, to encourage them to return to the business.

For example:

Subject: Here’s a Discount, ‘Cause We Miss You

Hey Recipient’s First Name,

Long time no see! We wanted to reach out with a special 25% off discount just for you.

Let’s make up and continue building something great together. Use code WELCOMEBACK at checkout today.

Love from [Product Name].

Wrapping Up

A sales email sequence, like every email, gives you the chance to connect with prospects on a personal level. It allows you to understand their desires, challenges, and needs. This way, you can present your product or service in a way that resonates with their unique situation.

This slow-building approach guides your leads down the funnel, and before you know it, those leads will be loyal customers.

Follow the steps above to get started, and remember to continuously test and refine your approach. 

In today’s competitive and fast-paced business environment, tracking the right sales performance metrics is essential for sales managers to gauge their teams’ performance. 

One key metric that offers valuable insights into both product movement and sales team performance is the sell-through rate. 

In this article, we’ll break down what the sell-through rate is, why it matters, and how to use it to measure and boost your sales team performance.

What Is Sell-Through Rate?

The sell-through rate is a key sales metric that measures the amount of inventory you’ve sold over a specific period of time versus the amount of inventory shipped to you from manufacturers. 

Sell-through rate provides sales leaders and marketing teams with actionable insights into how well products are performing in the market. 

This helps them assess product demand, identify popular products, and evaluate the overall health of their inventory management. It can also serve as a direct indicator of how aligned a company’s sales strategies, marketing efforts, and supply chain operations are with real-time market demand.

How to Calculate Sell-Through Rate

The sell-through rate formula is:

For example, if you received 1,000 units of a product in a given time period and sold 700 units, your sell-through rate would be:

What’s a Good Sell-Through Rate?

There’s no universal answer to what makes a “good sell-through rate”. Benchmarks can vary greatly by industry, product type, sales channel, and time frame. Here’s a quick glimpse at some average sell-through rates across a few industries:

A general benchmark for many retail and B2B businesses is between 70–80%. Rates at this level typically indicate strong product demand, efficient sales processes, and well-aligned marketing strategies.

Lower sell-through rates might point to inventory issues, ineffective sales effort, or misalignment with the target market. 

Understanding what qualifies as a good rate for your business model allows you to set realistic sales goals and allocate resources more effectively. It’s a good idea to do some research and find out what the average sell-through rate is in your specific industry.

Why Is It Important to Measure Sell-Through Rate?

Understanding your sell-through rate is about more than just tracking how much inventory moves. It can also provide valuable insights into your sales team performance, product viability, and the effectiveness of your sales and marketing strategies.

Here are five key reasons why tracking sell-through rate is vital for any business looking to stay competitive and maximize profitability.

Identify Your Best and Worst Selling Products

Tracking your sell-through rate by product type or product category helps you identify which items are consistently in demand and which are lagging behind. 

This insight allows sales reps and marketing teams to double down on popular products and implement promotions, bundles, or phase-outs for items that aren’t meeting expectations. 

It also informs future marketing campaigns, allowing marketers to secure interest by platforming your most popular products.

Reduce Storage Costs

Excess inventory ties up capital and drives up storage costs. By regularly analyzing your sell-through rate, you can better align inventory purchases with actual product demand, leading to leaner stock levels and less waste.

This not only improves your inventory turnover ratio but also helps your business reduce carrying costs by avoiding markdowns, spoilage, or obsolescence. 

Manage Cash Flow

The speed at which you convert inventory into closed deals directly affects your cash flow. A healthy sell-through rate ensures steady revenue inflow, allowing you to reinvest in marketing campaigns and new product development.

Businesses with sluggish sell-through often struggle with liquidity issues, limiting their ability to capitalize on sales opportunities or respond to shifts in market dynamics. 

Optimize Your Supply Lines

Accurate sell-through data helps streamline your supply chain. With real-time visibility into what’s selling and what’s not, sales managers can better coordinate with vendors and reduce the risk of stockouts or overstocking.

This improves customer experiences, ensures better alignment with customer demand, and supports the creation of more agile, responsive inventory strategies. 

Measure Success

At its core, sell-through rate is a great performance goal to monitor. It helps gauge the effectiveness of your sales processes, marketing initiatives, and the entire sales team. 

Whether you’re tracking monthly sales, comparing against revenue targets, or measuring growth over time, this inventory metric provides an anchor for understanding how your efforts translate into results.

By integrating it into your sales metrics dashboards, you can monitor team progress toward broader goals and uncover potential areas for improvement in the sales pipeline.

Factors Affecting Sell-Through Rates

Understanding the factors that influence sell-through rate is crucial for making effective adjustments to your sales strategies. Let’s explore some of the key drivers behind fluctuations in this essential metric.

Pricing

Your pricing strategy is one of the most direct levers impacting sell-through rate. If a product is priced too high relative to the market conditions, it may sit in inventory for longer periods. On the other hand, pricing too low can cut into margins and undervalue your product offerings.

Availability

No matter how compelling your product is, if it’s not available when and where customers need it, your sell-through rate will suffer. Stockouts hurt sales and erode trust, which are among the main factors influencing where shoppers spend their money. 

Meanwhile, overstocking increases storage costs and eats into profits. Balancing inventory levels with product demand, especially across different sales channels, is key. 

Supply Chain

Your supply chain has a direct effect on how quickly you can replenish stock and fulfill orders. Delays or inefficiencies here can cause gaps in availability and hinder sales reps from maximizing sales opportunities.

Sales Team Performance

How well your sales team performs directly impacts sell-through rates, influencing the effectiveness of product sales and how quickly inventory moves. 

A strong sales team (perhaps motivated by compensation) drives higher conversion rates and ensures inventory turns over efficiently. 

Marketing

Strong marketing campaigns drive awareness and urgency, boosting product demand and accelerating movement through the sales pipeline. When marketing and sales align effectively, the result is increased visibility, higher conversion rates, and a more consistent sell-through rate.

Competition

Lastly, your sell-through rate is always affected by what competitors are doing. If rival brands are offering similar products at better prices, your sales are likely to take a hit.

Regularly monitoring the competitive landscape enables you to anticipate moves, refine your business model, and protect your market penetration rate. Staying proactive helps you retain customer attention and avoid losing ground in fast-moving markets.

6 Tips for Utilizing Sell-Through Rate to Gauge Sales Team Performance

Sell-through rate helps the entire sales team assess how well they’re converting leads into customers and effort into results. Here are six practical ways sales leaders can leverage sell-through rate data to evaluate and improve sales team performance.

Track Sell-Through Rate Alongside Other Key Metrics

While sell-through rate offers a window into product performance, it becomes even more impactful when paired with other key sales metrics. 

Key performance indicators (KPIs), such as conversion rates and average deal size, can all be analyzed alongside sell-through rate to give a clearer picture of the performance of the sales team.

Creating sales performance dashboards that include data points from all these metrics allows sales managers to see the full picture, from inventory turnover rate to how quickly leads become closed opportunities. Solutions like business process automation can track these KPIs automatically, making it easy to keep up to date on how your team is performing.

This multi-metric approach helps teams more accurately pinpoint where bottlenecks occur and provides valuable insights on how to address them.

Set Clear Performance Targets

Having a clear goal to work toward helps sales managers and their teams focus their efforts toward a measurable goal for success. Using historical sell-through rate data, sales leaders can establish realistic, data-backed performance goals for individual sales agents and entire sales teams. 

For example, if one product category consistently sells through at 80%, that benchmark can serve as a sales target for similar items in the future. By connecting sell-through rate to specific sales goals, teams can stay aligned with broader business objectives while remaining accountable at an individual level. 

These targets are also useful when forecasting and planning, as they allow for data-driven resource allocation and marketing efforts.

Use the Right Tools

It’s important to ensure that the tools and technology utilized across your business can support your sales efforts. A great place to start is your communications platform. 

Investing in reliable communication infrastructure, like business PBX phone systems, ensures your sales teams can contact customers efficiently and affordably.

To realize sell-through data’s full potential, integrate it into your customer relationship management (CRM) system or enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform. 

These integrations provide real-time visibility into performance metrics from right across the business, giving decision-makers access to huge amounts of data at a glance.

Free project management tools like Nifty, Monday, and Asana allow teams to align timelines, assign tasks, track progress, and connect daily workflows to broader goals.

Advanced tools can offer predictive insights and flag early warning signs of underperformance by implementing technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).

Analyze Trends and Identify Gaps

Trends in sell-through rate over a period of time can reveal important insights about your sales process, market behavior, and team performance. 

Are certain reps consistently exceeding expectations while others fall behind? Do specific products underperform during certain seasons? 

Analyzing data to answer these questions helps identify skill gaps, training needs, or flaws in the sales pipeline. By keeping a close eye on historical trends and aligning them with market dynamics, sales managers can fine-tune their approach, understand what to look for in work experience in resumes of potential hires, and provide better coaching and support to the team.

Focus on Data-Driven Decision-Making

Intuition has its place, but sales team performance improves dramatically when decisions are grounded in data. A strong sell-through rate, analyzed alongside customer behavior insights, can help teams refine messaging, adjust timing, and optimize product focus.

Whether it’s reallocating resources to a high-performing product mix, launching special promotions, or tweaking your conversion optimization strategy, let the data guide your moves. The more data your decision-makers have, the better.

This approach fosters continuous improvement across the sales organization and ensures everyone is rowing in the same direction.

Review and Refine Strategies

Sales isn’t static. Customer preferences shift, market conditions evolve, and new competitors emerge. That’s why it’s vital to continually assess how your sales strategies are performing using real-time sell-through rate data.

Regular performance reviews, informed by your inventory metric and other KPIs, help teams remain agile. Teams that embrace a culture of optimization are better positioned to meet their revenue targets. So, don’t be afraid to pivot when necessary. 

This could mean adjusting your sales content, focusing on a different customer segment, or expanding to a new sales channel.

It’s also possible to change direction by outsourcing other areas of the business to prioritize your sales strategies internally. 

For example, many companies will choose to outsource call center services to third-party partners, ensuring consistent customer engagement while freeing up in-house reps to focus on high-value sales activities.

How to Improve Your Sell-Through Rate

If your sell-through rate isn’t quite hitting the benchmark you’d envisioned, don’t panic; there are plenty of things you can do to give it a boost.

Invest in Marketing

Strong marketing initiatives generate awareness, create demand, and push products faster through the pipeline. You could try using customer relationship management (CRM) data to personalize your messaging and align your marketing strategies with customer needs.

You could also expand your marketing channels to reach new audiences. For example, you could invest in influencer partnerships or social media marketing.

Hold Special Promotions

Time-limited deals, bundle offers, and loyalty discounts are all tried-and-tested methods for accelerating sales. They’re especially effective for slow-moving stock or seasonal inventory. Promotions stimulate demand, encourage repeat purchases, and can help you hit urgent monthly revenue or sales targets

Reduce Inventory

Streamlining your product mix and avoiding overstock helps maintain a healthy inventory turnover rate. Focus on popular products with proven performance, and trim underperforming SKUs that increase sales expenses without contributing meaningfully to your revenue.

Lean inventory strategies not only improve sell-through rate but also reduce your customer acquisition costs and improve ROI across the board.

Avoid Stockouts

Nothing kills momentum like running out of stock on high-demand items. By using forecasting tools that analyze historical trends for predictive sales analytics, you can ensure availability matches demand. 

Avoiding stockouts enhances the customer experience and keeps satisfied customers coming back.

Be Aware of Seasonality

Understanding seasonal trends helps you plan better and stock smarter. You can stock up on items when you know they’re guaranteed to sell and reduce your inventory during periods of lower demand. 

This ensures you always have enough stock to meet demand but are never burdened with reserves that you’ll never sell-through.

Turning Metrics Into Momentum

In today’s fast-paced, data-driven landscape, knowing your sell-through rate isn’t just about tracking how quickly inventory moves; it’s about unlocking actionable insights that can elevate your sales team performance and drive long-term revenue growth.

By integrating sell-through rate with other key sales metrics, aligning it with your sales goals, and using it to inform daily decisions across your sales organization, you can empower sales reps and leaders alike to make smarter, faster, and more strategic moves.

When used effectively, this essential metric bridges the gap between operations and sales, giving you a clear, real-time picture of what’s working and where there’s room to improve. 

Remember that metrics are only as powerful as the actions they inspire. The more you invest in understanding and applying them, the more your sales team can turn effort into results and results into growth.

Designing comp plans by “gut feel” is a gamble most finance leaders can’t afford in today’s economic climate. With increased scrutiny on spend, compressed margins, and heightened accountability, every dollar of variable compensation must be tied to measurable impact.

Fortunately, tools like QuotaPath empower finance teams to move beyond instinct.

With features like Draft Plans and historical overlays, finance and revenue leaders can now pressure-test comp plans using real data and scenario modeling, before those plans hit reps’ desks.

“I prefer when Sales comes to us with options and pre-proposals… then we can determine if it will break the bottom line,” said Ryan Macia, VP of Finance at QuotaPath.

Why Comp Plan Testing Is Essential for Finance

Only 9% of companies had 80%+ quota attainment last year. That means 91% fell short, according to our report. 

The causes? Some point to market conditions, but 31% of revenue leaders cited unrealistic quotas, a problem that can be avoided with robust testing and forecasting.

Unvalidated comp plans often lead to:

• Missed revenue goals
• Overpaid commissions
• Rep turnover due to lack of trust and transparency

QuotaPath helps mitigate all three.

From Intuition to Intelligence: How to Pressure-Test a Comp Plan

Designing a comp plan isn’t just about setting attractive rates and quotas. It’s about understanding the ripple effects each decision has on profitability, performance, and morale. For finance leaders tasked with owning that accountability, a rigorous modeling framework is essential.

At QuotaPath, we recommend a 4-part approach to stress-testing compensation plans before they ever reach your reps.

1. Sensitivity Analysis

What happens if you tweak one variable?

This is your controlled testing environment. Adjust one lever—quota, commission rate, accelerators, draw, or thresholds—and measure the resulting change in cost and attainment distribution.

For example:

• Increase the quota by 10%. How many reps still hit 100%+?
• Drop commission rates by 1. How much do you save across the team, and does it disincentivize performance?
  

Used correctly, sensitivity analysis identifies breakpoints where comp plans become either too expensive or demotivating.

2. Bottom Line First

Reverse engineer your plan from your target commission expense.

Start with the top-line budget you can afford to spend on commissions, often 10–12% of revenue or tied to CAC, and model the comp plan that fits within that constraint.

This approach forces prioritization:

• Do you want to send more to retain top performers?
• Are you willing to flatten earnings to increase quota coverage?
  

Prefect’s Head of Finance, Thomas Egbert, added that while leaders care about and prioritize overpaying commissions, they should focus as much attention on ensuring their reps understand how they’re paid. 

“Finance is always worried about overpaying. But worse than that is when reps don’t understand the generous plan you did build for them,” said Thomas Egbert, Head of Finance at Prefect.

Bottom line modeling keeps generosity within control. Just make sure you can easily communicate your plan structures to your revenue teams. 

3. Run Scenarios

Next, build projections using forecasted attainment data across rep types. 

For instance, you can use QuotaPath’s Draft Plans to run multiple “what-if” versions side-by-side:

• What happens if 80% of reps hit 75% of quota?
• How does the plan scale if you add 20 new sellers mid-year?
• Are you over-indexing on high performers while neglecting the middle 60%?
  

And we have our customer, NeuroFlow, to thank for that product idea to help finance teams test plans. 

“Really early on, we provided feedback about wanting to mock up a plan and run scenarios without using the production environment. During our time as customers, QuotaPath built and released Draft Plans. We’ve used it for at least one year of commission planning,” said Genevieve Moss-Hawkins, Systems Operations Manager at NeuroFlow.

You can also evaluate plan structures: flat rates vs. tiered accelerators, quarterly vs. monthly quotas, or OTE-heavy plans vs. bonus-heavy ones.

4. Deal-Level Commission Cost Analysis

This is where financial modeling becomes a diagnostic tool.

Even if your plan passes the sensitivity test and stays within the top-line commission budget, it’s still possible to lose profitability deal by deal. 

This is especially true when multiple people and roles, BDRs, AEs, SEs, managers, touch the same deal and earn a percentage. You may find yourself unintentionally paying out 30%+ of a deal’s revenue in commissions without realizing it.

At QuotaPath, we call this your deal-level total commission rate.

By running a report that rolls up total commission earned on a deal and compares it against the deal’s revenue, you get a clean percentage that shows how efficient, or inefficient, your payout strategy is. We recommend flagging anything over 30% as a sign to investigate further.

Our VP of RevOps, Sales, and Marketing Ryan Milligan said, “You blink and you’re paying 35% of a deal in total commissions once you add up everyone involved. That’s a hidden cost finance leaders need to track”.

With QuotaPath, you can track this automatically using our reporting suite, making it easy to monitor, benchmark, and optimize payout efficiency per deal.

A Win-Win for Finance and Sales

Ultimately, testing comp plans isn’t about slowing down Sales. It’s about enabling smarter, faster decisions that protect the business and create comp plans reps can trust.

This is why visibility matters as much as modeling.

QuotaPath empowers finance teams to:

• Build and compare comp plan drafts before rollout
• Run forecasts with multiple attainment bands
• Track total cost of commissions in real-time
• Give sales reps and managers clear insight into how their performance translates into pay
  

“The time we got back was huge. I reconcile on a quarterly basis, approve deals quickly, and just export to accounting. Plus, reps don’t need to come through us to get commission answers, it’s all right at their fingertips,” said Genevieve. 

Final Thoughts

Designing compensation plans through financial modeling is a non-negotiable requirement. 

By investing upfront in modeling, scenario testing, and per-deal analysis, finance leaders not only protect margins but also help fuel a motivated, high-performing sales team.

At QuotaPath, we believe the future of compensation is one where Finance and Sales operate from the same playbook, backed by data, not guesswork.

To begin planning for 2026, schedule a meeting with our team today.

When the sales team grows, it’s not just headcount.

New territories, teams, quotas, and more follow suit. And with that comes new comp plans and complexities. 

What starts as a manageable spreadsheet quickly becomes a sprawling web of manual calculations, error-filled audits, and wasted time between RevOps, Finance, and Sales to determine who is getting paid what and when. 

Payout cycle slowdowns follow, and, in the worst-case scenarios, a rep (or reps) receive incorrect commission checks. 

These inefficiencies not only slow down payout cycles, they erode trust across the organization.

Did you know: 75% of sales reps don’t trust are paid fairly (Report)

The natural question arises: How can companies scale their commission processes without scaling their operations team?

That’s exactly where sales commission software like QuotaPath comes in. 

Built to automate, streamline, and bring transparency to sales compensation, QuotaPath helps fast-growing companies eliminate manual pain points while maintaining lean ops. 

And the results speak for themselves: from saving hours of administrative time each month to improving rep motivation and payout accuracy, teams across industries, from SaaS to healthcare, have proven that you don’t need to add headcount to scale commissions.

Below, we’ll explore:

• The hidden costs of commissions and manual tracking
• Why scaling sales shouldn’t mean scaling ops
• And, how QuotaPath’s automation empowers teams to grow smarter, faster, and without compromise.

Calculating the True Cost of Sales Compensation: Key Metrics and Considerations

Unpack the hidden costs of your sales compensation plan and dive into a practical approach for calculating the true cost of commissions and bonuses. Placeholder Content

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The Hidden Costs of Manual Commission Tracking

First, let’s get into the costs of commissions you don’t typically come across until there’s an issue.

Manual commission tracking may seem like the path of least resistance (especially for lean teams), but unexpected costs can accumulate quickly.

Every month, RevOps, Finance, or Sales leaders spend hours toggling between spreadsheets, CRM exports, and comp plan documents to calculate who earned what. This time drain is rarely sustainable, especially as the organization grows and comp plans diversify.

But the real cost? Errors.

A single cell drag error can break the accuracy of the commission calculation, resulting in incorrect payouts. Then what happens? Your reps lose trust in how they’re paid, compromising the entire purpose of commissions: to motivate certain selling behaviors.

Take Keegan Otter, Warmly’s Head of Revenue, who used to run commissions manually.

“We had errors, multiple audits… When six sets of eyes still aren’t enough to prevent errors, you know it’s a problem,” said Keegan. 

So, in addition to financial and operational risks, you now have teams chipping away at rep morale and organizational credibility due to manual sales compensation management practices riddled with mistakes. 

When time and trust are both on the line, the cost of not automating becomes hard to ignore.

The Blind Spot in Spreadsheets: Total Commission Rate

Additionally, when commissions are managed manually, one critical metric is often overlooked: the total commission rate.

This figure represents the combined percentage of a deal’s revenue paid out to every team member who earns compensation, including SDRs, AEs, Marketing, Sales Leaders, and others. While each payout might seem reasonable on its own, spreadsheets make it nearly impossible to track the cumulative cost at the deal, segment, or company level.

And that’s a problem.

Without visibility into total commission rates, Finance leaders can’t accurately forecast commission expenses or evaluate whether compensation is aligned with margin. Worse, high payout overlap across roles can quietly eat into profits without anyone noticing.

Automated solutions like QuotaPath expose this hidden metric in real-time across teams, plans, and deals.

David Thai, Augury’s RevOps Team Lead, switched from spreadsheets to QuotaPath and immediately benefited from greater clarity into total costs.

“Now we have more lines of sight between budget forecasting, commission forecasting on a monthly and a yearly basis… QuotaPath helped unlock a lot of things that I think were gaps for us in the past,” said David. 

When you can see the full picture, you can make smarter decisions, whether it’s adjusting accelerators, capping overlaps, or aligning plans with strategic goals. 

Total commission rate should never be a guess. With QuotaPath, it doesn’t have to be.

Why Scaling Sales Shouldn’t Mean Scaling Ops

Keep in mind, visibility is only half the battle.

Even when leaders understand the full cost of commissions across every role and deal, managing those costs manually is another story entirely.

As headcount increases and compensation plans become more nuanced, spreadsheet-based workflows struggle to keep up under the pressure.

That’s why scaling your sales team shouldn’t automatically mean scaling your ops team. 

Yet that’s often the default when manual processes remain in place.

Instead of empowering existing ops leaders, outdated workflows bog them down, consuming time, increasing errors, and making audits a nightmare. What once worked for a five-person team becomes a high-risk bottleneck as the org scales.

That’s exactly what James Hall, EVP of Revenue at Gappify, experienced firsthand:

“I probably spent five or six hours a month personally doing [commission calculations]… not a great process for everybody,” said James.

With QuotaPath, leaders like James can reclaim their time and refocus on strategy, rather than spreadsheets.

Or Liza Dukhova at Rootly, who runs RevOps solo for a growing sales org:

“My time is a valuable resource. I’m a team of one… QuotaPath saves me hours of time,” said Liza.

A tool like QuotaPath allows lean teams to do more with less by replacing brittle manual work with reliable automation, so you can scale sales, not spreadsheets.

What Scalable Commission Automation Looks Like

So, what does scalable commission management actually look like in practice?

It starts with replacing spreadsheets and disconnected workflows with a platform designed to grow with you. One that integrates with your existing systems, and one that supports complexity without sacrificing usability.

The right commission automation solution will offer:

• CRM integrations (like Salesforce or HubSpot) to sync deal data automatically
• Real-time visibility for reps to track earnings, forecast commissions, and flag discrepancies
• Customizable compensation plans with built-in automation and logic to support diverse roles and structures
  

For teams navigating rapid growth or shifting go-to-market strategies, the ability to move fast without rebuilding your compensation infrastructure is game-changing.

“Once we made the decision to get off spreadsheets… the question was how to do it cost effectively,” said Thomas Egbert, Head of Finance at Prefect, who purchased QuotaPath in 2022.

When teams automate calculations, they unlock time, accuracy, and transparency at scale. 

That’s what sustainable growth looks like.

ROI Realized ROI with QuotaPath

Of course, don’t just take our word for it.

Our customers have achieved significant wins in terms of time saved and money saved.

• Hydrocorp: Paid for QuotaPath in one month by catching commission overpayment mistakes
• Warmly: Scaled from 3 to 35 reps, saving 5–8 hours/month and increasing trust
• Whistic: Reduced commission processing time by 90% for ~30 reps
• Augury: Cut quarterly processing from 45 days to 15 days

Start Early. Scale Smart. No Extra Headcount Required.

The best time to fix your commission process isn’t after it breaks. It’s before it costs you time, trust, and top performers.

“When is it time to introduce automation? Day one,” said Hona VP of Finance Jordan Rupp. “I’ve worked at other organizations where you keep putting that off and you keep thinking and telling yourself, like, ‘Hey, it’s not worth doing it yet.’ But I don’t think we ever really calculate how much time, effort, and also emotional drain it takes on an organization to run this through a manual process.”

As your team scales, QuotaPath ensures your compensation operations don’t have to.

By eliminating manual processes, teams free up hours each month to focus on higher-impact initiatives, such as go-to-market strategy, forecasting, and enablement.

QuotaPath is built for lean teams with big goals. 

Whether you’re preparing for scale or already in hypergrowth mode, it’s never too early (or too late) to build a commission process that works for you.

Ready to get started? Schedule a demo with our team today.

Sales comp isn’t just a sales issue… It’s a margin, forecasting, and behavior issue.

Most CFOs know how much they spend on commissions. 

However, the best CFOs understand why they spend it and whether that expenditure is actually driving the desired outcomes. Because the way we see it (and use it), sales compensation is a strategic lever to influence revenue efficiency, margin performance, and sales behavior.

Smart CFOs don’t treat comp as a black box or a cost center.

“The only thing worse than overpaying is having an overly generous incentive structure where the commissionable team is not actually seeing the incentives right in front of their noses,” said Thomas Egbert, Head of Finance at Prefect. 

Leading finance teams are rethinking comp beyond a payroll line item in favor of viewing it as a direct input into CAC, LTV, gross margin, and retention. Especially in a market where the cost of capital has shifted, the most astute CFOs are trading the “grow at all costs” mindset for compensation plans that reward efficient, profitable growth.

As Ryan Macia, CFO at Osana, said, “Growing at 20% profitably is better than 100% with burn. Investors want growth and efficiency now.”

The Challenge With Comp

Still, despite more finance leaders recognizing sales comp as a powerful tool, 30% of finance and RevOps leaders say their comp plans fail to motivate reps, according to our 2024 report.  

This is often due to a lack of clarity and visibility, resulting in a missed opportunity for strategic influence and predictability in planning. When plans are buried in spreadsheets or divorced from actual outcomes, companies not only lose confidence in forecasts they also lose control of margin and motivation.

This blog will explore the lesser-known truths of sales compensation through the lens of high-performing finance teams.

We’ll unpack:

• The hidden margin risks in bloated commission structures
• How behavioral economics and visibility influence rep performance
• The CFO’s role in aligning comp plans to strategic business metrics
• Why automation and data-backed planning are no longer optional
• And the common pitfalls experienced finance leaders still make

Whether you’re building a comp plan from scratch or scaling one across a 300-person team, this blog will give you the framework and financial lens you need to treat comp like the growth lever it is.

The Hidden Costs of Sales Compensation Most CFOs Miss

While more CFOs are waking up to the strategic potential of sales compensation, many still overlook how compensation structures silently erode profitability and predictability.

It’s not just about how much you’re paying, it’s where and why that spend accrues.

Take what we call the “35% Commission Rate Trap.” 

It happens when multiple roles, like BDRs, AEs, SEs, frontline managers, and directors, are all paid on a single deal. On paper, each rate looks reasonable. However, without deal-level visibility, these layered payouts can accumulate quickly, resulting in a margin bleed that most CFOs don’t detect until it’s too late.

“You blink and you’re paying five commission rates … 5%, 10%, 3%, 1%, and it turns out you’re paying a 35% commission rate across all these people. That’s a hidden cost of commissions,” said our VP of RevOps, Sales, and Marketing, Ryan Milligan. 

This lack of visibility makes it almost impossible to assess true deal profitability, especially in team-based or multi-stage sales processes. And without centralized reporting, you can’t identify these inefficiencies until they’ve already impacted your margin.

Behavioral Economics and Sales Comp: Incentives Are Only as Good as Their Visibility

If hidden costs eat at your margin, then hidden incentives quietly erode motivation.

Following the logic of behavioral economics, an incentive only works if the person on the receiving end understands it, believes it’s achievable, and can track their progress in real time. Unfortunately, many comp plans fail at that last one.

The stat we referenced above from our 2024 Sales Compensation Trends report (30% of finance and RevOps leaders say their comp plans fail to motivate reps) is largely tied to a lack of visibility. 

If sellers can’t see how their efforts connect to earnings, compensation ceases to influence behavior.

Genevieve Moss-Hawkins , who introduced QuotaPath at NeuroFlow, saw a positive change with her team shortly after.

“The sales team loves having the ability to see their pipeline, forecast potential commissions, and understand exactly how payouts are calculated and when they’ll receive them,” said Genevieve.

Genevieve’s experience is a perfect example of how visibility reduces admin burden and how reps engage with their goals. 

By giving sellers line of sight into their pipeline, forecasted earnings, and payout timing, NeuroFlow unlocked more accountability and energy without needing to touch the comp structure itself.

The CFO’s North Star: Aligning Sales Compensation to Strategic Metrics

Visibility motivates. But alignment is what drives real business outcomes.

Once reps understand how they’re paid, the next critical question for finance leaders becomes: “Are we rewarding the right outcomes?” That’s where many comp plans fall short, especially those still locked into a “new business only” mindset.

The most strategic CFOs take it further. They use sales compensation to steer the business toward healthier metrics. Ie: gross margin, CAC efficiency, customer retention, cash flow. 

“Growing at 20% profitably is better than 100% with burn,” said Ryan Macia. “Investors want growth and efficiency now.”

That’s the North Star for finance leaders today. Rewarding top-line growth and designing comp plans that optimize how that growth is achieved.

Results of Sales Compensation Report

Watch the webinar to uncover the biggest gaps in comp planning and commission management, and get expert guidance to align Finance, RevOps, and Sales Leadership for 2024 success.

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Turning Metrics Into Incentives

So what does alignment actually look like?

Here are some examples of strategic sales behaviors smart CFOs are incentivizing — and the business outcomes they support:

By shifting incentives to support these behaviors, even modestly, CFOs can significantly impact the quality of revenue, not just its quantity.

Design With the End Metric in Mind

Comp plans are often built with only the seller’s perspective in mind. But when finance leads the design, the question changes from “What will reps respond to?” to “What metrics do we need to move?”

That subtle shift makes a major difference. You start to:

• Pay more for the deals that deliver long-term value
• Avoid overpaying for revenue that hurts margins
• Design accelerators that reinforce retention, not just acquisition
  

This approach turns comp into a strategic engine.

And it’s not limited to AEs. These principles can apply to SDRs, CS teams, and even full-company variable pay when aligned to top-level goals.

The Operational Payoff: Automation, Forecasting & Audit-Readiness

Strategic alignment is powerful, but without automation, it’s hard to scale.

Once compensation plans are designed to influence the right outcomes, finance leaders face the next challenge: executing those plans accurately, repeatedly, and at scale. This is where automation becomes not just a convenience, but a necessity.

Take James Hall, EVP of Revenue at Gappify for example. As they scaled, the errors mounted up.

“I would sometimes make mistakes… There are multiple times I would go back to a rep and let them know they had actually been overpaid or underpaid,” said James. 

Manual comp processes buried in spreadsheets create friction at every level. They slow down payout cycles, increase the risk of error, block visibility, and make forecasting a painful, unreliable task. In a world where forecast accuracy and audit readiness are non-negotiables, that’s a risk most CFOs can’t afford.

That peace of mind comes from knowing comp calculations are correct, approvals are streamlined, and payment data flows directly into payroll and accounting systems, eliminating double entry, cutting time, and reducing audit exposure.

Now, James can trust automation to reduce those errors and more…

“One of the things that has been really valuable for Gappify since we implemented QuotaPath is not just the time savings for me, but the positive impact on motivation for our sales team,” said James. “They love being able to log in and see how they’re tracking and model out, ‘Hey, if I book X amount of dollars, how much can I earn this month or this quarter?’”

Forecasting: From Luxury to Table Stakes

Once automation is in place, forecasting becomes a built-in benefit. The best comp platforms allow finance to:

• Model plan changes before rollout
• Forecast payout liability by pipeline, role, or plan
• Track attainment and commission cost in real time
• Produce audit-ready reports across periods and entities

“I loved that you could model out the pipeline… I would consider it [forecasting] a requirement because it’s really powerful to look at forecasted deals,” said Thomas from Prefect, who implemented Quotapath 3+ years ago.

What Most CFOs Still Get Wrong

This is where we see Finance leaders make the biggest missteps when it comes to comp:

• Overly complex plans = underperformance: 78% of leaders say reps don’t understand their comp plans.
• Underestimating sales comp’s strategic weight: CFOs who view it purely as a cost center miss opportunities to influence margin, retention, and growth quality.
• Lack of real-time reporting: Chris Wasik (Honeycomb) notes the importance of seeing “how much we pay per dollar of revenue sold” — a critical metric many tools overlook.
  

What Smart CFOs Do Differently

So, to avoid these downfalls, focus on the following. 

The most forward-thinking CFOs don’t treat compensation as a static line item — they treat it as a strategic lever for growth. Rather than focusing solely on cost containment, they design comp plans to influence deal quality, drive desired sales behaviors, and improve overall business performance.

They obsess over visibility for finance and reps. When sellers understand exactly how they get paid, they’re more engaged, more motivated, and more likely to deliver consistent results. That’s why smart CFOs prioritize tools and processes that make earnings transparent and easy to model.

They also design comp plans with the end metric in mind. Whether the goal is to improve gross margin, increase multi-year deals, or incentivize upsells, top CFOs work backwards from the business outcome they want to achieve, then model plans to support that outcome.

Finally, they invest in automation early. Rather than waiting until the comp process becomes unmanageable, they implement systems that can scale with the business, reducing manual work, eliminating errors, and freeing up time for strategic finance.

Turn Sales Compensation into a Strategic Advantage

Join the ranks of CFOs using comp to drive better business outcomes. Talk to QuotaPath to learn how you can model, automate, and scale smarter compensation plans.

👉 Schedule a Demo