Big news! As of today, QuotaPath offers a native Copper CRM integration.

That’s right, the CRM applauded for its seamless experience and full functionality with Google Workspace has a new commission tool to offer its 30,000+ customers with QuotaPath. 

“A collaboration with Copper was a no-brainer given our shared focus on SMB/mid-market and product philosophies of simplicity and ease-of-use,” said QuotaPath Co-Founder Cole Evetts. “Now we can provide a solution to their customers for a problem every growth team experiences: automating commissions.”

With this integration, Copper users can feed deal data directly into QuotaPath to deliver revenue teams immediate access to their existing and future earnings, total annual recurring revenue, and attainment progress.

“We’re thrilled to announce our new QuotaPath integration and we’re excited for the efficiency and time savings it will offer Copper customers,” said Copper CEO Dennis Fois. “Managing sales commissions can be a manual and painful process, and this integration will bring greater visibility, ease, and organization to our sales, operations, and finance users.” 

Customers of both platforms are also eager.

“QuotaPath has been a great platform for our sales team, providing visibility and accuracy into our sales commissions and compensation process,” said PlaybookUX Co-Founder and CEO Lindsey Allard. “We are excited to use this integration, as it will save us even more time by providing a seamless experience between QuotaPath and our sales data in Copper CRM.”

Learn more about our latest **real-time integration below.

Ease of implementation

Both Copper and QuotaPath, two platforms that pride themselves on usability, can be implemented easily — hello, onboarded in less than 30 days! So, of course, when we built the integration, we made sure the sync would be just as simple (if not more).

How QuotaPath’s Native Copper integration works

• Connect to your source data
• Identify which records count toward earnings
• Map sales compensation plans with Copper
• CRM data from designated fields
• Define Deal stages to pull from Copper
• Preview mapping and input additional filters

Try the Copper integration with QuotaPath

Ready to automate sales commissions with compensation management software that users love to use? Wonderful, we’re ready to help!

Make your work-life easier by letting Copper and QuotaPath do the heavy lifting. Book a time with one of our friendly team members to learn more. In fact, once you schedule it, send your comp plan over and we’ll build it out in QuotaPath.

Not a Copper user? You should be! Their full CRM functionality directly in Gmail means no toggling between the two platforms, and we love their customer-relationship-first approach. To try Copper for free for 14 days, sign up here. 

About QuotaPath

QuotaPath automates the sales compensation process for scaling revenue teams. Our team of sales leaders and technology experts offers ​​sales compensation consulting to design plans that drive the right behaviors. Then, we help your team map these out in our platform to automate the entire process. With QuotaPath, give your reps and revenue leaders a tool to forecast commissions and attainment. Let them see real-time commission progress and calculations. Free your finance team from having to build out formulas and offer them a seamless pay approval experience for commissions. 

About Copper

Copper is the CRM of choice for Google Workspace businesses. Copper arms its users with collaboration tools and provides a user-friendly experience to help teams and businesses build long-lasting relationships. It is used across finance, marketing, and sales, automating tasks and statuses for today’s digital-first employees at small-to-medium size companies. Copper is Recommended for Google Workspace, and is used by over 30,000 paid businesses in more than 100 countries..=

** When we say “real-time” integration we mean it. No nightly refreshes. No delays. Enjoy instant access to your earnings potential!

Can you run QuickBooks commission tracking? Below, we introduce QuickBooks and its capabilities. But most importantly, we share how to use QuickBooks with QuotaPath’s commissions management solutions.

First, what does QuickBooks do? 

Launched in 1983, QuickBooks supports accounting and finance teams by automating processes, managing products and projects, and streamlining workflows. 

While initially set out to support the small and medium business sector, QuickBooks has scaled to support large enterprises, too. 

Speaking of enterprises, Intuit founded QuickBooks. This seats the fintech platform next to Intuit’s family of brands which includes TurboTax, Mint, Credit Karma, and Mail Chimp. The enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform can facilitate inventory tracking, invoicing, bill management, bookkeeping, timesheets, and lots more. Basically, all of the responsibilities of a standard accounting team can get a leg up with QuickBooks. 

However, one key accounting function that QuickBooks cannot do independently is automated sales commissions.

And that, my friends, is where we, another “Q” company, come into play.

Plus, you can log in to our free commission tracking software and work with a commission plan template, customize your own, or partner with us to design one aligned to your business model.

Build a Sales Funnel

Use our free sales funnel resource to see how many meetings your team needs to book to hit quota.

Calculate Now

Automating compensation

But that’s only the beginning. Our consultative comp planning efforts prepare your team for the actual automation of sales commission tracking and payments. 

Once your plans are ready, our team works with yours to build them out in QuotaPath. Through real-time integrations, our platform generates accurate and up-to-date deal and commission data. This enables users to quickly generate a sales commission report and get immediate insights into existing and forecasted earnings and attainment. 

Leaders can make adjustments easily to comp plans or users throughout the year, thanks to our system’s usability. And, thanks to the high backend technical work, our platform can manage almost any comp plan, regardless of its complexities.

Interested in connecting this platform with QuickBooks? See below!

Using QuotaPath with QuickBooks

Fans of both QuotaPath and QuickBooks can soon connect the two platforms for payouts eligibility.

This means that teams can configure commission payments based on variables set forth by the compensation plan.

Let’s say your plan pays 10% when the deal closes and the other 90 when the invoice comes in. QuotaPath can automate commission payouts accordingly. 

And, because we love transparency, those earning the commissions can go in as well to see when they get paid and how much.

Learn more about QuotaPath’s QuickBooks commission tracking

To learn more about QuotaPath’s commissions management services and compensation plan software, book a time with our team. Send over your comp plan ahead of the call, and we can build it out within the app for you.

For our QuickBooks fans, we’ll show you how QuotaPath will run QuickBooks commission tracking to ensure no commission check is inaccurate again.

QuotaPath’s Senior Director of RevOps Ryan Milligan originally published a version of “How to design sales compensation plans” with Pavilion. 

A good compensation plan is like anything in business: If you set it up in the right way, you’ll get results. This might sound counterintuitive, but the salary isn’t everything when it comes to building a productive sales team. Your approach to design sales compensation plans can increase revenue, decrease churn, and drive change with your customers. 

Competition is fierce for talent. There’s been up to a 15% bump in sales comp in the last year alone for sales positions. Companies aren’t getting much of a discount for hiring people who don’t work in New York or San Francisco. For companies that want to scale up rapidly, it’s important to meet salary expectations. 

Below, we’ll guide you through how to get there — from developing a business plan to aligning compensation to making it all simple and usable.

About the author

Ryan Milligan is the Senior Director of Revenue Operations at Quotapath. He previously led marketing and RevOps teams at Homebase and solved customer acquisition, revenue attribution, and customer segmentation problems as a member of Wayfair’s Data Science team.

Steps to building a compensation plan

To an extent, a sales compensation plan model represents a math problem. You can’t pay for more employees than your income allows. The goal, of course, is growth, and that can make it hard to project how much income you’ll have. You’ll want to be conservative in setting sales quotas, assuming your team will make around 80% of the planned goal. But you’ll also want to be aggressive to design compensation plans that prioritize and reward sales growth. To set up sales incentive compensation in a thoughtfully executed plan, follow these steps.

1. Understand and prioritize the goals for your business.

What are your goals? You can’t do everything, but you can target a business improvement or two through your compensation plan. Choose the behaviors you want to incentivize, and build your comp plan accordingly.

Driving increased top-line revenue.

How much time can your team afford to spend on outbound work, calling potential customers? And how much growth potential is there from your existing customers? You’ll want to make sure you’re incentivizing growth through designing compensation plans.

Decreasing churn. 

The fewer customers we lose to churn, the more money our company makes. A 5% increase in retention can mean a 25 to 95% increase in profits, according to a Harvard Business School report. It pays to keep customers happy and reward salespeople for keeping their business in-house.

Expanding revenue from existing customers. 

Have a sales compensation system in place to encourage opportunities with customers you already have. Reps should look at if customers subscribe to all your services. Could they benefit from a more in-depth relationship? Encourage your reps to upsell with the right incentives. 

Selling new products/product lines to customers. 

This entails outreach, both to new and existing customers. You don’t know the answer if you’re not talking to your people. Incentivize your reps to talk with customers regularly and discover what they’re missing. 

Driving change within existing customers 

How are you getting paid by existing customers? There could be an opportunity to convert monthly contracts to annual or move annual deals to multi-year agreements. Incentive compensation management that rewards your reps for these conversions will drive these behaviors.

2. Understand who you have on your team and how success is measured for each of them

Now that you’ve outlined your business goals, think about what you want each team member to do. It’s more than pie-in-the-sky thinking. Sales teams have crossover responsibilities. Be clear about what you expect from each position and be clear about how they get compensated for their work.

Sales development reps

Sales development representatives (SDR) and business development representatives (BDR) often have nearly identical job descriptions. While the roles vary, they’re typically focused on finding new customers or starting sales to existing customers. These usually involve entry-level positions. Responsibilities include:

• Doing homework. An SDR or BDR will research prospects and verify their contact information.
• Reaching out to prospects. It’s their job to start the ball rolling by cold-calling, emailing, or messaging through LinkedIn.
• Qualifying leads. They are essentially asked to make sure the prospects are real and valuable before moving to the next step.
• Booking meetings. Typically, the last step for an SBR or BDR is setting up a meeting with an account executive. 

One important thing to consider here. Are these employees at all involved in the sales process? It’s important to reward them with commissions if they’re doing more than setting up meetings. We recommend SDR comp plans that include incentive pay for qualified opportunities and the amount of revenue on closed/won opps that come from them.

Account executives

Account executives have more wide-ranging job responsibilities. At companies without SBR and BDR, account executives are “full-cycle,” meaning they handle every aspect of the sales transaction. Here’s what additional duties account executives have:

• Run demos. Show the product in action and how it can soothe companies’ pain points.
• Sign up new accounts / book revenue. This is simple enough: they’re responsible for closing the deal. 

A typical sales commission structure for an AE will include measures that incentivize overperformance and decentivize underperformance, such as decelerators, accelerators, and multi-year kickers. 

A few other points you should consider: Do you have a full-cycle sales team? Are AEs at all responsible for the post-signature onboarding? Do you have a quick-churn issue? The toughest transition point in churn is getting customers on board and happy with your product. More than ever, business is about relationships. Since your new customers know the salesperson, it often makes sense for them to be involved in the handoff to an account manager.

Account managers

Account managers run the show after the contracts are signed. They represent the face of your company, as far as your clients are concerned. It’s more than customer service, it’s also about keeping customers with your business for the long haul. Account manager responsibilities include: 

• Onboard new customers. The transition from sales to actual use of the product can be tricky. This part of the post-sale is crucial. 
• Get customers actively using the product. This is about keeping customers happy in the long run.
• Expand revenue from existing customers. Account managers are excellent resources for your company because they get to know customers, see their needs, and identify solutions your company can help with.
• Decrease churn. As the face of your company, your account manager’s job is to keep customers happy with your product.

AM comp plans usually entail a base salary plus commission structure with a set commission rate for upsells. 

3. Determine target total compensation for each team member

The Betts Compensation Guide is a great place to start to design sales compensation plans. It’s free to sign up for and provides data for the largest tech markets in the country. The key points to know: Salaries are going up, with average starting pay hitting $50,000 in the 2022 guide. And, instead of reps in New York and San Francisco making tons more, costs have started flattening as remote work becomes the norm.

4. Determine target earnings

The formula here is simple. Determine what you want the annual salary to be for each sales team member, then split the pay by base pay and commissions, or variable compensation. For instance, if $140,000 is the goal for an account executive, and SDR and account executives typically get paid 50% base and 50% variable, the annual salary would be $70,000 with $70,000 of expected variable compensation. Account managers work on a 65/35 ratio, or sometimes 70/30. Figure out what works best for your company.

5. Determine a quota for your sales team

Next, use the QuotaPath Quota:OTE calculator to determine what a healthy annual quota is for an account executive based on their total earnings. Look at your financial plan, expected quota attainment, and on-target earnings (OTE) on a per-rep basis to calculate how many reps you will need to hit your financial plan.

Let’s work with a real example. 

Suppose your company wants to close on $400,000 in new business each quarter. Each account executive has an OTE of $100,000 per year ($50,000 in base, $50,000 variable). Set the rep quota at $400,000 annually (four times the quota-to-OTE ratio from our calculator). That’s a healthy range for a business with less than $1 million a year in annual recurring revenue – and that quota is $100K per rep, per quarter. Estimate 80% quota attainment across your team. That means you’re expecting to close $80,000 per rep, per quota. That means you’ll need five reps to close $400,000 in new business per quarter. 

6. Give team members visibility into their compensation

Lastly, everybody on your sales team will value transparency. 

Using a tool like QuotaPath, you can sync your deals live from your customer relationship management (CRM) software to give reps real-time visibility into commissions calculations. Reps can also forecast what they will earn if they close other deals in their pipeline. The team can proactively flag payroll discrepancies before you pay them, leading to fewer hassles when it’s time to run payroll. 

The signing of the deal marks the start of the customer relationship in sales. Similarly, rolling out a compensation plan sets the beginning of your financial relationship with your employees. Stay plugged in so you can make adjustments should any problems arise and adapt to changes in your market.

Countless hours of research. Sales training after sales training. You’re actively perfecting your demo, editing your sales email template, and finetuning your cold call script. You’re even bantering like a seasoned pro. But none of that matters if you’re pouring time and energy into trying to convert somebody who isn’t even the decision maker.

Learning what to say to decision-makers is only half the battle. First, you have to figure out who the decision maker really is. And you may be surprised to find that the person you’re talking to has no power at all.

The best ways to identify the right decision maker

Trying to identify whether you’re chatting with a decision maker or just another cog in the wheel? Use these criteria to evaluate how much power your contact really has.

They show understanding of the buying process

In most cases, your pitch or demo won’t be the decision maker’s first rodeo. That means they should be on top of what’s next in the buying process. An inexperienced person might not be familiar with what goes into solidifying a deal. Talking to someone who seems ready to sign a hefty contract the first time you connect might be exciting at first. But in reality, that signifies a faux decision maker who is likely to get overruled by the real one.

A decision maker will answer key questions

Decision makers are willing to answer questions integral to the buying process. They want a good deal but also one that’s targeted to their unique needs. That requires due diligence on your part, including asking a lot of questions about timeline, budget, etc.

Real decision-makers also know the answers to questions they should get all the time. And they’ll have those answers on the tip of their tongue because it’s their job to know their organization from the inside out.

Those questions may include:

1. What is your business’s unique value proposition?
2. Who will be using the product?
3. What’s your goal? (Should be quantifiable, like a percentage increase in a particular metric)
4. Are there stakeholders or other people of interest who would be directly affected by this purchase?
5. What was the last product you bought in this category? Who bought it?
6. What were your objections/challenges with that purchase, and how do you want this purchase to be different?
7. What steps are involved in your internal purchasing process?

They ask closing questions

As important as your questions are, questions from the prospect may be even more critical. A true decision maker wants information. Even C-level executives usually have to answer to partners, a board or stockholders. They can’t unilaterally accept or deny your sales proposal based on pure gut feeling. Instead, they ask questions.

You’ll know you’re likely dealing with a decision maker if they ask questions like:

1. How quickly can we get onboarded?
2. Can we conduct our own trials?
3. What is your customer service plan like?
4. How does the package price change if we alter the length of the contract?
5. One of our challenges is XXX. How does your product offer a viable solution?

They don’t defer to others

Decision makers may need to answer to other people for their decisions, but they don’t have to get approval. Someone who says, “I need to talk to my boss,” isn’t going to give you a yes or no. The same goes for someone who says, “I need to get the okay before we go any further.” People who need help deciding probably aren’t the ones you should be pitching in the first place.

Yes, many organizations have gatekeepers but identify those players early on. Then, ask outright when the conversation should move to those with more decision-making power. It’s as easy as saying, “Are there other people who should be involved in this decision?” Imagine you’re talking to an assistant, and you know their boss has the key to the kingdom. There’s a way to diplomatically suggest they join the call. “I know Ms. Adamson will be hands-on with the roll-out and oversee the software long-term. Should we schedule her on the next call so that we can cover her questions as well?”

The decision maker offers feedback

Decision makers are professionals. Unless a pitch really tanks, the first call isn’t the end of the conversation. Pros will ask for information, pore over the materials you send, and have questions they need answered before considering the deal further. For that reason, expect real decision makers to be willing to schedule additional time for feedback after the initial call.

If you start a pitch and get wishy-washy objections like, “I’m not sure we need this” or “I think this is out of budget,” that’s a red flag. Decision makers know there are layers to every deal, and they’re willing to invest in uncovering them.

Once you identify the decision maker, it’s time to go for the close. To hone your skills, check out these top sales podcasts that will help you access new tools and learn from industry examples.

About QuotaPath

QuotaPath’s sales compensation system automates commission tracking for revenue and finance teams while proving reps with a sales forecast template. This functionally motivates reps and allows them to see how their pipeline translates into earnings. To see how QuotaPath’s sales incentive software can simplify your process with accurate, real-time, and trusted earnings data, book a time to chat with our team.

PS: Send over a sample compensation plan ahead of the call, and we’ll build it out for you in the app.

It’s been nearly three months since I last gave an update regarding the market downturn. Since then, some tech companies, QuotaPath included, have started to see rebounds. For other organizations, however, conditions have worsened.

Shopify, for instance, added to 2022’s 30,000 tech layoffs after announcing 1,000 layoffs this week. Boosted Commerce and Outbrain also cut ties with 5 percent and 3 percent of their workforce, respectively. 

Economists and industry analysts like Billionaire investor Jim Coulter say we’re only through the first of three phases of this year’s unofficial recession.

But this isn’t a doomsday post. Quite the opposite, actually.

As leaders, rather than making siloed decisions internally, let’s share what we found out after evaluating Q2 misses. Let’s help one another prepare to take on what Coulter has called the next two phases of the downturn, and come out of this stronger and smarter together. 

Now, what you need to know is that my 80% bar differs from what other sales teams say. Others set an 80% target that translates to the sales team attaining 80% of their quota over the year. 

My 80% rule is that 8 out of 10 sellers should hit their quota. This perspective promotes consistency across the entire team. 

When that didn’t happen in Q2, this indicated that we needed to restructure our GTM strategy at the team level as well as at the sales compensation level.

Here’s what we did:

Structure to strengths

First, we looked into how we segment our top of funnel (TOFU) inbound leads and how we could do it better.

For instance, some leads come in with no special requests, while others require enterprise support, complex compensation needs, ASC-606 compliance, or specific integrations. So as demands come in, how could we create immediate value for them?

The solution involved restructuring our sales team to their strengths and changing up roles accordingly. An example, one of our reps who has an incredible understanding of the technical suite within QuotaPath became a solutions engineer. In his new role, he can get involved in the sales cycles early on with reps who could benefit from having his expertise on the call.

Additionally, we created sales development roles (SDRs) to move the marketing qualified lead (MQL) process more efficiently. This has led to faster response times from the point of immediate interest conducted by a rep who has an exceptional understanding of our value add as well as the outbound motion. Our goal is to better quality our MQLs and move them faster through the funnel. Already, we’ve seen success. 

Adjusting compensation plans

Secondly, we reviewed our commission plan. 

What I’ve observed in my experience, is that companies are quick to cut low-performing sales reps in lieu of evaluating their sales commission structure. 

Admittedly, our Quota:OTE ratio was a bit out of whack. So, we used our own Quota:OTE calculator to readjust it so that we can get to that 80% attainment bar. 

This, paired with a transparent communication plan that kept everyone in the know and showed the data for our changes kept momentum and attitudes up.

So what is there to learn here? 

Admit your weaknesses and lean into your team’s strengths. Build a culture and positions that align to those strengths. Look into compensation and see where you can make changes and demonstrate clearly to your team why those changes are being made. Honesty goes a long way.

The team will respect your changes a lot more than if you can’t explain the “why” behind it.

If you need assistance reviewing your plans or creating new opportunities for your sales team within your organization, please reach out (aj@quotapath.com). The more we support one another right now, the better the industry will be in the future.

Now, on to the second month of a better Q3. Let’s go!

QuotaPath collects monthly nominations from our customers to name a Quokka of the Month. We’re thrilled to announce our QuokkaPath July winner below. To nominate a teammate, see past winners, and learn more about this peer recognition initiative, check out our dedicated QuokkaPath page. 

When Leo Ratner searched for a new job in the fall of 2021, he wanted a place he could grow.

At Omnipresent, a remote employee management platform, Leo found that and more.

In less than 8 months, Omnipresent promoted Leo from sales development representative (SDR) to Senior SDR. His hustle and grit at in-person events, social media selling by highlighting the remote work experience, and mastering the ancient art of memes have played a huge hand in his success.

And, that’s why he is July’s QuotaPath Quokka of the Month!

“Leo has crushed our in-person event presence, setting up quality meetings in a face-to-face environment by perfecting his pitch and seeking out the best prospects to strike up a convo,” wrote Omnipresent Global Sales Development Manager Chad Harris in Leo’s nomination.

His SDR approach entails inserting his own voice and not adding too much jargon.

“I don’t use a bunch of fancy words and instead just stick to the point,” Leo said. “I’ve always been detail-oriented, so I try to focus on things that others might not be.”

Read on to learn more about our Jully QuokkaPath winner, Leo!

What’s it like to work for a fully remote company?  

I love it. We have team meetups in cool locations two times a year. That, plus working fully remote, brings the best of both worlds. I have the ability to work from anywhere, like Mallorca, where I am now!

We also have great leadership to learn and grow from, and, of course, the ability to move up in the organization.

There are a lot of “no’s” when it comes to the work of an SDR. How do you stay positive and motivated?

Every “no” brings me closer to the “yes” that I am looking for. I just don’t let them get to me. Someone who isn’t interested right now may eventually come back around. Sales is more about relationship building than getting that “yes” or “no.”

What advice would you offer first-time SDRs?

Focus on the people you will be working for and the product/service you will be selling. If you don’t have people to learn from, then it is not worth it. If you don’t believe in the product you are selling, they won’t be able to sell it with passion.

You were just promoted, congrats! What’s your next professional goal? 

I hope to move up to the account executive role at Omnipresent. 

Once again, congrats to our winner, Leo!

We are now accepting nominations for August’s Quokka of the Month. To recognize your teammate, answer six short questions and learn more about our QuokkaPath in the video below.

This article, which previously appeared on Close’s blog, covers sales commission structure design. Read on to learn various structures to consider, best practices, and three sales commission structures that QuotaPath’s Graham Collins has seen work most effectively for account executives (AE), sales development reps (SDR), and sales leaders.

The challenge with landing on a strong sales commission structure is getting one in place that aligns with the results you aim to achieve.

For instance, if a company plans to increase multi-year deals over the next quarter, the sales commission structure should reflect that. Meaning, that reps should earn a higher commission rate on multi-year contracts. In doing so, you’re encouraging and rewarding them for locking in an extended contract. Without that incentive, why would a rep even bother?

That’s just one example to keep in mind, but there’s plenty to consider. 

Below, we’ll outline various commission structure types and sales commission structure best practices. Our last section will include three sales commission structures examples for an AE, SDR, and sales leaders that have worked well with our customers in driving the right behaviors.

What is the difference between a compensation plan and a sales commission structure?

First, we’ll begin with the difference between a sales compensation plan and the commission structure itself. A compensation plan details a seller’s total compensation package, including base salary (or fixed pay), commission rates, incentive programs, and on-target earnings (OTE). Meanwhile, the sales commission structure sets the rules for the commission section of the compensation plan. The commission structure dictates the what, when, and how reps get paid from sales.

So, could you have a compensation plan without a sales commission structure? Yes, only if the comp plan didn’t include a commission or variable pay component. On the flip side, could you have a sales commission structure without a comp plan? Nope.  

Sales commission structure types

Now that we have differentiated comp plans from commission structures, let’s take a look at the 9 various structure types. 

1. 100% commission

Also referred to as “straight commission,” 100% commission structures pay teams entirely based on sales earnings. The plans do not include base salaries or guaranteed pay. 

Some people have tagged straight commission plans as controversial, citing high turnover and bad sales practices as side effects. But, when reps only receive payment based on the deals they sell, they are highly motivated to sell more. 

2. Base salary + commission

The most widely adopted commission structure type across SaaS pairs a base salary with a commission plan. We recommend a 50/50 split, where 50% of a rep’s pay comes from their base salary while the other half comes from sales earnings. We’ve also seen organizations adopt a 60/40 ratio. In this ratio, the base salary makes up 60% of the rep’s OTE, and the remaining 40% consists of variable pay.

To find an OTE ratio that works best with the amount of revenue your team generates and your average team attainment, use our free Quota:OTE Ratio Calculator.

3. Tiered sales commission

Meanwhile, a tiered sales commission structure works great for organizations looking to incentivize top performers. In this structure, reps unlock higher commission rates as they hit a designated amount of deals or revenue benchmarks. You may also hear this structure referred to as multiple rate, accelerators, escalators, or multipliers.

An example of a tiered sales commission structure example may include a 7% commission rate on deals up to $75K in bookings. Once surpassing $75K, the rep then starts earning 9% on all new deals within the same period. 

For more examples, check out our guide.

4. Single-rate sales commission

We define a single-rate sales commission as variable pay earned off a fixed percentage from every deal closed. This structure is the easiest to understand and widely adopted. You may have also heard the single-rate structure referred to as flat-rate commissions, fixed-rate commissions, or commissions. 

What’s the standard commission rate in SaaS, you ask? 10%.

5. Gross-margin commission

Next up is the gross-margin commission structure, which adopts a similar approach to the single-rate plans. Where gross margin differs, however, is that it considers the business’s profits from the deal. So, instead of accruing commissions based on the contract value or annual recurring revenue (ARR), the rep would earn commissions from the gross revenue collected.

As an example, if a rep sold a contract for $50K, but it cost the business $15K to secure the deal in associated expenses, the rep would earn commissions on $35K.

6. Commission Draw

A  draw against commission shows up sixth on our list. These allow reps to borrow against future commissions earned and have the most impact when ramping new hires.

If you offer commission draws, you’ll need to decide if the rep has to pay back the draw or not (recoverable vs. non-recoverable). We explain in detail when to consider commission draws and outline the pros and cons here.

7.  Residual commission model

For companies looking to reward reps for maintaining long-term business relationships with their accounts, the residual commission structure may be a good fit. 

The residual commission model pays the original rep on a continuous basis as long as the account continues to create revenue via renewals and upsells. According to mailshake, agencies and consulting firms most frequently adopt this commission structure.

8. Territory volume commission

Territory volume commission models involve a team approach to sales. Organized by territory, teams collaborate to sell across an entire region or vertical. Then, as deals come to fruition, the team earns a set commission rate on the deal and splits the commissions evenly. 

For example, three reps share a quota of $100K a month for deals in the state of Minnesota. If one rep closed $50K, the second closed $35K, and the third sold $15K, then the team hit its target. As such, the three reps will split 12% commission, collecting $4K in earnings each. 

9. Base-rate only

The ninth structure, base-rate only, doesn’t involve any commissions. Instead, sales reps earn a fixed salary or hourly rate. We’re critical of these plans because they don’t incentivize or motivate the rep to sell, which should be the goal in a sales job. 

Sales commission structure best practices 

After you choose a commission structure to follow, you’re now ready to tailor it to your business and build out a comp plan. When doing so, we suggest following these best practices. 

Don’t go at it alone.

The best commission structures and comp plans were the results of a group effort. Invite RevOps, Finance, and your senior reps to the conversation. This helps build alignment and ensures the plans reward reps and make sense with the business goals. 

Simplicity is the way.

If it’s hard for you to explain to a colleague or friend, then it’s too complicated. Your reps will likely struggle even more to understand it. Aim for simplicity. This enables leaders to easily reiterate what reps should be selling and for reps to understand what the outcome of their efforts will amount to.

Communicate well.

Outline your compensation program, make sure everyone has a copy, and review it with your team in a designated meeting. This is especially important amid mid-year changes to a commission structure or plan. Make sure reps know what the changes entail, the why behind the changes, and how the company will support them under the new changes.

Test it. Then test it again.

Pull up historical compensation data and run it through your proposed commission structure. No historical data? No problem. Use random or expected data, then run extreme scenarios, like what would happen if a rep achieved a 400% quota. Testing will help you prevent a wild card situation of having to pay a rep over 100% on ARR.

These may seem obvious as you’re reading it, but you’d be surprised how frequently we see teams skip all or some of these tips.

3 sales commission structure examples

As promised, we put together three solid commission structure examples below.   

Account Executive

We recommend a comp plan with a decelerator, an accelerator, and a multi-year kicker. This incentivizes AEs to overperform and decentivizes underperformance. 

The decelerator: For a rep who hits below 50% of the monthly quota, the rep earns a reduced commission rate of their standard commission rate. Meaning, that if I hit my monthly quota of $40K and my standard commission rate is 10%, then I would get paid $4K. But, if I only make 40% of my quota, or $16K in sales, then I am paid out 7% on that $16K. Or, $1,120. 

However, if I achieve between 50% and 100% of my quota, then I earn my standard commission rate of 10%. So, using the example above, if I book $35K in deals, then I would earn $3,500 in commission.

The accelerator: The accelerator kicks in for deals brought in after achieving 100% quota within the specific time frame. In the above example, the rep would earn 15%, a 5% bump, on any deal that comes in after crossing 100% quota.

Multi-year deal commission: Then, for multi-year deals, apply an extra 5% to the commission rate for any deal over one year. 

Sales Development Rep

For an SDR compensation plan, we recommend a structure that’s based on the number of qualified opportunities and the amount of revenue. 

So, if an SDR’s OTE is $80K, split between a $50K base salary and $30K target, half of the target OTE should consist of qualified opps and the other toward revenue.

Set a target of qualified opps: Let’s say 30 per quarter. Then give the SDR a percent of any revenue they generate as well, such as 3%. 

The idea here is to incentivize them to land a bunch of opportunities. But, by rewarding them with commissions from revenue generated, you’re motivating them to push for high-quality opportunities that are more likely to close.

Sales Leader

A good sales manager compensation plan should be attainment-based.

Attainment points: Hold your manager to 90% of their team’s quota sum and follow a point system.

In this example, let’s say I oversee a team of 5 people and each person has a $200K quarterly quota. The sum of my team’s quota is $1M. However, I’m held to 90% of the total sum, or $900K. Following a points-based bonus, I get $250 per attainment point. For instance, if my team accrues $900K in sales, that means I hit 100% of my goal and get a bonus of $25K. If the team hits 70% ($700K), then I would earn 70 attainment points, or a bonus of $17,500. 

This structure aligns sales leaders with their team target. It also allows for flexibility if someone on their team leaves and the quota sum goes down. Under this approach, leaders can focus on building their team up rather than trying to get as many people on their team as possible. 

Automating sales commissions with QuotaPath and Close

Still with us? Hi! We recognize that was a lot of information. But you can clearly see there are many factors to consider when building a commission structure.

We hope you have found this meaningful.

What’s even more helpful is integrating your CRM with QuotaPath. For growing, remote-based sales teams, we recommend the sales-first CRM Close. Launched in 2013, Close’s solution supports reps every step of the sale, including prospect and outreach efforts, lead scoring, and much more.

By integrating Close with QuotaPath, you can seamlessly feed deal information directly into QuotaPath. This allows sales reps, leadership, Finance, and RevOps to see real-time updates into existing and forecasted commissions and ARR.

Want to see the integration in action? Schedule time with a QuotaPath teammate today for a custom, live demo. 

PS: If you send us your comp plan ahead of time, we can show you how it’ll map out in QuotaPath. 

This is a guest blog from RevPartners. RevPartners offers businesses the “Ultimate HubSpot onboarding experience.” As a preferred partner, RevPartners allows you to focus on driving revenue with its team of experts so you don’t have to spend as much time on the HubSpot CRM onboarding process. Executed with excellence and care, RevPartners gives:

• Designated Resources. You will get a dedicated Strategist that will give you the attention you deserve.
• HubSpot Experts. Each team that you have averages 10 HubSpot certifications. 
• Overcommunication. Constant communication about your statuses and upcoming tasks.
• Responsibility. If something fails, it’s RevPartners’ fault. Period. 

As a company grows, silos naturally form, and it becomes progressively more difficult to maintain alignment across teams. This, of course, spills into sales and can detrimentally affect sales performances. 

But the technology exists to help. And, one system that immediately breaks down barriers and streamlines processes is the star of most sales tech stacks: the CRM. 

CRM, which stands for customer relationship management, provides a platform to manage customer and prospective customer relationships and interactions. Sales, support, customer success, and marketing departments leverage CRMs for real-time visibility into the status of their accounts and potential future accounts.

HubSpot, one of the leading CRMs, is often praised for its user-friendliness, affordability, and well-rounded marketing and sales tools.

In this blog, learn the key benefits of HubSpot and how QuotaPath can automate HubSpot commission tracking. 

HubSpot CRM offers multiple tools that can adapt to your needs. This gives your team the opportunity to create a workflow that is functioning at its highest level, with HubSpot as the main character of your tech stack.

And, there is no better time than the present for RevOps leaders to become HubSpot admins. 

This past spring, G2 recognized HubSpot as the No. 2 CRM, No. 1 MAP (marketing automation platform), and No. 1 CMS (content management system). This is essential for boosting your RevOps department.

Is HubSpot an Enterprise CRM? 

First things first, what is an enterprise CRM? An enterprise CRM is an all-inclusive system that is designed for the complexity of larger organizations. It collects accurate, real-time information which results in companies providing more informed and intelligent customer experiences. 

So, is HubSpot an Enterprise CRM? Absolutely. 

Unlike traditional CRMs that have been used over the past decade, HubSpot pushed the frontier of digital marketing by creating a user-centered system for centralized data. Customer interests sit at the forefront of the company’s strategy.

HubSpot’s G2 achievements did not come from any luck or coincidence. As stated by HubSpot, their “CRM platform offers enterprise software in marketing, sales, customer service, content management, and operations.” HubSpot’s CRM platform was built with your growth in mind by focusing on adaptability and alignment across its UX. 

Why HubSpot?

RevOps juggles a lot of responsibility, but one of its key focuses and metrics is widespread technology adoption. While most CRM software can be difficult to implement, HubSpot has earned the reputation of being an easy-to-use platform for every team. This leads to higher adoption rates.

Some of the popular tools accessible with HubSpot include pipeline management. Within this tool, sales have full visibility, email tracking and notifications, live chat support, and meeting scheduling available. HubSpot also offers a deeper toolkit that includes artificial intelligence, advanced automation, and custom reporting. 

Admins can map comp plans with HubSpot CRM data to automatically calculate earnings and attainment from HubSpot deals.

Additionally, QuotaPath’s integration with HubSpot (which is a HubSpot certified application) includes the ability to see QuotaPath commission data directly in HubSpot. 

This setup allows for a single source of truth for both attainment and earnings, which creates alignment, accuracy, and a better user experience.

Integration

With the proliferation of tools and app integrations, HubSpot helps you manage all of your tools from one place at the same time. Applications that work together allow you to organize and run your systems more efficiently. This leads to a smaller tech stack that can run multiple functions and decluttered processes. 

The integration of HubSpot and QuotaPath, for example, allows multiple functions to live in the same tool for Hubspot commission tracking. Let’s take a look. 

QuotaPath’s automated commission tracking and sales compensation management software allows reps to easily see their deals, forecast potential earnings, and bring in real-time updates during their sales and commission process.

Admins can map comp plans with HubSpot CRM data to automatically calculate earnings and attainment from HubSpot deals.

Additionally, QuotaPath’s integration with HubSpot (which is a HubSpot certified application) includes the ability to see QuotaPath commission data directly in HubSpot. 

This setup allows for a single source of truth for both attainment and earnings, which creates alignment, accuracy, and a better user experience.

How QuotaPath’s native HubSpot Integration works:

• Import HubSpot Deals in 4 clicks
• Identify which records count toward earnings
• Map comp plans with HubSpot CRM data from designated fields
• Import custom HubSpot fields
• Define Deal stages to pull from HubSpot
• Preview mapping and input additional filters
• View QuotaPath Earnings directly in HubSpot

Adaptability

The adaptability of technology plays an important role in RevOps. That’s why HubSpot allows users to build multiple data sets inside HubSpot so that you have the flexibility to organize your CRM based on your business needs. This provides a greater level of control and accuracy with how you want to use your data. 

According to HubSpot, you have the ability to “embrace flexibility to name the object, determine what properties it has, and decide what other objects it can be associated with. Custom object data looks, feels, and acts like other objects in HubSpot, so there’s no adjustment period for your team or new apps to figure out — just better data.” 

Organizing complexity

The complexity of your teams and the structures within them will increase as your company grows. For example, marketing teams work on many projects using data from both customers and prospects. Meanwhile, sales teams work to actively fill a pipeline of opportunities and leads. This means different departments require different access to the information within a CRM. 

HubSpot allows you to grant relevant permission to each team to simplify and boost the workflow of each team. 

When creating records, users can set properties to enforce validation rules and requirement gates. The use of data validation is the practice and enforcement of keeping the integrity, structure, and accuracy of data before it is used.

Game changer

HubSpot CRM allows you to authorize individuals to interact with data even if they don’t have a paid seat. Per HubSpot, here are three reasons your team needs access to free seats:

• The democratization of data gives you improved collaboration and transparency for leadership.
• Powerful tools with no extra cost.
• Deliver a more cohesive customer experience.

So, then, why isn’t everyone already using HubSpot? 

Great question! 

After decades of Salesforce and Microsoft leading the way, people struggle with shaking off the common fear of change. As more people continue to recognize the value of HubSpot, this hesitation to switch platforms will change. More companies will experience HubSpot’s uniquely positioned CRM that’s built in-house on one code base. This means you get a unified experience that’s easier for your team to adopt and use than the competitors’ systems.

About RevPartners

RevPartners designs and executes revenue engines to supercharge its customers’ growth. The company orchestrates, optimizes, and reports on its clients’ marketing, sales, and operations processes through automation and tools. RevPartners’ mission is to democratize Revenue Operations as a Service empowering the 99% to experience the benefit of RevOps. What makes RevPartners different from the rest is how their values translate into the excellence of how they operate. One of the most important values they uphold is taking 100% ownership of everything that they do. As stated on their website, they only win, when you win. 

About QuotaPath

Launched in 2018, QuotaPath automates the sales compensation process for scaling revenue teams. Our passionate team of sales leaders and technology experts partner with organizations to develop sales compensation plans that drive the right behaviors. Then, we help your team map these out in our platform to automate the entire process. With QuotaPath, give your reps a tool to forecast commissions and attainment and see real-time commission progress and calculations. Free your Finance team from having to build out formulas and offer them a seamless pay approval experience for sales commissions. Learn more today. 

The sales forecasting struggle is real. Fewer than 25% of sales organizations have forecast accuracy of 75% or greater according to a Korn Ferry study. The same study found that the rewards of getting sales forecasting right are significant. By establishing a structured process, win rates of forecasted deals increased by 17% compared to businesses using a less formal approach. And that’s only one of many benefits of accurate sales forecasting.

Another study revealed that removing human bias, errors, and other issues relating to manual efforts increases forecast accuracy by 76%. This is significant when you consider the many ways that businesses leverage sales forecasting. 

So to help, we took a closer look at what you need to do to nail sales forecasting and reap the benefits.

Below, check out 8 sales forecasting tips, free sales forecasting templates, and resources that you can begin using immediately.

What is sales forecasting?

First, let’s review what sales forecasting actually entails. 

Sales forecasting predicts sales for individual reps, sales teams, or the entire organization on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. 

Leaders use this information to guide and inform strategic decisions across the business including budgeting, hiring, and manufacturing.

Benefits of sales forecasting

The benefits of sales forecasting include:

• Facilitating financial, staffing, and inventory decision-making and planning, including around future sales compensation strategy
• Improving pipeline management by helping determine when and where additional prospecting is needed
• Aligning and adjusting sales quotas with revenue projections
• Reducing time needed for territory design and setting quotas
• Benchmarking to gauge and recognize trends more easily
• Improving win rates by inspiring sales reps to focus on high-revenue, high-profit opportunities in the sales pipeline
• Enabling the business to more accurately project costs and revenue

Challenges

Producing a consistent and accurate sales forecast can be difficult. Some of the most common sales forecasting challenges encountered by businesses include:

Data quality or quantity

Incomplete or inconsistent data is often caused by poor adoption of a customer relationship management platform (CRM), where data isn’t being entered in a timely matter or at all. This reduces the accuracy of historic information for generating predictive patterns for sales forecasting accuracy. For organizations that don’t use a CRM (think: HubSpot, Close, Salesforce), manual forecasting spreadsheets also lead to greater risks of human error.

Subjectivity

Relying too heavily on sales reps’ gut feelings about opportunities and their probability of closing, versus objective data, leads to inaccuracies. Subjectivity on the part of the seller can stem from a lack of pipeline and increasingly limited selling time resulting in forecasting deals to close that aren’t quite ready.

Lack of integration

Although sales organizations now use an increasing number of sales technology tools, a lack of planning and integration within the sales tech stack results in forecasting inaccuracies. When the CRM is integrated with other software like quota tracking and forecasting solutions, these inefficiencies and errors reduce in favor of more reliable forecasting.

Sales forecasting tips

To ensure accurate forecasts, it’s important to set yourself up for success. Get started with the following steps:

1. Create a sales process

Establishing a consistent process and sales methodology with well-defined stages and steps facilitates more accurately predicting when an opportunity will close. Plus, a standardized sales process includes clear definitions of each stage, avoiding confusion about deal status. This will enhance your teams sales techniques.

Resources:
What is the MEDDIC sales training?
How a discovery call can help you win more deal

2. Establish individual and team quotas

Quotas provide a financial baseline and help gauge rep and team performance. To set an appropriate quota that’s fair and reflective of your company’s historical performance, use our free Quota:OTE Ratio Calculator.

3. Use a customer relationship management (CRM) tool

CRMs serve as a database for sales reps, simplify tracking opportunities, and increase the accuracy of deal closing projections and forecasting. Learn more about CRMs and other sales tech stack must-haves. 

4. Select a sales forecasting method

How you choose to approach sales forecasting depends on factors like the age of your business, the size of your sales team and pipelines, the quality of your sales data, and the consistency of your data tracking habits. It’s common for forecasting methods to evolve with your organization.

For instance, your business might forecast based on the length of the sales cycle, while others measure from the opportunity stage.

5. Include other departments within your organization

Dig deeper to gain additional insights from other departments within the business to understand how teams like marketing, product, finance, and HR may impact or be influenced by the sales forecast. For example, you’ll want to consider upcoming marketing plans or product launches, how well the forecast aligns with company financial goals, and potential hiring strategy adjustments based on the forecast.

6. Note year-over-year variances

It’s also important to compare the current sales forecast with the prior year to identify variances, discrepancies, and trends. Documentation never hurt anyone, so be sure to make note of your observations to improve the accuracy of future sales forecasting efforts.

7. Hold reps accountable

Communicate the importance of up-to-date data and accurate forecasts to your sales team. Then hold them accountable for their performance against forecasted deals.

8. Gather feedback

Determine which forecasting approach is most effective for your business and make any necessary adjustments to increase accuracy.

After following these steps, consider changes to the following factors when referring to your sales forecasting:

• Staffing – increasing or reducing the number of sales reps on the team affects future outcomes with either less reps or more that aren’t fully ramped.
• Sales compensation plan – implementing changes to the comp plan, like clawbacks, may reduce sales revenue and reduce churn that boosts renewals.
• Territory – realigning rep territories often creates a temporary drop in sales while team members adjust to their new assignments.
• Competitive – what competitors are doing can influence sales outcomes by either increasing pressure or driving greater results.
• Economic – stronger economies often accelerate sales cycles, while economic downturns may lengthen the process.
• Market – tracking market impacts on your customers to know which ones are being negatively impacted by their market conditions. For example, the travel industry took a serious downturn during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Industry – your industry’s trends influence sales, so keep track of what is happening to anticipate the impact of these trends on your business.
• Legislative – be aware of any legislative changes that may impact your market or industry.
• Product – any changes, new feature launches or new product launches your product team is rolling out will influence sales during the upcoming period.
• Seasonal – if your sales tend to be seasonal, keep this in mind when making sales forecasting adjustments.

Simplify the process

Accurate sales forecasting is essential for guiding business planning and decision-making. Challenges like subjectivity, inaccurate data, and manual processes greatly impact your ability to get forecasting right. Forecasting software, like QuotaPath, can improve the process by using commission projections to create accurate budgets and forecasts faster. To see QuotaPath’s forecasting functionalities and to see your commission agreement mapped out in our system, schedule a custom demo with our team. 

The following post discusses inside sales vs. outside sales and highlights the similarities and differences between the two roles.

Inside and outside sales share the same goal — to generate revenue for the company. How the two relate to each other is governed by whether they are actually making money for the company. No company can afford to neglect inside or outside sales. Both are important lead generation tools that businesses should work on constantly improving.

Since the pandemic (COVID-19), outside sales have become nearly impossible, with numerous countries enacting lockdowns. Outside sales agents rely on face-to-face meetings to make sales. But the pandemic put this sales approach on pause. So, outside agents had to get familiar with inside sales tools and approaches. Inside sales tools leverage remote tools like social media marketing and email marketing.

However, now that most COVID-19 lockdowns have been lifted, things have slowly started returning to normal, with outside sales jobs increasing once again.

Inside sales and outside sales industries

Most industries utilize both inside and outside sales teams for maximum returns. Most notable is the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry, which relies on an inside sales team to run the back end of marketing software. Meanwhile, the outside sales team manually markets the product and drives sales through the front end.

A study conducted in 2017 revealed that large organizations felt the biggest ROI from their outside sales teams. These companies made an annual return on investment worth over $500 million. Inside sales were not completely abandoned but practiced on a much smaller scale. After the pandemic hit, sales leaders changed tactics and adopted hybrid sales models that leveraged remote selling.

Smaller organizations most frequently invest in a sizable inside sales team. These organizations make an average of $50 million or less annually. Because of the nature of their selling approaches, smaller organizations with inside sales teams adapted more quickly to remote environments than larger companies.

Sales cycles

Inside sales teams have shorter sales cycles compared to outside sales teams. A sales cycle describes the time it takes for a sales agent to turn a potential client into a paying consumer. Inside sales teams usually average much smaller deal sizes than outside teams, which leads to shorter sales cycles. Outside sales teams often track down larger deals, some of which may require former RFP (request for proposal) processes, which lengthens the time-to-close. But, the latter typically brings in more revenue to the company.

Deal Sizes

Inside sales teams have a smaller deal size compared to outside sales teams. This is because inside sales reps do more outbound work to convert prospects to customers. On the other hand, outside reps work less deals and do less prospecting to pursue larger returns.

Large deal sizes are the trick behind high investment returns generated by outside sales teams. Thanks to their large returns, outside sales teams can earn back the money they spend wooing clients and traveling. Good training and job experience make an outside sales agent excellent at their job.

Inside sales vs. outside sales: Tools

Sales tools for both inside and outside sales have become similar during the pandemic. For example, both teams will likely use the same CRM (customer relationship management) to hold vital client information and track progress. Inside sales teams interact with their computers, spending most of the day at their desk making appointments and running demos virtually.

On the other hand, outside sales reps will spend a lot of time booking in-person meetings and coordinating travel accommodations to make those appointments. These employees are expected to go above and beyond to get in front of the target client and key decision-makers. As such, companies usually allow flexibility for outside sales reps to improvise when interacting with the client to increase the likelihood of securing the deal. Navigating this requires understanding the ins and outs of mileage reimbursement policy, as well as the accommodation policy, ensuring accurate expense tracking and reimbursement for travel-related expenses

For must-have sales tools suggestions for inside and outside reps, check out our blog.

Experience requirements and responsibilities

Inside sales roles may require prior experience but can count as entry-level jobs.

In an inside sales job for an Austin tech company, the prerequisites in the job requirements include:

• Thorough understanding of related technology or willingness to learn, i.e., websites, CRMs, lead capture, lead followup
• Demonstrated sales record of consistently meeting and exceeding quota
• Skilled in virtual presentations, online web demos, and remote sales processes

For an outside role, companies usually require previous sales experience. This section of a job post for an outside rep in Austin, for example, includes the following:

• Minimum of two or more years of Outside Sales experience
• Experience meeting or exceeding sales quotas
• Must be willing to work a minimum of 40 hours per week
• Should have access to a computer on a daily basis
• Exceptional interpersonal skills, communication skills and ability to build strong relationships
• Excellent time-management skills – (including the ability to work independently and manage your own schedule)

Inside sales and outside sales rep salaries

An outside sales representative earns an average salary of $82,000, according to recent numbers from Indeed. That’s not including their commissions, which puts their average on-target earnings (OTE) well north of $100,000. For more senior outside reps, and enterprise account reps, you’ll see OTEs in the $200,000 to $300,000 range. These roles require more experience and a detailed history of demonstrated success.

Average salaries for inside sales representatives come in just under $60,000, according to Indeed. When factoring in average sales commissions of $12,000 for this role, inside sales rep OTEs range between $70,000 and $80,000.

Commission pay structure

While many reps come to their role with innate motivation, commission structures for sales can motivate even more and steer certain selling behaviors. Plus, a strong sales compensation plan model can attract top-performing recruits and retain your team.

When it comes to designing compensation plans, you’ll want to identify structures that align with your business goals. For example, if you want your team to increase their deal size, you might want to extend your quota term from one month to quarterly to accommodate for longer sales cycles. Or, if a goal of the business is to secure multi-year deals, then the comp plan should reflect that by paying out higher rates on deals longer than one year.

For more sales comp plan best practices, check out these helpful guides:

• 7 compensation planning best practices to implement ASAP
• What is sales compensation? Here are the basics
• How to pick your sales commission structure
• How to set up a successful sales SPIF
• After 350+ strategy sessions, Graham shares 5 key comp management tactics

Characteristics and soft skills: Inside vs. outside reps

We’ve covered responsibilities, tools, and salaries. What about skills? Leaders expect outside sales reps to be outgoing, disciplined, and autonomous. The representatives must quickly pick up on non-verbal cues, display good communication skills, and have exceptional relationship- and trust-building abilities.

Inside sales reps should be competitive, excellent communicators, and have a hustle that doesn’t get sidelined by rejection. Prospecting plays a huge role in inside sales, which involves a lot of “no’s.”

Is inside sales a good job? Is outside sales a good job?

Both inside and outside sales jobs are good jobs as long as you choose the one that suits your skillset. Most outside reps started their sales careers as inside reps, which gave them the groundwork to build and strengthen their sales confidence.

About QuotaPath

QuotPath supports sales incentive compensation for inside and outside teams by automating commission tracking and sales commission payouts. To learn more, find a time here to chat with our team.

Financial Analyst Rimi Dhillon didn’t know the role of a sales compensation analyst existed. That is, until she had the opportunity to become one in 2014.

Eight years have passed since Rimi found her finance specialty. And now,  she won’t do anything outside of sales compensation.

“Sales compensation analysts have a very large impact on the business,” said Rimi, a senior sales compensation analyst at Route. “If the sales compensation plans are not set correctly, your sales team will lose motivation.”

As such, the responsibility to design competitive sales compensation models that align to business goals and motivate reps falls to this niche arm of finance.

What does a sales compensation analyst do? 

Typical job duties include staying on top of industry trends, predicting salary increases, adjusting quotas to mirror go-to-market strategies, developing the sales commission structure, sales compensation planning, and more. Analysts must also factor regional differences, experience levels, and job titles to evaluate and implement effective sales compensation strategies. Although they usually work within finance functions, depending on the organization, you might see a comp analyst report under SalesOps or RevOps. 

The role is in high demand, especially at mid- to large-sized companies. More than 2,000 sales compensation analyst jobs appear on Indeed right now, including roles at Zoom, Cloudflare, and Adobe.

Meet Rimi

Upon earning her degree in Business Administration and Finance, Rimi started her career as a
Financial Analyst and Accountant at San Joaquin Valley Pulmonary Medical Group. In 2014, she took a compensation analyst opportunity with Carrington Holding Company, where she stayed for four years. Since then, Rimi has worked at Medtronic and Core Logic as a comp analyst, before joining Route in April 2021 as a senior sales compensation analyst.

When she’s not working, you can find Rimi enjoying quality time with her husband and two boys.

Q&A

When did you realize you wanted to get into Finance?

I have been in Finance since the beginning of my career. I love numbers and got my degree in Finance, as well.

As a senior sales compensation analyst, what’s your day-to-day look like? 

My days are different based on what time of the month, quarter, or year it is. Normally, I am strategically thinking on what makes sense to motivate the sales team through our compensation plan. To do this, I run a lot of different analyses. For example, I’ll look at the percentage of sales hitting quota and making on-target-earings (OTE). I’ll also calculate return on investment analyses, and evaluate the comp plans to ensure they align with company objectives. 

What are some of the biggest challenges you solve for?

In this role, there is not one straight answer. That’s what I love about it. You have to think about different scenarios to come up with a solution. Plus, you have to keep improving with time and experience due to not having a straight answer.

What trends have you noticed in the sales compensation space that you’re paying close attention to?

We aim to be competitive in the market when it comes to our comp plans. We try to ensure our sales team feels motivated to bring in more revenue and that when we do, we reward them accordingly.

With the signs of a recession, what’s your advice on how to approach sales compensation?

In my opinion, a recession doesn’t affect sales compensation. Regardless of what’s happening with the market, you always have to reward your sales team for doing a great job. If a company pauses hiring more sales reps, you still have to continue to reward the ones you have. 

Thanks so much for offering a peek into life as a compensation analyst, Rimi!

About QuotaPath

QuotaPath provides automated commission management solutions and sales compensation software to provide Reps, Leadership, and Finance teams with real-time tracking and forecasting. We’re the only commission payment software built with a UX design as awesome as our backend technology to take on commissions.  

Curious to see how your Salesforce commissions translate into QuotaPath? Book a time to chat with our team here, then send over a comp plan ahead of the call. We’ll build it out and show it to you over the demo.

In May, members of our product and engineering teams collaborated on 10-plus different projects over 2.5 days for an internal hackathon!

Was it a success? We’ll let our CTO and Co-Founder Eric Heydenberk weigh in.

“I’ve been a part of a lot of hackathons, but this was by far the best — our engineers are smart, creative and able to get scrappy in a way that exceeded my already-high expectations,” said Eric. 

Director of Product Andy Keil added, “This hackathon highlighted the technical chops across our teams. Almost half of the projects we worked on are likely to make it into production and several are already live.”

Read on to learn more about our hackathon, the winners, and what made it into production!

First, what is a hackathon?

A hackathon invites employees to work on products adjacently related to or outside of their regular work projects and roadmap priorities. 

For our most recent one, we solicited ideas from the entire QuotaPath team, including sales, marketing, and customer support before putting them in front of participants.

“Some of the best hackathon ideas would never make it onto the roadmap in official planning sessions,” said Andy. “But, the dedicated time to explore and prove out a concept can show what’s possible and why a particular feature is compelling in a short period of time.”

Once we closed submissions for project ideas, participants self-organized into teams and selected 11 projects to work on. 

And, despite a healthy dose of competition among participants (with prizes up for grabs), as the event unfolded, Andy said members from different hackathon teams hopped in to lend a helping hand or skillset.

“Our camaraderie and ‘one team’ mindset was on full display,” Andy said.  

So, what were the hackathon projects?

For starters,  log in or sign up for a free QuotaPath account. Watch carefully.

Did you see it?

The little buddy you saw hopping about as your page loaded is the direct result of the hackathon!

Our Senior Product Designer Ryan Weaver and Lead Engineer James Truty teamed up to deliver and delight our users with an animated quokka. To learn about our connection to the quokka and our customer-nominated peer awards, visit our QuokkaPath page.

Another project that included our Co-Founder Cole Evetts, Lead Engineer Zoe Wolfe, Maeve Anand, David Cortinas, and Venu Kunche focused on in-app Team Contests. They built out the ability for teams within QuotaPath’s commissions software to set and run contests around deal sizes, quantity, and commissions.

The Geographic Analysis engineering duo of Kyle Cook and Kevin Denny developed a deal visualization tool pulling in key metrics of a deal. 

Meanwhile, a team of five appropriately named the Confetti Team, created in-app celebratory animations. And, of course, they added a customization element.

Other hackathon projects included: adding performance regression testing and in-app smoke tests, a sales job board, QuotaBot workflow improvements, a Slack integration, a command palette, a dark mode version of QuotaPath, calculated fields, and improved onboarding and bulk efforts within the app.

Obviously, the quokka has lived beyond the hackathon, but what else is in production?

“The final results from 2.5 days of work are going to make a material impact on the product and delight our users,” Andy said.

For example, the team has already shipped the QuotaBot development workflow improvements.

Also near completion? In-app onboarding upgrades thanks to the efforts of our Workspace Onboarding hackathon team. 

“The team worked on a ton of bulk action improvements that will make administering the workspace so much easier!” said Customer Success Manager Patty Williams. “My favorite that we’re already using is a bulk invite feature from the members modal. Inviting large groups to a workspace used to take 10-15 minutes, now it takes less than 30 seconds!”  

Plus, the Command Palette is well underway, and the design team has kicked off development on Team Contests. 

“Working on the Command Palette team was some of the most fun I’ve had programming in ages,” said Lead Engineer Mike Bagwell. “We built something that we’re all immensely proud of and that all of us are itching to get into the app so we can use our familiar shortcuts again. I’m still hitting command+K just out of muscle memory. Every team member contributed meaningful ideas and built quality code in a tight-knit communal process. Couldn’t have asked for a better experience.“

Who won?

After a companywide vote, the Team Contests group, led by Zoe, earned the coveted “Overall Winner” title along with the “Sales and Marketing Award.”

“Venu, Maeve and myself had so much fun working on this,” Zoe said. “We were in a Zoom call for all work hours during the hackathon. At one point, Venu Door-Dashed me a cotton candy milkshake. There was so much collaboration, iteration, and friendly jests.”

Other teams picked up some honors, too!

Command Palette earned the “Product & Engineering Award.” Workspace Onboarding won, you guessed it, the “CS & AM Award.” And, last but not least, our “CEO Award” went predictably to our Confetti Team. (Our CEO has a long-standing thing for confetti.) 

When’s the next one?

Due to the success, we aim to host these a couple of times throughout the year.

“People across the company submitted almost 100 project ideas, proof that people from all parts of QuotaPath understand our product, and proof that we have so many exciting opportunities to improve QuotaPath in the months and years to come,” said Eric.

The participants would agree. Here’s what a few said during their hackathon retro.

“I learned that we can build stuff extremely quickly when we really want to. I would love to see how we can keep this scrappy mentality and utilize it for bigger feature development.”

“Something about the informality of prototyping was very freeing, ended up encouraging more teamwork and we got more done faster. Could carry over into actual project execution.”

“Tons of excellent cross-team collaboration. I was so proud of the project my team was able to see through in such a short period of time.”

“There was extremely thoughtful, ingenious, thorough work that came out of this hackathon. It felt like a breath of fresh air to work in such a quick, scrappy fashion with members across the entire org.  It was very cross-departmental and felt like a celebration!”

Interested to learn more about working at QuotaPath? Check out our career page to read about our values, life at QuotaPath, and see current openings.