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

What does “team player” mean to you?

For Kin Sales Manager Melissa Shah, our QuokkaPath May winner, teamwork translates to supporting her team as a coach and, more importantly, a teacher.

“Melissa is very understanding,” wrote Kin Sales Consultant Tonya Brey in Melissa’s QuokkaPath nomination. “She’s always willing to help and offer assistance in a smart and efficient way.”

Tonya added that, rather than just answering questions, Melissa slows down and shows her team how to address their challenges should they come up again.

“She’s always there to teach,” Tonya said.

One time, for instance, Tonya had several questions about an upcoming commission check. Instead of directing Tonya to Finance, Melissa pulled up QuotaPath, addressed Tonya’s concerns, and guided her through how to find this out next time.

“I love to instruct and coach, and I’ve found my role as a Sales Manager very rewarding,” Melissa said.

More on Melissa

The sales leader joined the home insurance platform Kin just under a year ago. Prior to Kin, Melissa served as a sales manager at State Farm for nearly seven years.

“Sales excites me because your effort determines your earnings and I truly enjoy helping my team reach their goals,” Melissa said. “I’d describe my management style as supportive, and I set the bar high.”

As for some parting leadership advice, Melissa had this to share:

“The folks in the trenches on the sales floor know a ton about the company (often more than I do) and I make no secret of that,” Melissa said.

Excellent tip!

Please join us in congratulating our May Quokka of the Month winner, Melissa Shah!

Nominations are now open for June’s Quokka of the Month. To recognize your teammate, answer six questions and learn more about QuokkaPath in the video below.

An appropriate commission tracking process allows businesses to improve performance by rewarding their employees. Unfortunately, many organizations use ineffective methods to manage sales compensation, which can slow down scaling efforts. Relying on outdated methods to track earnings based on a commission plan increases the risk of errors, low morale for your team, and delays.

So, how can you ensure you save time, reduce mistakes and motivate your employees?

Read on to learn three ways to clean up your commission tracking process and improve your organization’s performance.

Challenges to the commission tracking process

Information silos

First up: information silos. These occur when divisions or departments fail to share vital information. Information silos can hinder efficiency and growth in your company. As a result, missed opportunities, lack of synergy, and duplications of efforts may follow. Spotting and correcting information silos can allow you to open critical communication lines in your company and enhance performance.

Potential for error

Using outdated methods, such as spreadsheets or manual commission tracking, can lead to errors. According to the Corporate Financial Institute (CFI), 88% of spreadsheets have errors. These mistakes can cost your business losses to productivity or even lawsuits. Commission tracking inaccuracies can lead to poor organization, confusion amongst sales reps, and disincentivized top performers. Other issues with spreadsheets may include:

• Challenges in growing your company and the need to introduce more complicated sales compensation plans
• Flawed commission payments due to miscalculations from spreadsheet errors
• Minimized visibility into the tracking process for the commissionable reps, leading to a lack of transparency

Payrolls and accounting barriers

Sometimes the commission tracking process can be cumbersome when using manual methods. Even more, your accounting team may actually begin to fear each sales cycle’s end. The team will need to remember every employee’s comp plan. When an error happens, they end up getting blamed for commission inaccuracies. Payroll and accounting staff experience the following barriers:

• Time-consuming and cumbersome commission calculations
• Auditing and compliance challenges
• The payroll and accounting team has to deal with sales reps’ anger
• Manual commission tracking will likely result in miscalculations

Failure to achieve your organization’s goals

It becomes a challenge to meet your company’s vision if the accounting and sales teams spend significant time resolving commission errors. As a result, various departments in your organization start looking backward to solve disputes instead of focusing on business growth and expansion.

You risk suffering loss when your best sales account executives quit due to commission miscalculation frustrations. This can damage your sales and negatively impact your return on investment. But how can you make the commission tracking process straightforward and avoid the issues explained above?

Below, we share three solutions.

Standardize It

Document and standardize the tracking process steps to ensure you don’t make unnecessary mistakes. This is critical because when you need someone else to step in and fill in for you, they’ll know exactly what to do. Having multiple people serving as the “commission person” while following the same procedure will streamline the process and reduce confusion. Here are ways you can achieve better compensation management:

Tailor your report: No sales rep wants to go through bulky data to view their earnings. This should be quick and stress-free. You want to break down earnings by team member or region. With a commission tracking solution, this becomes simple to perform. Just pull customized data and send it to the appropriate individuals using a commission tool.

Label data clearly: Proper data labeling ensures all stakeholders can understand the numbers hassle-free. Software automation can allow you to customize an easy-to-understand dashboard for everyone to comprehend the data.

Create a logical flow: Ensure your information order is sensible for your sales reps. With sales commission software, you can set up customized mapping and reporting during onboarding and leave the rest up to the system.

Simplify It

Next, simplify it. Simplifying your commission tracking process will eliminate inaccuracies and allow sales reps to focus on the organization’s goals. Review the steps you created from standardizing sales compensation and see what needs improvement. Here are things you could adjust to make it simple:

Automate calculations: Feed your system of choice the required calculation algorithms and the necessary estimates to get the work done. One of the primary challenges of using a commission tracking spreadsheet is that it requires a heavy lift to combine data and calculate. They are complicated, and not everyone may understand how to use them. This often leads to a gatekeeper situation for commissions.

Provide real-time updates: This allows you to incorporate a large data volume and monitor it continuously. All the information you need is available in a few clicks. Real-time data enables you to accurately monitor earnings and stay privy to any late payments and sales rep bonuses. Most commission tracking platforms will offer integrations to popular CRMs. Just make sure they’re actually real-time and not data that only updates once a day.

Automate It

Lastly, lead generation has become highly competitive. Organizations need to find cutting-edge solutions that keep their teams happy and hungry for more. Automating your commission tracking process will help motivate your staff and maintain diverse individual commission goals, channels, quotas, and sales territories.

An effective sales commission software can help infuse more enthusiasm in your employees, reinvent your commission reporting and open up new possibilities. Efficient commission tracking software helps you with the following:

• Accurate quota setting
• Timely and insightful report delivery
• Dispute resolving and answering questions
• More sales insights
• Little or no manual intervention
• Behavior and sales progress analytics in real-time
• Implement and track an ad-hoc SPIF or bonus
• Complicated compensation plan management
• Analyze how the new plan will impact your organization
• Introduce a new comp plan and scale

Clear up your compensation formulas with QuotaPath

We end with this. Don’t let your commission tracking process hinder your business.Instead, let QuotaPath streamline your sales compensation process while motivating and retaining top-performing reps. Try our free commission tracking software. Or, schedule a time with a member of our team to see how we can take on comp management for your organization.

The tech downturn is in full swing. Recession talks have dominated the headlines as interest rates saw the highest jump in 22 years and the stock market continues to fall. We’ve watched companies like Netflix, Carvana, and Noom enforce layoffs in the past week, with economists predicting many more in the coming months.

Founders, myself included, have begun having conversations with one another, advisors, investors, and our leadership teams to plan accordingly.

Should we find ourselves in another economic downturn, fresh off the heels of the short (yet painful) one brought forth by the pandemic in 2020, we want to be prepared.

A primary driver of the tech downturn

In the technology sector specifically, a leading cause of this volatility hails from multiples on business valuations that come in much higher than their revenue.

For context, we typically see funding announcements with valuations that amount to 10x to 20x company revenue. But at the beginning of 2021, we started seeing multipliers 50x, 100x, even 250x revenue. 

Companies that received huge funding rounds ended up directing significant percentages of those fundings toward customer acquisition costs (CAC). They spent, for example, $30 to $40 million of their $50 million investment on marketing efforts to hit $10 million in revenue. On the outside that looks like a bump to $10 million. But what does the company have to show for it? The CAC far outweighs the revenue, which means they can’t raise at the same multiple again and risk a down round. A down round occurs when an investment leads to a lower valuation.

So, what do leaders do in this position? They reduce the amount of money they spend each month. We refer to this as “burn.”

Investors have begun instructing executives to conserve cash and cut costs via headcount reduction (aka layoffs) or eliminate unnecessary spend. See: Bloomberg’s “Tech’s High-Flying Startup Scene Gets a Crushing Reality Check.”

Where QuotaPath fits in

Fortunately, and unfortunately, I’ve been down this road before. 

I took my first job in sales fresh out of college for a PR SaaS platform in 2007 during a recession. Think about that. PR is one of the last industries you want to be selling into when the economy is down. Many of the people I spoke with didn’t know if they would have a job the next week. 

But we shifted our mindset. Instead of selling one to two large contracts, we went after six to eight smaller, quick deals to hit our targets. And it worked.

We applied a similar mindset in creating QuotaPath in 2018. 

We purposely think about our customers and how economic shifts can impact their hiring plans. We recognize that in times of uncertainty, companies look to cut the burn, whether that’s people or platforms.

We positioned ourselves from the beginning to serve as the commission tool that can move with sales teams as their needs change. We keep our prices transparent and have built a product-led growth model that scales with businesses no matter the size. It doesn’t make sense for businesses to overpay.

Teams can implement QuotaPath quickly. Our platform allows for fast adjustments in the system, whether that’s adding/removing users or building a new compensation plan.

Even more, we created QuotaPath’s product to play a much larger role than automating commission tracking. 

We are the only compensation management software that actually motivates teams, which has led to higher sales, team attainment, and rep retention.

Ask Dennis Dube, SVP of Commercial Operations at OSG, Blackthorn’s VP of Sales Joe St. Germain, or RoverPass’s Director of Sales Kristen O’Hara. 

Each of these sales leaders, and many more within our QuotaPath network, can attest to the effect of reps being able to see how their next deal impacts their personal and professional goals. Dennis, for instance, finished 2021 with the highest sales year reported in company history and 70 percent of his team achieving quota. 

Motivating your team, keeping spirits up, and driving revenue as reps question their job security will be especially important through the remainder of 2022 – and likely into 2023. 

Choices ahead

No doubt, every leader has already begun to evaluate how to maximize revenue and where to save money. We have had those conversations here and will continue to do so. 

But we will not be cutting people or programs that have empirically shown to increase productivity, motivation, and retention. We hope you’ll consider the same. 

As always, our team is here to support you, and that includes support from me. 

Feel free to reach out, aj@quotapath.com, if you have questions about optimizing your QuotaPath experience, or, if you’re a leader looking to chat through today’s economic landscape.

Sincerely,

AJ Bruno

The power of an intentional compensation strategy goes a long way. That, paired with a streamlined, automated sales compensation process can stretch success even further. At least that was the case for OSG (now EverView) after they consolidated 35 comp plans into one and adopted QuotaPath’s Salesforce commission tracking integration. 

We’ll get into how OSG’s sales team had the best sales year in company history in a moment. But first, some history.

In August 2020, each member of OSG’s 80-person sales team followed one of 35 sales comp plans. Some of these plans included as many as 12 components. And all of these plans leaders and reps tracked by hand.

Enter Dennis Dube, who joined OSG around this time as SVP of Commercial Operations. Upon his arrival, he helped lead an internal survey to gauge seller satisfaction with OSG’s sales compensation management methodology.

‘Mo comp plans, ‘mo problems

The survey revealed that OSG sellers spent two hours per week manually calculating commissions. Additionally, half of the reps admitted to not understanding their comp plans and how they get paid.

“At the time, sellers didn’t know how much their paychecks would be until they received those checks,” Dennis added. 

That’s what we call in the biz a significant problem. Because, as sales leaders, how can you motivate positive sales behaviors if your reps don’t understand the benefit of doing so? Still, it took one more “final straw” moment for Dennis to ignite change in OSG’s sales commission reporting process.

While traveling with his son on a Saturday afternoon, the operations leader received a panic-stricken message from a coworker.

“The text said that if I didn’t approve a commission calculation within the next hour, then our sellers wouldn’t get paid on time,” Dennis said. 

“It was then that I knew it was time to get a better system in place.”

First up, Dennis and his leadership team restructured OSG’s compensation plans to align with a more strategic selling model. Then, once OSG dropped from 35 plans to eight, Dennis introduced QuotaPath’s Salesforce commission tracking integration to remove manual entry.

The outcome?

The best sales year in OSG history with 70 percent of the team meeting quota and 20 percent meeting 90 percent of quota.

More on OSG’s successes below. 

Integrated Salesforce commission tracking 

Dennis hoped to find an integrated Salesforce commission tracking solution that could support their projected growth. Their ideal solution would be easy to navigate and user-friendly for sellers.

Furthermore, he and his team wanted a frictionless solution that their Ops department could quickly organize, implement, and update. AKA: scalability. Both Ops and Sales also requested a commission tracking platform that would save time preparing and facilitating sales commission payments.

After exploring a couple of options, Dennis moved forward with QuotaPath in September 2020.

“The ease to get up and running with QuotaPath was a big plus — that and QuotaPath’s real-time Salesforce integration,” Dennis said.

Compensation plan strategy

Comp plans should motivate sales reps and attract the best talent.

If reps don’t understand their comp plan, it becomes a huge roadblock. Instead of driving selling behaviors and rewarding performance, convoluted comp plans slow down teams and discourage reps. This ultimately leads to frustrations across the sales function and eroding trust between reps and leadership. 

So, to address OSG’s confusing comp plan modeling, OSG leadership condensed the plans. They reduced them to eight in 2021 and to one in 2022.

Upon consolidating the plans, Dennis and his leadership team seamlessly added them into Quotapath. By doing so, they provided reps with immediate visibility into their earnings, forecasted commissions, and attainment.

“Our comp plan was easily measured and viewed by our sellers in QuotaPath, which drove positive selling behaviors,” said Ron Morgan, OSG’s Director of Commercial Operations.

(Did you know we offer comp plan strategy consultations? Book a time with Graham here.)

Top-down communication

Another driving force behind OSG’s recent successes involved its top-down communication.

In the months after Dennis started at OSG, leadership focused on establishing a sales culture of accountability and leaned on QuotaPath to help. 

QuotaPath enables sellers to visualize their objectives. Reps can see when they reach 100 percent, how close they are to the next accelerator, and the impact of the next deal. That’s in addition to tracking real-time commissions and forecasted earnings. 

As such, leaders over-communicated the comp plans and the areas the team should focus their efforts. Then they directed reps to QuotaPath to answer their commission questions.

When reps had compensation questions on specific deals, Ron said leadership would ask, “Have you checked QuotaPath yet?” 

Empowering reps to seek out their commission questions while giving them a tool to visualize their success led to a 95 percent daily adoption rate amongst OSG’s 80-person sales team. 

Conclusion

OSG completed a comp plan makeover, increased compensation visibility through QuotaPath, and created a new targeted sales structure. In doing so, OSG achieved its highest sales year to date. If you’re ready to re-think sales compensation and automate commission tracking in a way that actually inspires changed selling behaviors, let’s chat!

Learn about the crucial role an account executive plays as we define what is an account executive, how this role compares to other sales positions, and average AE salaries.

The term account executive is thrown around quite often in the sales world, but many people still don’t understand what the role truly entails.

Perhaps you’re researching a career in an account executive position, or maybe you’re just new to the sales industry and want to ensure you have a solid handle on organizational hierarchy. Either way, find out everything you need to know in this guide about account executives, their responsibilities, and earning potential.

What is an account executive?

Account executives are salespeople who create relationships with new customers with the overarching goal of driving revenue. Account executives, or AEs, may create and nurture client relationships by attending networking events, doing research, making sales calls, and visiting potential and current clients in person.

What do account executives do?

Most account executives tackle a core set of responsibilities as part of their daily duties. That usually includes some combination of:

• Researching and identifying prospects
• Establishing “ins” at a company via networking
• Pitching and presenting onsite or conducting virtual presentations and demos
• Maintaining relationships
• Addressing customer questions and/or potential issues during the leadup to a sale
• Pushing to reach sales quotas and targets
• Staying up to date on market and industry trends

The exact “day in the life” of an account executive may differ depending on the structure and size of the AE’s employing company. For example, at some companies, AEs enter the sales process when it’s already underway to help finalize the sale and convert prospective customers.

At smaller companies, such as a SaaS startup, an account executive might own the entire sales process, tackling every step from start to finish. That includes kicking off the relationship with a cold email or call and wrapping up the final sales contract when it’s time to close.

Some AEs don’t come into the picture until immediately after the deal wraps. They step in when it’s time to onboard the client and identify upsell opportunities.

Those significant differences in roles and duties mean more opportunities for AEs who want to lean into a specific part of the sales process. For instance, say you’re not great at breaking the ice but you’re known for your ability to close. You could look for an AE role at a company that primarily relies on account executives for the latter part of the sales cycle.

Key skills for an account executive include:

• Exceptional presentation and communication skills
• Well organized
• Analytical
• Ambitious
• Empathetic
• Goal-oriented
• Proactive
• Strong problem-solving abilities

What’s the difference between account executives and account managers?

Depending on the company, a sizable overlap between account executives and account managers may exist. Both positions involve working directly with customers. In some organizations, the AE actually acts as an AM, playing a dual role.

In most instances, AMs only come into play after a prospect signs the contract and moves from prospect to customer. At this time, the account manager serves as the liaison between the company and the client through the duration of their contract.

Account executive vs. sales development rep

Sales development representatives (SDRs) are primarily focused on outbound prospecting. They govern the part of the sales process that deals with researching and contacting potential clients. Unlike account executives who might dabble in multiple portions of the sales cycle, SDRs only source and qualify leads.

An account executive might also do the work of a sales development representative, participating in lead sourcing and qualification. This is more common at smaller organizations, where AEs run prospecting efforts until the company builds an SDR function. But very rarely, if ever, would an SDR cover the same job responsibilities as an AE.

Are account executive roles entry-level?

Yes and no. Account executive roles may be entry-level if the company is younger or smaller. Larger companies with more complex sales department structures may require AEs to have more extensive experience. Or, they may have several types of AEs with different salary packages dependent on experience.

Smaller companies and startups often ask AEs to have more experience. That’s because their responsibilities extend beyond what most AEs typically do. Account executives who also act as SDRs or account managers will need a more expansive skill set. Therefore, it’s helpful if they’ve held those other roles earlier in their career.

We see Senior AEs typically defined as account executives with at least two or three years of previous experience. These AEs usually have higher sales targets (and on-target earnings) than entry-level AEs and larger customers.

Average salary for an account executive

According to Indeed.com, the national average base salary for account executives in the United States is $68,055. In addition to base salary, account executives may be eligible for common benefits and variable compensation. These might include a cash bonus (averaging $15,000 per year) and commission (averaging $24,000 per year). Some organizations track and calculate this manually, while others lean on platforms like QuotaPath, to provide automated commission tracking and compensation insights.

There are also job perks like a 401(K), gym memberships, health/dental/vision insurance, disability insurance, wellness programs, and flexible scheduling. The exact compensation package depends on the company and the market.

For comparison, account managers in the U.S. averaged $58,357 per year, and SDRs average annual salaries of $68,837. Betts 2022 Compensation Guide also offers additional sales salary info and year-over-year earning trends.

So, is being an account executive a good job? For hard-working, organized, solid communicators, yes! But this role requires balance and attention to detail that won’t fit everyone’s needs. We recommend connecting with a peer currently in an AE role to learn first-hand what the job is like.

Are you an existing or aspiring account executive interested in finding a better way to track commissions? QuotaPath’s commission tracking software takes the mystery out of payday and scales with your team as you grow. For more information about how you can get more accurate, straightforward compensation results, try QuotaPath for free today.

QuotaPath users recognized our solution as a sales compensation management leader in the space once again via G2 rankings.

Recently, the peer-to-peer user review platform awarded QuotaPath a series of badges in the Sales Compensation category. These included Users Love Us, which we earned after collecting 20 4.0-star reviews, and Easiest to Do Business With. 

Our approach to sales compensation management allows go-to-market teams to run a more efficient and accurate sales process. With real-time data syncs and personalized dashboards, QuotaPath forges a deeper understanding of earnings, forecasted commissions, and quota attainment. As a result, our approach and technology have led to more motivated teams and higher team attainment.

Before sharing our new badge list, we want to thank our users who rely on us for accurate commission tracking. Without your feedback and your ability to recognize QuotaPath’s capabilities, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So, thank you!

Our goal

Since 2018, it has been our goal to ensure reps understand their earnings and the impact the next deal has. As we grow, we will continue to support commission necessities and expand to support the entire compensation process.

In the past year alone, we grew our feature set by more than 100 percent. Much of these additions came at the request of our customers. These new features fostered in-app collaboration while building out technical intricacies to support more complex plans. We will continue to listen carefully and grow alongside the scaling teams we support. 

Furthermore, fresh off the heels of a $41 million Series B, we remain committed to our mission and users. Sales compensation leaves a lot of room for error in comp plan design and throughout calculations and payouts. We aim to fix it. Looking ahead, we’ll drop new resources that minimize errors at the beginning, middle, and end stages of the compensation process. Stay tuned!

Additionally, we’ll double down on the six key areas where QuotaPath stands out in the sales compensation management space. 

Why QuotaPath is a sales compensation management leader

1. Reps can easily learn and pickup the platform.

First, our Dashboards, Earnings, and Attainment views give sellers the ability to see their earned and forecasted commissions in real-time. This ease of use lends itself to high adoption rates amongst sales teams. In fact, we see reps pull up QuotaPath immediately after closing a deal to check their commissions and attainment. 

“Reps can jump in and figure it out on their own. It’s so easy to use!” said RoverPass’s Director of Sales Kristen O’Hara. 

2. Reps can forecast future commissions.

Secondly, money often acts as the leading motivator for sales reps. We created QuotaPath with exactly that in mind. Using our sales commission software, reps can see how deals in their pipeline translate to future dollars earned. 

“Our reps realized they could run scenarios and see how much they could earn from our monthly kickers,” said Blackthorn VP of Sales Joe St. Germain.

As such, Joe’s reps pushed harder to bring in deals now, versus letting deals linger into the next month. A record year of sales for the Blackthorn team followed.

3. Fast implementation and integration syncs.

In addition to QuotaPath’s ease of use in the platform, we designed our integration syncs to be set up quickly.

Our set-up wizard enables first-time users to integrate their CRM in 4-steps and build out comp plans and rules. 

For example, Tribe Dynamics set up QuotaPath and their HubSpot integration within one week of their demo. 

4. Actual native integrations with CRMs vs. manual refreshes.

Speaking on integrations. QuotaPath’s robust platform has a unique offering with multiple native integrations and an open API. Native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Close CRMs ensure the accuracy of the data without the need to double-check. Users don’t have to refresh the page. This may not seem like a big deal today, but at the end of the quarter, it is. 

If your sellers and Finance currently track and calculate commissions manually, these native integrations act as an incredible time saver.

Just ask Katie Cooper at Muck Rack, who used to spend one week calculating commissions for a team of 10. Today, she runs commissions in less than six hours for a team of 70. 

5. Pricing transparency and no implementation fees. 

Our new G2 badge, “Easiest to do Business With,” reflects our transparency around pricing. Our pricing model includes never charging implementation fees. 

We offer three pricing packages — including a free version — that can scale with teams. 

6. Assistance with compensation planning strategy.

As mentioned above, our focus this year centers on supporting teams through compensation design. We will continue to share resources and modeling tools to help. However, in the meantime, book a one-on-one call with our Resident Sales Nerd Graham Collins.  

These six differentiators have contributed to our recent badge work on G2. Take a look at our Spring recognitions below. 

G2 Spring Recognitions

• Most Implementable: Fast onboarding. Easy to learn. That’s us!

• Best Results: Implement QuotaPath, see immediate time-to-value.
  
• Best Relationship: Our team won’t let you fall through the cracks. We’ll be by your side the entire time.
  
• Leader (Small-Business): High ratings in sales compensation? That’s us.
  
• Fastest Implementation (Mid-Market): We have the shortest go-live time in our category and average onboarding times of less than two weeks.
  
• Easiest Admin (Small-Business & Mid-Market): A callout to our intuitive design and set-up wizard.
  
• Momentum Leader: Not us ranking in the top 25% of our category? Why yes, yes it is.
  
• Easiest To Do Business With (Mid-Market): If you haven’t met our team yet, you should. 

• Easiest To Use (Small Business): The most common feedback we hear from our customers is “It just works.”
  
• High Performer: Our customers reported high customer satisfaction scores. Probably because a lot of the teams we’ve worked with have seen immediate increases in sales productivity. 

In closing, users have consistently expressed love for QuotaPath and our ability to both save time and motivate their teams.

If you want to see what the hype is all about, we’d love to chat with you! Book a time with our awesome team. And, see how QuotaPath can help with your sales commission tracking and compensation management today. 

When sales technologies are optimized, teams note quantifiable improvements in metrics like pipeline, close-rates, and forecast accuracy. So, it makes sense that high-growth companies deploy more sales tools than laggards and achieve a 5 percent improvement in quota attainment as a result.

But implementing the right tools can be tricky.

RevOps leaders tasked with identifying impactful sales and marketing ops solutions must sift through a lot of noise. For instance, 1,200 available solutions across 43 different categories crowd the sales technology market. 

The vast array of options makes it harder for leaders to figure out which technologies to go with. 

To help, we’ve sourced a few of our favorite tools! Then we checked out customer review sites and case studies to learn what users love best about each of them.

1. CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms help salespeople enhance their daily schedules and prioritize tasks. With a CRM in place, reps are less likely to lose track of customer and prospect follow-ups. CRMs also ensure that information accrued by your sales team is accessible across your entire company in one centralized system. CRMs store customer data and communications. They facilitate tracking and nurturing customer and lead relationships and act as a single source of truth.  Pro tip: Before using a CRM, it is best to make sure that the device is optimized (clear the RAM, remove applications that launch at login, etc.). Then your work with CRM will be fast and smooth.

 HubSpot

Hubspot is an easy-to-use CRM platform with all the tools and integrations you need for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. Plus, it supports hundreds of app integrations (including QuotaPath).

Their customers love how simple it is to use. SalesOps professionals specifically appreciate how easy it is to generate dashboards, reports, and filters, and how smoothly it integrates into the marketing module.

Hubspot’s Sales CRM helps sales teams close more deals, manage client relationships, and track team activities.

Salesforce

Salesforce CRM can be used by businesses of all sizes.

Their customers love how customizable and versatile the platform is, so it can be used by many industries. Salesforce’s resources, third-party integrations, including QuotaPath, and their reporting structures are excellent.

Salesforce helps companies manage prospect relationships, communication, lead tracking, opportunity conversion, and gauge success through reporting.

Close

Close CRM focuses solely on the needs of SMBs and scaling teams. It is a sales engagement CRM designed to help SMBs turn more leads into revenue.

Close CRM’s customers love the interface because it’s easy to navigate and very intuitive. They also love the robust filters and sorting functions as well as the automated email tracking function in Close CRM.

Close lets you email, call, and text your leads, all without add-ons. The platform includes productivity tools like task reminders and a Power Dialer to reach more leads, follow up more often, and close more deals. And, Close CRM integrates with QuotaPath.

2. Chili Piper

Chili Piper is an advanced scheduling and routing software for B2B revenue teams.

Customers love the platform for its ease of use and ability to simplify the process of scheduling calls and meetings. Not only does the platform streamline scheduling, it facilitates rescheduling, reassigning, or updating meetings and invites. Chili Piper also gives you the ability to set up round-robin functionality for call and demo distribution with smart routing capabilities to assign accounts. Their customers also love the assortment of integrations offered by Chili Piper.

Chili Piper helps revenue teams double their inbound conversion rates, increase customer satisfaction, and increase productivity in terms of scheduling.

3. Jiminny

Jiminny is a conversation intelligence platform that records, transcribes, and analyzes customer conversations.

Customers have shared they find the platform easy to use. They love that Jiminny simplifies coaching by highlighting key coaching moments and encourages more coaching through self and peer-to-peer coaching. It also provides performance and deal analytics, and simplifies internal communication. Jiminny customers also praised the company for offering up excellent customer support!

Jiminny helps companies shorten new hire onboarding times, simplify and improve sales coaching for continuous rep performance improvement, update sales processes, and increase forecasting accuracy.

4. Contractbook

Contractbook is an end-to-end contract management platform that enables you to manage your contracts in a single, streamlined flow. The platform allows you to automate every step with data-driven document automation to save time and avoid errors.

Contractbook’s customers say their technology makes life easier by ensuring consistency across teams and finalizing contracts more quickly. The solution allows customers to see when a client has viewed a contract or requested a re-send. It also flags changes to the contract and notifies when a client has sent a contract back. You can also autogenerate contracts and create new documents from templates.

Customers have also applauded Contractbook’s intuitiveness and its large list of integrations.

5. QuotaPath

QuotaPath is a sales compensation management tool with real-time data syncs and personalized dashboards for greater rep and leader transparency and understanding of earnings and quota attainment.

Customers love the platform because it saves time by replacing error-prone manual tracking processes with sales incentive automation. It’s set up for RevOps, Finance, and Sales to use, and it’s not uncommon for reps to pull up QuotaPath immediately after closing a deal. This leads to high adoption rates and rep motivation because reps can actually forecast commissions, too. 

QuotaPath helps measure sales performance, deliver results, and drive consistent revenue. The platform helps businesses save time by automating commissions, increasing transparency around even the most complex comp plan, eliminating compensation errors, and driving success. 

Plus, the team offers a wealth of knowledge in compensation planning and partners with companies to design plans that drive positive sales behaviors. 

6. Blissfully (acquired by Vendr)

Blissfully is a platform for managing every aspect of your technology stack.

Customers have shared that the solution has helped them pump transparency into their SaaS spend by automating the process. The onboarding and offboarding processes in Blissfully give customers the ability to create standard checklists per department to follow when a new employee starts or leaves. Blissfully manages the process and sends reminders so no details slip through, which matters for SOC 2 audits.

The Blissfully platform provides organization, automation, and security to every aspect of your technology stack. It simplifies business operations, streamlines on- and offboarding, optimizes SaaS and IT spend, and improves security and compliance.

Still need help building a sales tech stack that your team will actually use? Check out the recap and recording of our webinar, “How to Build a Sales Tech Stack Your Team Will Actually Use.”

And, when you are ready, you can find out how QuotaPath can add immediate value to your sales tech stack today. 

In this blog, we connect with QuotaPath Systems Engineering Lead James Truty to get an inside peek into the QuotaPath HubSpot CRM integration. To automate commission tracking via HubSpot and QuotaPath, learn more here. 

QuotaPath’s Engineering Lead James Truty has a lot of experience setting up system integrations throughout his career. 

A lot, as in 20 system integrations since 2008. 

At QuotaPath specifically, James led the sales compensation management platform through its first integration in 2019 with Salesforce. This allowed users to automatically feed real-time deal earnings data from Salesforce into QuotaPath.

Even more, the Salesforce integration set the stage for QuotaPath’s second CRM integration with HubSpot a year later. By applying the lessons learned from the Salesforce sync, James and team cut the delivery time down from 20 weeks to six with HubSpot.

At the beginning of 2021, HubSpot CRM users could fully automate and track sales commissions using QuotaPath. 

Users of both platforms shouted with glee and saw immediate successes. (Check out Muck Rack’s story here and Tribe Dynamic’s here)

QuotaPath’s ongoing relationship with HubSpot

And so began QuotaPath’s blossoming relationship with the makers behind the orange-adorned marketing, sales, customer service, and CRM software. Just months after announcing the QuotaPath HubSpot CRM integration, for instance, HubSpot invested in QuotaPath via HubSpot Ventures.

“For sales teams, the CRM is the center of every customer interaction. QuotaPath helps by bringing a part of the CRM that doesn’t exist today — there’s no real way to calculate earnings and commissions off of CRM data,” wrote Brandon Greer in HubSpot’s announcement.

The following fall, QuotaPath added the ability for HubSpot users to view their QuotaPath-tracked commission data directly in HubSpot. Called QuotaPath Earnings, this allowed users to see everything without having to toggle between the two systems. 

Then, this past Spring, QuotaPath became a HubSpot certified application by passing additional HubSpot tests and security protocols. 

So, what’s behind the relationship between QuotaPath and HubSpot, and what can users of both systems expect next? 

To learn more, we turned to none other than James Truty!

Hi, James!

James started at QuotaPath in 2019, which made him one of the first employees at the company. The engineer has over 14 years of experience, five of which he dedicated to TrendKite where he met QuotaPath Co-Founders AJ Bruno and Cole Evetts. When James isn’t at the office, he can be seen at local breweries with his wife and kids, checking out new parks, or riding his bicycle. 

First, what constitutes a “solid” integration from a technical perspective?

James: A good integration starts with documentation and good tooling for our developers. The integrations that we can complete in the fastest amount of time with the fewest resources on our side are the ones that are documented really well. For example, CRM integrations require a lot of test data and test accounts, which can be a burden and drive costs. So, when you have that information and data upfront, it makes a CRM integration much easier. 

How come the HubSpot integration took significantly less time than the first one?

James: Integrations get easier over time as you develop the product. We hammered out a lot of things, such as UI and data integration with our first one with Salesforce. This made it easier to verify that the integration worked in HubSpot and that changes in HubSpot immediately reflected in QuotaPath.  

Additionally, we were able to work really closely with HubSpot from the beginning to build a native integration through our platform. This was a big differentiator over the previous system integration. We knew from our learnings with Salesforce that we could make a very smooth integration with very few clicks and have that be useful for importing a customer’s data over and keeping it synced.

Tell us how QuotaPath’s native integration with HubSpot has evolved. What’s next? 

James: Initially we only supported HubSpot “Deals” in QuotaPath. Since then, we’ve added more objects as customers have needed them, such as “Tickets.” This allows teams to base commissions off more than the deal value. For example, a sales rep might earn commissions when a deal closes based on the deal amount. But a different rep on a different team might earn commissions from tickets closed. By supporting multiple objects and fields within those objects, users have the flexibility to track and automate commissions to align with how they actually earn money.

Up next, we’ll continue to build support for more objects and fields that will help us better support other sales roles, like SDRs, through commission events. 

Lastly, congrats on leading QuotaPath’s HubSpot certification on the app marketplace! What exactly does this mean?

James: Our app passed an additional technical review conducted by an internal HubSpot team of developers. These tests evaluated the security of our data, the speed of application, and a few other items. We had already met most of HubSpot’s requirements, so when we applied for certification, it took just over a week to finalize. 

HubSpot’s Certification Metrics for QuotaPath:

• Success rate above 98% for all activities (HubSpot requires 95%)
• 100+ Customers using integration (HubSpot requires six)
• Authenticated via OAuth and assessed for HubSpot’s security best practices
• Numerous other metrics tied to privacy, reliability, performance, and usability

Final Thoughts 

“We’ve had good support and feedback from our HubSpot customers overall,” said James. “They like that it’s quick to use and quick to set up. We want to continue that as we build more features and integrations.”

If you’re already utilizing HubSpot and thinking about using QuotaPath to help track commissions and earnings, you’re already halfway there! Take your research journey to the next level and see how the QuotaPath HubSpot CRM integration works in a custom demo.

A message from CEO and Co-Founder AJ Bruno regarding the QuotaPath Series B announcement.

Today, we’re excited to announce our $41 million Series B, led by Tribe Capital! 

Before we dive into the specifics of the announcement, I wanted to share a few thoughts on what this funding means to us and what we’re building at QuotaPath.

First, Tribe Capital has a reputation for investing in companies that embrace and execute successful product-led growth models. This means the product steers an organization’s go-to-market strategy, and it’s been our approach since our 2018 inception. 

Tribe also packs a ton of sales experience, especially Sri Pangulur, who has served in executive sales roles at companies like Cloudflare, Datacoral, and Trace Data, and who will join our board. Additionally, Tribe has a machine learning-focused fund that aligns with where we aim to take sales compensation management next.

It’s incredibly validating and exciting to have Tribe’s backing. 

We have their confidence as the winners in the market. They trust the makeup and experience of our team and leaders. They believe in our point of view that sales reps should be excited about their comp plans and commissions (and that if they aren’t your team is doing it wrong). 

I don’t know how else to say it other than it feels like we’re an unstoppable machine. 

With this Series B, we will:

• Continue to work with talented individuals and build a culture that embodies mission, vision, learning, and growth, and in an environment where people enjoy working with one another. 

• Develop a platform that thousands of go-to-market experts rely on for commission tracking and when they need help understanding how new roles and teams impact compensation and revenue growth.
  
• Double down on our differentiators that have captured the hearts of teams that previously used spreadsheets or other commission software.

Additional details of the funding are below, but I leave you with one of my favorite quotes:

“It’s about the Journey. Not the Destination.” We’re excited and thrilled to take this next step in our journey. 

 — AJ Bruno

Inside today’s announcement:

Tribe Capital joins our existing investor group of Insight Partners, ATX Venture Partners, Stage 2 Capital, and Integr8d Capital. 

“Backing QuotaPath was an easy decision,” said Sri Pangulur, Partner at Tribe Capital, who will join our board. “As the only major player in the space with a product-led-growth sales motion, we believe QuotaPath can become the dominant commission tracking software for companies of all sizes while growing alongside its customer base.”

The funding comes 9 months following our Series A, in which we’ve since tripled our revenue and doubled our team.

Our goal remains to help reps and revenue leaders be more successful in their roles. When reps trust their comp plans and can visualize the impact of the next deal, we’ve seen that they sell more. (See: OSG, Blackthorn, Sapling.)

We will continue to automate commissions while branching out with new functionalities that support the entire compensation process.

For example, QuotaPath customers can expect to see new CRM, ERP, and payroll integrations. We’ll also drop additional compensation resources that ensure your team has the most impactful variable pay models in place. (Resources like our OTE:Ratio calculator that are free and open for anybody to use). 

Our team of “Navigators” is growing, too. Our engineering and sales teams will see the most growth, yet every department will add roles. If you’re curious, empathetic, and interested in making a big splash in the sales compensation space, we want to hear from you! (To explore our open positions and learn more about our values, check out our careers page.)

Before we return to our usual programming, we’ll leave you with a few points of pride:

Where we stand out:

QuotaPath is the only sales compensation management platform that:

• Gives reps the ability to forecast future attainment
• Runs native CRM integrations for real-time visibility
• Offers free sales comp plan strategy consultations
• Does not require any type of coding or formula building
• Shares transparent pricing
• Charges zero implementation fees
• Onboards teams in days after signing (not months, like our competitors)
• Invites users to get started for free 

Thank you to everyone who has joined us on this journey! To learn how QuotaPath can help your team get sales compensation right, book a time to chat with us. 

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

It takes new employees about 12 months to reach peak performance, per data from Gallup Analytics.

For Tyler Winterstein, a senior accountant, it took less than six months.

That’s according to his teammate, Derek Peterson, who serves as Senior Vice President of Operations at Opendorse.

Derek nominated Tyler, our QuokkaPath April winner, for the huge impact he has made in his short amount of time since joining Opendorse.

“Tyler joined Opendorse roughly six months ago and has been crushing it for our team,” Derek wrote in his QuokkaPath nomination. 

In addition to his finance responsibilities, Tyler led the implementation of QuotaPath for the athlete endorsement and marketing platform. 

“We were not maximizing this tool before Tyler grabbed the baton and started running with it,” Derek said. “It’s like that a lot when it comes to Tyler, and I’m very appreciative of him.”

Thanks to Tyler, Opendorse’s revenue and finance teams get to fully enjoy an automated sales compensation process a la QuotaPath.

“It is amazing to be receiving this recognition. But, I couldn’t have done it without the help of the QuotaPath team,” said Tyler.

More specifically, Tyler recognized our Director of Account Management James Millard. “Whenever I had a question or issue, he would help me right away. This is definitely the biggest reason why I was able to reach my goal of implementation.”

Please join us in congratulating April’s Quokka of the Month!

Tyler, here’s to you for taking ownership of an initiative that had an immediate effect on the organization. 

Get to know QuokkaPath’s April Winner:

• Tyler, a student-athlete, attended Nebraska Wesleyan University, where he played baseball as an infielder
  
• He recently became a new homeowner — congrats!
  
• He collects golf balls from the courses he’s played across the country

Sounds like going above and beyond is par for the course for Tyler.

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

As part of our series highlighting leaders who replaced manual commission tracking with QuotaPath’s automated commission tracking, we turn to RoverPass’s Director of Sales Kristen O’Hara. Her story differs from the other two, as she joined RoverPass after they bought QuotaPath. To fully optimize the platform, she reshaped her team’s compensation plans to drive sales performance and better align with QuotaPath.

A good sales compensation plan encourages the right sales behaviors and gets your ideal customers through the door.

When one — or neither — of those things happen, a new comp plan may be in order.

That’s why Kristen O’Hara’s first priority upon her arrival at RoverPass in July 2021 involved redesigning their compensation plan. 

Prior to her joining, RoverPass reps earned commissions based on earned revenue. This approach required heavy manual manipulation and significant work in spreadsheets. It also failed to incentivize positive sales behaviors, Kristen said. 

“We weren’t getting the right fit customers in our door, and it was impacting our ability to onboard,” said Kristen.

Additionally, the company had purchased QuotaPath a month before Kristen signed on. Due to the comp plan design, however, the revenue team hardly made use of it.

Then came Kristen’s comp plan makeover. 

Today, RoverPass, a campground reservation system and online booking marketplace, has five compensation plans. Kristen modeled these plans for four sales development reps (SDR), a market manager that oversees them, two account executives (AE), and a sales manager.

Kristen’s move to change up the comp plans also solidified QuotaPath in RoverPass’s sales tech stack.

“Re-modeling the plans to fit in QuotaPath is the best thing I’ve done,” said Kristen. “I used to spend a day running commissions, now I’m done in an hour through QuotaPath.”

Plus, her reps now have full visibility into their existing and potential earnings and in real-time, thanks to QuotaPath’s integration with their HubSpot CRM.

Life’s been good since automating commissions through QuotaPath. 

To learn more about her QuotaPath experience, we asked Kristen a few more questions. 

Meet Kristen

Kristen O’Hara fell into sales when a friend invited her to run their business development team. At the time, she had been working in operations, branding, and marketing. Yet she made the shift and has continued in sales for five years now. Today she leads a growing sales team at RoverPass as Director of Sales.

As a sales leader, Kristen focuses on hiring the right people and then providing them with the right tools, support, and opportunities for advancement. 

What other changes did you make to your comp plan?

Kristen: We also changed from having territories and just AEs to having AEs, SDRs, a lead-based model, and no territories. The new plan consists of monthly, quarterly, and annual commissions. Using QuotaPath’s integration with HubSpot, the monthly data feeds over from HubSpot and directly into QuotaPath. This allows reps to track where they’re at, know how much they’re going to make at any given time, and forecast what they should shoot for to hit target.

Sounds like your team is scaling. What type of growth are you experiencing?

Kristen: RoverPass is well over 40 employees now, and on the sales side, we continue to grow. We’re hiring fantastic people that exemplify our company values. We’re also moving people up quickly. The SDR role specifically receives training to be an AE within six to 12 months of onboarding through a 4-step process.

How has QuotaPath been the right tool for automated commission tracking?

Kristen: The best value about QuotaPath is it just does its job seamlessly. It’s taken so much weight off of me. It gives the reps the ability to see where they’re tracking very easily when they log in. We don’t even have to train them on it. Reps can jump in and figure it out on their own. It’s so easy to use!

Could you ever go back to running commissions in a spreadsheet?

Kristen: No. As a software company, there’s software to make your life easier. Take advantage of that when you can. I love QuotaPath. My entire experience has been really great, and the account management team is amazing!

Final Thoughts

We know separating from your trusted spreadsheets can be difficult. Re-designing a comp plan can pose an even bigger challenge. Good thing we can help with both. 

To learn more about QuotaPath’s sales incentive automation platform can track and help build sales comp plan strategy sessions, chat with us today. 

To our sales leadership out there, do we have a tool for you! This week, QuotaPath released our latest upgrade to our real-time leaderboards, Team Attainment Leaderboards.

Take that in. Team. Attainment. Leaderboards. 

These new, interactive leaderboards provide leaders with a way to easily visualize and forecast team attainment using conditional color formatting. Now, managers can quickly identify areas of opportunity and be more strategic with their coaching and time as a result. 

With Team Attainment Leaderboards, create up to five leaderboards and goals for a given team.

Got an SDR team that’s measured based on meetings booked? Great, set their leaderboard to populate based on the number of demos scheduled. 

Then, for your teams tracked on contract value or annual recurring revenue, base their leaderboards on currency. 

We also made it possible to create leaderboards from different data sources within QuotaPath, like Plan, Path Shared Quota, or Field.  This means more flexibility to build out visualizations fit for your team. For example, if your SDR team is compensated on demos booked and on closed/won bookings, you can create two leaderboards. One that runs based on meetings set and the other from closed/won bookings.

Visualize attainment

 “Scaling sales organizations want the ability to visualize attainment in a way that allows them to understand success or failure ‘at a glance,’” said Co-Founder and Head of Product Cole Evetts.

Our latest changes deliver that — and more.

When reps can easily see where they stand and where their forecasted deals could take them, these gamified views help motivate reps to push forward. Our latest updates provide the clearest, most intuitive reporting UI for reps to date and are much more than a real-time statement report. 

Plus, the new dashboards support leaders with robust reporting to drive the right behavior and results. It’s data they can actually use and turn insights into immediate action. 

“Sales teams are so excited about the new Team Leaderboard functionality,” said QuotaPath Director Sales Sam Manley. “Our prospects have told us how much value it would add for them to be able to see percentage attainment views across their sales reps in a leaderboard style view.”

This update marks QuotaPath’s latest effort to give reps and sales leadership more ownership and insight into their performance and pipeline. 

“Traditionally, ‘commission tracking tools’ aren’t built for sales but for finance,” Cole said. “By investing in a great experience for reps, we have the ability to actually bring ‘commission tracking’ into the sales enablement category, bridge the gap between company and personal financial goals, and provide sales leadership with another tool to drive behavior and results.”

The details

Now, in Team Leaderboards:

• Create Attainment Leaderboards based on currency (annual recurring revenue) or based on numbers (demos booked)
  
• Set leaderboards from different data sources within QuotaPath
  
• Gauge quota and percentage of quota attainment using Attainment Index View with conditional color formatting
  
• Set multiple leaderboards within a team, each with its own goal
  
• Forecast your team’s pipeline 

Existing customers, sit back and relax. Upon your next login, you’ll notice the new leaderboards. Go in and adjust them according to your team!

“I’m confident that this functionality will be a game-changer for sales leaders, sales reps, RevOps, and executives across the board!” Sam said. 

We’re excited to share our latest effort in arming sales leaders with enablement tools that drive behavior and results. To start motivating your team using our real-time, interactive attainment leaderboard, schedule a time to chat with us.