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. 

A VP of Sales is a vital part of your management team and is integral to the success of your company. They are responsible for hiring, training, and developing members of your talent pool and making sure they have the skills and team to help your organization achieve its key performance indicators (KPIs). 

With this in mind, it’s essential to hire the right person for the position, and for that, you need to offer the right sales compensation package. 

In this article, we explore some options to offer a prospective VP of Sales that will fit their expectations as well as the needs of your business.

How should a VP of Sales be compensated?

As with any position of such importance, there is no “one size fits all” package for compensating your VP of Sales.

Rather, consider the following factors when building your package:

• Track record — Have they a proven record of achieving targets and retaining the best sales team?
• Years of experience — Will this be the person’s first time as a VP, or will it be their 8th?
• Size of employer — Larger employers have larger sales teams, and typically compensate to reflect that.
• Years of tenure at an employer — A new employee often has lower compensation expectations.
• Employer’s industry  — Niche industries often need to pay more for experienced VPs.
• Industry knowledge and connections — Those who bring a larger network and industry knowledge to your organization may deserve a higher package than someone who does not.
• Method of compensation — Salary, bonuses or stock options? Different combinations suit different companies and candidates, as we shall explore later.
• Location — If this person lives in an area with high living costs, they’ll expect their compensation to match.

VP of Sales compensation structure

As we indicated earlier, there is no one-size-fits-all structure for compensating a VP of Sales, but some basic guidelines apply. 

Usually, a package includes a base salary and some sort of bonus or commission-based element, depending on the stage of the VP’s career and the industry they work in. 

For SaaS (Software as a Service) organizations, the salary and bonus figures depend on the organization’s size, how many sales managers and reps they employ and the geographical area they work in.

3 examples of a VP of Sales compensation package

Choosing the best compensation package for your VP is closely related to the size of your company, its needs, and your growth goals. This may change over time and should also relate to the expectations of the type of candidate you wish to attract.

To help, we sourced three VP of Sales compensation package examples based on commonly adopted compensation structures. 

1. A stretch plan for startups: 50/50:25+

If you’re running a start-up, growth is vital, so you need a package that incentivizes growth. However, you don’t want to offer too much and jeopardize your organization’s profitability. So a good package to offer at this stage can be made up as follows:

• 50% base
• 50% commission
• 25% of all revenue above the total revenue target goes to the leader (accelerator)

To make this work, you need to set your goals early on and ensure they’re realistic. If you pitch your targets too low, you may needlessly lose a chunk of revenue — although your VP will be happy! Too high, and a good VP of Sales will recognize this and become demotivated.

2. Equity package: 70/30: equity

A package with a solid salary base can attract experienced VPs who want a predictable income. And, of course, a commission element keeps them motivated. A good split for that will go like this:

• 70% base
• 30% commission
• Stock or cash bonuses for milestones above target

The stock or cash bonuses also motivate your VP to bring on team members who can contribute strongly to your revenue. This gives them a good connection to your organization and keeps them invested.

3. Year-over-year comparison

This highly-motivating package compares revenue, net profit results, and gross profit. You then calculate bonus payouts to align with the gross profit for each category over the previous year. If your business doesn’t grow, there’s no bonus for your VP of Sales. You can scale this model to suit the needs of your organization and also inspire your VP to build a team well-suited to helping the company grow.

Best practices for building a VP of sales compensation package

When building your compensation package for a VP of Sales, start with a pre-determined and clearly laid-out quota and annual plan. This may involve:

• Setting an annual budget for sales hiring and expenses.
• Modeling the numbers to ensure the gross profit your VP brings in will outweigh the cost of their role.

You should also be aware that the strongest VP of Sales candidates will require a large OTE salary. It’s also a good idea to offer a guaranteed draw (full bonus), as you would with a new sales rep.

Of course, once you have the right VP of Sales compensation package in the first year, the journey isn’t over.

As your company grows, your VP of Sale’s role will grow with it, so it’s best to revisit that package annually to ensure it still meets the needs of both your organization and your valued VP of Sales.

Need help with comp plan design for AEs and SDRs? Our free and ungated resource, Compensation Hub, includes a library of 20 adjustable templates to find the right plan fit for your business. To learn more about QuotaPath’s automated commission tracking and incentive compensation management software, book time with our team today or sign up for a free 14-day trial.

QuotaPath recently published a comprehensive sales comp plans guide. Get a preview below. 

Organizations have to get sales compensation right in 2022. 

A whopping 47 million people voluntarily left their jobs last year in search of better wages, benefits, and working conditions. That’s the highest quit rate to date, as reported by the Labor Department. 

Sales teams definitely felt the hit.

Last year, sales rep tenures, which, let’s be honest, have always been short, dropped even more to just 18 months. For reference, that number was closer to 2.5 years 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, average on-target earnings (OTE) for account executives and sales development reps jumped between 5 and 15 percent year-over-year based on region and experience. We anticipate those numbers to continue to climb in 2022. 

Are the shortened tenures and larger OTEs correlated? We think so. 

Dooly, a platform that helps sales reps maintain pipeline data hygiene, found that, of reps surveyed, 51 percent said they would ditch their team for higher pay.  

To address increasing sales rep attrition rates and OTEs in a hyper-competitive job market, leaders must adjust.

That means designing sales comp plans that: pay well, reward over performance, motivate reps, and are easily understood.

To help with all four, we compiled this extensive sales comp plans guide. 

Learn how to set quotas with competitive OTEs that align with your business goals and attract high performers. Take our recommendations for compensation plan best practices, variable plans, ramp-up methods, and quota frequencies. 

Calculate and track sales commissions more accurately — and in less time. Or, skip everything and head to the resources index for free tools to help your approach to sales compensation management.

Key Takeaways

Before you jump in, we listed some highlights from “Your Guide to Setting, Calculating, and Tracking Sales Compensation” below.

1. OTEs are up.

Account executives with zero to three years of experience see OTEs on average of $100K while SDRs are seeing OTEs between $80K and $90K. (Betts 2022 Compensation Guide)

2. Reps trust compensation plans created by RevOps the most.

However, not every organization has a RevOps function just yet. For companies that generate less than $30MM in ARR, sales leaders design the comp plans 73 percent of the time. (Benchmark Report: How to build compensation plans for your sales team)

3. Multiple-rate commission plans are the best

And even better when you add milestone bonuses. Although these types of plans are more complex to track and calculate, they drive performance and reward overperformance. In our survey, we found that nearly 80 percent of comp plans featured accelerators. (Benchmark Report: How to build compensation plans for your sales team)

4. Design comp plans that you can easily speak to.

Simplicity, consistency, and uncapped commissions are your friend. Make sure you communicate any changes or new plans to your team, explain how the company will support them through these changes, and allow them a space to ask questions.

5. It’s time to automate your sales compensation process when:

you have plans to scale your team, your current process slows you down and is silo’ed, and you and your reps lack visibility into real-time attainment and earnings. Get ahead of the problems by implementing a solution now. 

Enjoy the read!

QuotaPath, which supports scaling sales teams with sales compensation software, also offers free comp planning strategy consultations. 

Chat with one of our teammates to learn more. We look forward to meeting you!

Performance-based pay is one of the strongest ways to motivate your team. But if your salespeople aren’t totally clear on what variable pay means, this tool could lose its power.

To help get the most out of your employees, you need to create a compensation package that inspires action. Step one: Use variable pay to energize your team. Step two: Make sure they know what variable pay actually means and why they should be enthusiastic about it.

What is variable pay?

The term variable pay refers to compensation tied to, and dependent upon, your performance. The more you sell, the more you make. But that can be confusing for people not used to paychecks that fluctuate from week to week.

Variable may include:

• Commission
• Project bonuses (individual and/or group)
• Time-period bonuses (based on time-related goals, like sales per quarter)
• Holiday bonuses
• Profit-sharing initiatives

With all those factors in play, the water can become muddied quickly.

Here’s why it’s important to educate yourself and your employees about variable pay and all it entails.

It’s a major part of how to compensate salespeople

On average, commissions — aka variable pay — make up about 50 percent of each salesperson’s pay. Some jobs may offer a base salary as well as incentive pay. Those two numbers together form the pay mix. In some cases, that base pay may be fairly hefty. This is especially true of experienced salespeople and those in high-demand markets like SaaS. But entry-level salespeople may only get a few hundred dollars a week. To make a livable wage, those employees still need to achieve their goals and make commissions.

Standard commission rate rules emphasize a 50/50 split between base salary commission. That means your sales team could potentially double their income by meeting their quotas. By understanding the relationship between base salary and commission, and when a sliding scale may be appropriate, you empower yourself and your team.

It can increase performance

Variable pay can help you get better results from your team. But it’s a tool. Like any tool, it’s only as effective as the person using it. There is a right way and a wrong way to incentivize salespeople. Experts like to use the example of the carrot versus the stick. If you incentivize using the carrot, you’re encouraging positive performance based on the possibility of a reward. Think of a rabbit running toward a carrot. Win the race, get a snack.

Sales managers who use the stick try to motivate their team using threats. “You’ll be fired.” “You’ll lose your bonus.” That may work in the short term, but the long-term lacks effectiveness. Studies show that negative feedback rarely leads to improvement.

Let variable pay be your carrot. If you choose to use commission-based compensation, it’s important to give employees the opportunity and information they need to succeed. Finally, periodically review employee performance and provide consistent feedback. This is where writing down an employee performance review comes in handy.

• Clearly state expectations and the specific targets each team member needs to hit. This should be an objective, quantifiable goal.
• Let those team members know exactly what they’ll get if they meet those goals. Again, this should be quantifiable. Think “$100 per sign up” instead of “a monthly bonus.”
• Give employees opportunities to sell. For an incentive to work, both the goal and the reward need to be realistic and achievable.

Variable pay isn’t just for salespeople

We’ve talked a lot about how variable pay pertains to salespeople. That’s because incentive-based compensation is so prevalent in sales. But it can also incentivize your executive team, marketing department, and partners. You can create goals based on almost anything, including:

• The entire company’s performance
• Number of sales-qualified leads (SQL)
• Number of partner deals

This type of “gamification” can fuel growth throughout your organization. The same excitement that drives sales can help other departments achieve their goals and raise your company as a whole.

Variable pay is complicated

You’ve probably caught onto this already, but variable pay is rarely cut and dry. Even the simplest plans can be difficult to understand. Say you decide to give your salespeople 10 percent commission on every deal they close. Seems easy enough, right? But here come the hurdles:

• Which deals count?
• When are commissions paid out?
• If multiple salespeople work on a deal, how is the commission split up?
• What happens when a deal goes south, or a customer quits/requests a refund? You need a set way to handle these “clawbacks.”

These scenarios should all be addressed during the compensation plan design period and evaluated over time.

Call it incentive compensation, bonuses, or variable pay — it’s all a way to motivate employees to meet individual and organizational goals. Master how to use variable pay, and you may see an increase in conversions, improved employee morale, and happier clients, too.

Need help tracking your commissions? QuotaPath takes the guesswork out of commission tracking with software that calculates incentive pay quickly and accurately. To see the platform in action, chat with a teammate today.

Meet our first-ever QuokkaPath winner, March’s Quokka of the Month, Robert Candelaria!

Nominated for his recent promotion and following the obliteration of his monthly quota, please join us in celebrating Robert.

Robert works as a sales development representative for our customer Pathwire, a Sinch Company, that offers cloud-based email products such as Mailgun, Mailjet, and Email on Acid.

Within 9 months of joining Pathwire, Robert earned the promotion from market development representative to SDR. Then, in his 10th month, and first as an SDR, Robert steamrolled his monthly target by more than 200 percent. All of which he got to track in real-time using QuotaPath. 😉 

Go off, Robert!

When he’s not handing off smoking hot leads to sales, the SDR comes up with new outreach strategies for the team. 

For instance, to add a level of personalization to their cold email efforts, Robert inputted a variable that pulls the prospect’s company’s name into the subject line. 

He also refined his messaging to create urgency. 

“People do not like to waste money. I crafted my messaging to speak to companies hitting email overages,” said Robert. “Then I followed it with a call-to-action to find a day to discuss their account.”

Additionally, Robert put together tailored email campaigns segmented to hit prospects with pain points specific to their market needs. 

“By utilizing tools that I have access to, I could distinguish the messaging based on what companies were in the market for, which would decide what message was to be sent to who,” Robert said. 

And that, my friends, is how you sprint past quota. 

Congrats again, Robert, and thank you for sharing your story!

Want to nominate a teammate for April’s? Submit your nominations.

What’s QuokkaPath?

QuotaPath launched QuokkaPath in 2022 to celebrate our users!

The name nods to the Australian animal the quokka, which earned internet fame for its adorable smile.

Like a pack of smiling quokkas, we’re happiest when our customers succeed! 

That’s why every month, we ask our customers to nominate someone from their team who has gone above and beyond to support a customer, coworker, or prospect. Then, a Quokka Committee within QuotaPath selects a winner.

Our “Quokkas of the Months” earn permanent spots in our Quokka Hall of Fame. Plus, the winners and those who nominated them receive a quokka-filled swag pack.

How it works

• Customers can nominate someone as many times as they want
• At the end of the month, we pick a winner, then reach out to our main QuotaPath contact at the company to verify the winner.
• At the end of the month, we reach out to both the nominator and the winner and ask for an address and a couple more details.
• Then, we yell it from the rooftops! AKA our social media channels, and highlight our monthly winners in a blog just like this!

So, go ahead and nominate that mentor, that teammate you can always count on, or that leader who just gets you. We want to celebrate them!

Remember, this is just for QuotaPath customers. But guess what? You too can become a customer of our intuitive, easy-to-use, and accurate sales compensation management platform. To learn how QuotaPath tracks commissions and motivates reps to excel, like Robert here, schedule a chat with our team today. 

We promise you’ll be met with a quokka-esque smile!

QuotaPath Senior Account Executive Alex Brennen was about to close the biggest deal in the company’s history.

In revenue size, and in the number of users, the deal would push Alex across her quota target, help the sales team hit its monthly goal, and set a new precedent for future deals.

If you’ve ever been in sales, you know the type of thrill, accolades, and especially nerves, a deal such as Alex’s can generate.

Yet it wasn’t pride, commissions, or potential loss of the deal that crowded Alex’s thoughts. 

Instead, Alex remained steadfast to uncover and deliver on customer needs. And, set up steps to ensure that, should the deal go through, a smooth handoff from sales to our customer teams followed.

At the end of October, Alex rang our closing bell in front of a line of colleagues, who waited to shower her with high fives in celebration of closing the deal. Then, when onboarding took over, to their delight, they found no surprises or false promises from Alex’s sales process.

Alex’s approach to her work with customers and teammates exemplifies what it means to “Lead with empathy,” — one of QuotaPath’s five core values. And it’s why, at the beginning of the year, we recognized Alex as a winner of our new Value Awards.

The Value Awards

Following a freshening up of our core values last year, we introduced the Value Awards in early 2022 at our companywide kickoff. This annual event allows Navigators (what we call one another) to nominate and celebrate their peers who consistently embody our five values. 

“At QuotaPath, it’s everyone’s responsibility to hold each other accountable for living our values,” said Carrie Carroll, QuotaPath’s Workplace & Employee Experience Manager. “Strong values help create and enhance connectivity and trust across the team. That’s why we opened up the nominations to the entire company and made it peer-driven.”

See our newly updated values below. By changing the wording to make them more action-driven, we aim to make it easier for our Navigators to recognize when our values are being upheld. 

What it means to be values-driven

In addition to celebrating our Navigator winners, we embrace a values-driven culture and embed it into everything we do.

When it comes to hiring, for example, we have adopted a value-based hiring approach. This helps our candidates get a clear idea about how our values align with their own. That way, we both make sure we’re a match. Value-based hiring promotes authenticity with candidates. It creates space for people to live out their values at their own guidance. 

When we’re interviewing under this approach, we look into how people execute projects and interact with customers and colleagues. Are they building trust with their teams and colleagues? Are they staying curious and trying new things with their projects? 

“Instead of looking for people who ‘fit’ a certain culture, we want to work with people who live out our values in different ways,” said Angie Nelson, QuotaPath’s Recruiter. 

Value-based hiring also allows for conversations about company culture and teamwork, and encourages new ideas and schools of thought, Angie added.  

Values exemplified with our customers and one another

Additionally, our values drive our relationships with our customers. For instance, in 2022, we launched our QuokkaPath initiative to allow our customers to nominate members of their team who are excellent mentors, teammates, and share in our values. We then select a winner from a pool of nominations and celebrate the winners across our channels. Oh, and we delight them with quokka-inspired swag packs. 

Internally, we fill our Slack channels with cross-collaboration, support for one another, opportunities to connect with people outside of our immediate teams, and post “water cooler” questions to get to know one another. 

At the end of the week, the entire company jumps on a Zoom call to share our wins and offer shoutouts for our fellow Navigators. Last week’s shoutouts, for example, included a stream of praise for our RevOps team, our Director of Customer Success, and our Chief of Staff who hopped into deals, calls, and data to better support our company efforts throughout the week.

These events, whether big or small, foster connections internally and grow our community with our customers. 

To see how we incorporate our values into our product philosophy, schedule a time to chat with us. 

2022 Value Awards Winners

Lastly, please join us in celebrating our winners and honorable mentions from the 2022 QuotaPath Value Awards.

Lead with empathy

Honorable Mention: Darby Dupre (Marketing)

“Darby always encourages people to look out for themselves and is a huge advocate for mental health and self-empowerment in the workplace. On top of that, she’s always looking out for how to best connect with our customers and serve their needs.”

Winner: Alex “Simba” Brennen (Sales)

“With her prospects and teammates, Alex is always willing to put herself in others’ shoes and offer genuine feedback and support.”

Stay curious

Honorable Mention: Andy Keil (Product)

“Andy brings a creative and experimental mindset to product development. He is always willing to try new ideas and approaches. He constantly thinks of ways to optimize the product and improve the experience for customers, and his curiosity is the key to that.”

Winner: Melanie Taube (Marketing)

“Melanie is always willing to experiment and push the boundaries of marketing, brand voice, and design. She will hear something in a meeting, and then come back to the next one with ‘out of curiosity, last night I looked into x, y, and z.’ She is a strong example of someone who regularly explores new skill sets.”

Navigate with data

Honorable Mention: Meg Rodriguez (Customer Success)

“Meg has taken the lead on so many fronts since joining QuotaPath and at every step of the way she is seeking out ways to ground her thinking and decision making into data.”

Winner: James Truty (Engineering)

Why he was nominated: “Raw data is James’s food. It keeps him alive and allows him to perform the tasks he is responsible for. I can’t think of a response he’s ever given that wasn’t backed up by some empiric data.”

Build trust

Honorable Mention: Venu Kunche (Product)

“Part of being a great Product Manager is building trust with those you work closely with. Venu asks team members how to improve the process and takes the suggestions to heart. He works hard to test various approaches and take setbacks with grace.”

Winner: Josh Kamenicky (Customer Success)

“Josh will always be upfront and tell you what’s on his mind. Every single customer that he works with trusts him. His soft skills and ability to relate to everyone he interacts with is rare and should be celebrated.”

Promote inclusivity

Honorable Mention: Sam Manley (Sales)

“Sam is always supportive to the team and helps drive a positive workplace. She makes everyone feel included and ensures no one is left behind.”

Winner: Angie Nelson (Recruiting)

“Angie brings inclusivity to her day-to-day and is focused on ensuring that we are all creating an inclusive environment. This is evident in who we hire and how we interview.”

Navigator of the Year

Winner: Zoe Wolfe (Engineering)

“Zoe pays attention to the person/coworker as much as the task. She puts herself in others’ shoes. Then she takes that perspective with her own and provides insights into how we can make QuotaPath a better place.”

Congratulations to all of our winners!

Interested in learning more about life at QuotaPath? Check out our page here. 

This FP&A Manager saved a week’s worth of work after retiring her sales commission tracking spreadsheet by switching to QuotaPath.

Muck Rack’s Financial Planning and Analysis Manager Katie Cooper stayed loyal to spreadsheets until she had enough. 

“At the end of the day, the result was great. As long as everything was updated and formulas weren’t broken, spreadsheets did the job,” said Katie.  

At the time, she and her team also leveraged HubSpot’s CRM platform to manage their sales cycles.

But as Muck Rack’s revenue team scaled to 20 reps, the financial planning and analysis manager struggled to keep up manually.

At the end of every month, Katie had to build a list of every deal sold, pull data from HubSpot, cross-reference the data twice, and make sure that every payment over $1,000 was correct. This entire process took a week to complete. 

Before switching to QuotaPath, the tricky part for Katie involved maintaining a spreadsheet for every sales rep. She felt she couldn’t provide real-time transparency without oversharing information, so they all had their own versions of a master sheet. Additionally, if a sales rep got promoted and their pay structure changed, then that’s back to square one with formulating a new spreadsheet. And it wouldn’t be a true spreadsheet if a formula didn’t occasionally stop working. Which isn’t hard to fix, but who wants to have to deal with another corrective step? 

Even though Katie formulated a way to make spreadsheets “do-able,” she grew convinced that spreadsheets weren’t the most efficient way to work. 

There had to be a way to automate this, she thought. Then in December 2020, Katie changed her entire sales commissions workflow by implementing QuotaPath. Now, a team of 70-plus relies on QuotaPath for attainment and earning transparency powered by QuotaPath’s HubSpot integration.

Meet Katie

After earning a fine arts degree from The University of Utah and an MFA from The Accademia dell’Arte, Katie began her career as a sales coordinator. Next, she became an inside sales rep for a small local tech company. Then in 2019, Katie started at Muck Rack as the sales operations manager. Last year, the public relations media platform promoted her to a financial planning and analysis manager role.

What Katie enjoys most about her job: “Every conversation I have with people at Muck Rack is so encouraging. The company is full of people who believe in the markets we are serving, our product, and how we are building something to serve public relation professionals and journalists communities.”

Why make the switch from spreadsheets to QuotaPath?

Katie: It made sense to pay for an actual software that has a scalable system and is easy to reference for everyone involved. Now, I can send a link in a Slack post when commissions are approved every month. Furthermore, everyone follows the same instructions on how and where to find information that’s specific to them within QuotaPath. Before, I had to tailor directions for every person.

How has QuotaPath changed your workflow? 

The tool allows me to seamlessly automate everyone’s commissions into one platform so that sales reps, customer success managers, SDRs, and revenue management can view their own commissions in the tool. This makes it easier to troubleshoot when needed. It’s easy to reference and the information is made to be transparent for the entire revenue team.

A major game-changer for me is the ease in which I can onboard a new team member…and with our rapid growth, efficiency and accuracy here is a must. Assigning a plan, quota, and rate in QuotaPath saves me about a half-hour per employee.

You mentioned it took you a week when you had less than 10 reps. Today, your sales team is closer to 70. How long do commissions take now?

January’s commissions took me less than six hours from start to finish. 

Lastly, imagine your spreadsheet’s retirement party. What does it entail?

This is definitely more of a party for myself than my spreadsheet. My commission tracking spreadsheet is no more. I don’t want to see it again. I am kicking it out. Here’s some gasoline. A candle. Then I can sit back in my lawn chair and relax in the glow of a bonfire.

Final Thoughts

Now that Katie is done with commission spreadsheets forever, she doesn’t ever plan to look back. Separating from your trusted spreadsheets can be difficult. However, let us help send your commission tracking spreadsheet into retirement by switching to QuotaPath.

Like the scaling sales organizations we support, we too have grown. 

In fact, last year we grew our feature-set capabilities by 100 percent!

“In 2021, we listened to our users and added a massive amount of new value for our current and future customers,” said QuotaPath Founder and Head of Product Cole Evetts.

These changes occurred in stride with our evolving ideal customer profile.

In 2018, for instance, we launched to address the core issues of the compensation process for small, growing organizations with simplistic properties and requirements. We focused on the reps because there was no solution out there that enabled reps to dynamically track and forecast their commissions.  Now, we’ve expanded our product capabilities so that we can offer more to our existing customers, support larger organizations, and include all compensation stakeholders.

Product additions like new integrations, deeper insight capabilities, and greater in-app cross-collaboration have helped us level up to include teams with increasing compensation complexities. 

Despite these technical upgrades — and many more en route — our product and engineering teams remain fully committed to providing impactful and enjoyable experiences for our end-users. 

Check out the major changes below and how we continue to think about making sales compensation a better space for all.

Maintaining simplicity and managing greater complexities

We understand the importance of being able to connect the tools you use to create simple, automated workflows that you can trust. So we listened to our customers’ requests and invested in integrations.

We launched our most requested feature of 2020 early last year with our native HubSpot integration. This added another data stream for our sales customers that run their sales funnels through HubSpot’s Sales CRM, like Tribe Dynamics.

We also launched an integration with Close and improved upon our real-time data syncs so you’re always in the know with the CRM sync status indicator.

The release of Inbound API opens the doors to almost any CRM that exists to pull in deal data to QuotaPath.

Plus, our new Maxio and Outbound API allows for finance teams to build, automate, and track commissions in QuotaPath and then sync to Expense Recognition by SaaSOptics.

We also released features to support more complex compensation structures. QuotaPath’s cumulative quotas mean we can now support period-to-date attainment against monthly and quarterly cumulative quotas.

Lastly, we introduced global currency options and support over 150 currencies.

Hats off to everyone at QuotaPath who played a role here and our amazing partners!

Increased insight and collaboration

We continue to focus on surfacing meaningful insights and strengthening how teams collaborate for a smoother compensation process.

In 2021, we made it possible to upload additional deal data so that you can create payout schedules according to invoice dates, contract terms, and billing periods. Our Deal table enhancements provide those insights and more for at-a-glance views.

Our HubSpot customers loved this next one. The launch of HubSpot Cards opened up the ability for users to view their earnings from QuotaPath directly in HubSpot.

On the collaboration front, Deal Flagging and Plan Verification recently went live. These two avenues enable leadership, admins, and reps to communicate in-app regarding compensation.

Deal Flagging allows for reps to ask commission questions or raise an issue with earnings and deal details. Meanwhile, Plan Verification offers the ability to distribute compensation plans and track rep acknowledgment rates within QuotaPath.

Building cross-departmental alignment

We made serious advancements to establishing QuotaPath as a single source of truth for sales reps, managers, operations, and finance.

Earnings Approval aligns key stakeholders by reviewing commissions for accuracy before you freeze earnings to close the books.

With Payouts, teams can audit, confirm, and process payouts, without relying on spreadsheets. This magnifies cross-departmental alignment through surfacing clear audit trails of commission data. Reps know exactly what’s on their paycheck and the deals that comprise it. And, being able to represent complex pay schedules saves time and headache.

Additionally, to help our finance and accounting teams with their ASC-606 compliance, we launched Ledger. With Ledger, teams can create expense schedules for their revenue teams’ earnings, including complex variables like daily proration and unique schedules between deals.

More streamlined and efficient onboarding

In collaboration with our customer success team, we improved the speed and efficiency in delivering onboarding to new customers.

First, we significantly improved our sign-up flows by adding accessibility and security to the login process.

Secondly, we learned a lot about how complex comp plans can become and added Rate and Quota Manager to easily customize quotas and variable rates for reps in one plan. This provides flexibility for more scalable plan building.

We introduced Official Teams to include our new Team Manager role in QuotaPath. Now, managers can access their team’s Earning and Attainment Leaderboards to easily track performance.

We also streamlined the setup of Teams so that you can create more teams, more efficiently. 

Keeping your data safe

None of these additions matter if we can’t promise the security of our customers’ data. That’s why we earned our SOC2 Type 1 Certification. We also added two-factor authentication, improved our terms and conditions, and updated our workflows for annual contracts and billing automation. 

Package changes

It’s nice to stop and reflect on how much we’ve grown while getting excited about everything we have on deck.

As part of our evolution to deliver great experiences as you scale, we’ve made adjustments to our pricing. Our free offering is staying put! And, we will maintain our straightforward, transparent pricing with no implementation fees.

For smaller teams, we’ve added the QuotaPath Startup Package.

“The SMB market is underserved in this category and in need of a solution,” Cole said. “For this reason, we’ll maintain a budget-friendly, easy to use, and low barrier to entry option for those organizations .”

Our QuotaPath Scale Package pricing increased by $10, following our product feature-set that surpassed 100 percent growth. This offering includes Ledger, payout scheduling, attainment leaderboards, Plan Verification, Deal Flagging, and more. 

The future is bright

We’re proud of everything that we delivered and accomplished in 2021, and we’ve got even more in store this year. Join us as we continue to support scaling revenue organizations with their sales compensation needs!