Sales capacity planning helps businesses estimate the number and roles of sales reps to meet monthly, quarterly, or annual organizational goals.

Accurate and consistent sales capacity planning is essential for consistent revenue growth as market and economic conditions continue fluctuating. Otherwise, you risk falling short of business objective achievement.

There are several key considerations involved in creating a sales capacity model including data accuracy, sales resources, and quota attainment. Effective sales capacity planning requires data-driven decisions for reliable projections. Interestingly, Forrester found that data-driven companies are 58% more likely to beat their revenue goals.

However, these data-driven sales capacity projections are only as accurate as the historical data they’re based on. CRM improves forecast accuracy by as much as 42% according to Salesforce. So, leveraging a CRM helps improve sales capacity planning effectiveness.

The use of sales resources such as sales automation tools is another consideration.

Sales automation improves sales efficiency up to 15 percent and sales productivity by up to 10 percent according to McKinsey. These tools directly impact the number of sales reps your organization will require to achieve sales revenue targets.

Finally, across industries, average quota attainment has remained a challenge.

Data from 2012–2024 shows that only about 51% of sales reps typically hit their quotas, with downturns exacerbating this challenge. In 2023 and 2024, quota attainment saw a further decline due to market disruptions​. This factor also directly affects your sales capacity planning projections.

Ultimately, the goal of sales capacity planning is to determine the ideal number of sales team members to achieve business objectives and avoid under or over-utilized reps.

Below, we’ll lean into sales capacity models and share best practices along the way, so you’re all set for the new year.

What Is Sales Capacity Planning?

First though, let’s define it.

Sales capacity planning is an essential process leveraged by businesses to ensure consistent growth.

The process of creating a sales capacity model involves forecasting the optimal number of sales resources, such as sales reps, tools, skills, and knowledge, needed to meet revenue targets efficiently. It includes setting quotas, assessing hiring needs, and aligning resources with market demand.

Sales capacity planning is especially critical for SaaS companies where revenue is largely based on subscription renewals and consistent growth from customer acquisition. Effective sales capacity planning can increase revenue growth by up to 15% for SaaS companies by optimizing resource allocation, according to a Salesforce study. This highlights the importance of leveraging accurate historical sales data to ensure the creation of an effective sales capacity model.

Benefits of Sales Capacity Planning

Next, let’s outline the benefits of effective sales capacity planning, which offers many advantages in addition to driving business goal achievements.

How To Create A Sales Capacity Plan

Complete the following nine steps to build an effective sales capacity plan.

1. Set Clear Revenue and Growth Targets

Define Sales Goals: Establish specific revenue and growth targets for the quarterly or annual planning period.

Align with Business Objectives: Ensure targets are aligned with the company’s overall business goals, such as expansion, retention, or market share growth.

Example: A SaaS company might set a 20% revenue growth target with goals for both customer acquisition and retention.

2. Analyze Historical Sales Data

Review Past Sales Performance: Analyze historical data on revenue, deal sizes, win rates, and sales cycle length.

Identify Patterns: Look for patterns in sales volume, seasonality, and trends that can inform future capacity needs.

Example: If sales tend to spike in Q3, the company may plan for additional capacity during that period.

3. Forecast Sales Demand

Use Sales Forecasting Models: Apply forecasting methods such as linear regression and pipeline forecasting to project future sales demand.

Adjust for Market Factors: Consider external factors like economic conditions, market trends, or new product launches that could affect demand.

Example: If you are expanding into a new region, increase demand forecasts accordingly to account for potential growth.

4. Calculate Sales Capacity Requirements

Determine Optimal Sales Headcount: Based on sales targets, calculate the number of reps needed to achieve goals, factoring in productivity and quota attainment.

Define Productivity Benchmarks: Set realistic quotas and productivity benchmarks per rep, based on factors like average deal size and win rate.

Example: A company aiming for $10M in revenue with average quotas of $500K per rep would require 20 reps.

5. Account for Attrition and Ramp Time

Estimate Attrition Rates: Consider average turnover rates to determine the additional headcount needed to maintain capacity.

Factor in Ramp Time: Include ramp-up time for new hires to reach full productivity. This is typically 3–6 months in SaaS.

Example: For a 20% annual turnover rate and 6-month ramp-up, the company may need to hire 25% more reps than planned to ensure steady capacity.

6. Align Territory and Quota Allocation

Optimize Territory Assignments: Assign territories or segments to reps based on potential and coverage needs.

Set Fair and Attainable Quotas: Use historical performance data and market potential to set achievable quotas for each rep or team.

Example: For high-growth regions, assign more reps and set higher quotas compared to mature markets.

7. Plan for Seasonal or Cyclical Adjustments

Account for Seasonality: Adjust capacity plans for anticipated seasonal or cyclical variations in demand.

Adjust Resource Allocation: Hire temporary reps or reallocate resources to manage peak periods effectively.

Example: If demand is higher in Q4, allocate extra resources or consider temporary hires to manage the load.

8. Implement Sales Tools and Support Resources

Leverage Sales Technology: Equip reps with CRM, automation, and analytics tools to maximize productivity.

Provide Training and Support: Ensure reps have the necessary training, resources, and support to reach their quotas.

Example: Implement a CRM system for better tracking of sales activities and pipeline management.

9. Monitor and Adjust the Capacity Plan

Track Performance Metrics: Regularly review metrics such as quota attainment, pipeline health, and territory coverage to assess capacity.

Make Data-Driven Adjustments: Adjust the plan as needed based on performance, turnover, and market changes.

Example: If quota attainment is low, consider revising quotas or reallocating resources to underperforming areas.

Metrics To Consider When Sales Capacity Planning

Another detail to keep in mind as you explore capacity models if the data to include.

The following sales data is typically used during the sales capacity planning process. 

Implementing Your Sales Capacity Model

Feeling ready to go? You should be!

As you execute your sales capacity plan, keeping best practices in mind will increase its effectiveness in driving organizational objectives.

Start by aligning the plan with business goals to ensure it supports the company’s overall revenue and growth objectives. Then use historical sales data to help you assign attainable quotas based on average rep productivity, deal sizes, and territory potential.

Plan for ramp-up and attrition to maintain consistent sales capacity and adjust for seasonality and market changes to align headcount with demand. Applying reliable forecasting models to project demand and revenue more accurately will help as you refine your capacity needs. Optimizing territory allocation to maximize market potential and balance workloads across the team is also important to ensure productivity and prevent underutilization.

Incorporate sales support and technology to enhance productivity and meet capacity expectations. Then monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) routinely to evaluate plan effectiveness.

Remember, your plan requires regular reassessment and adjustment based on performance data and changing business conditions.

To learn how QuotaPath can support your sales capacity planning process through attainment reporting and commission reporting, schedule time with a team member.

For those of us with sales backgrounds, what feelings did you experience when your leadership introduced a new sales compensation plan?

Was it distrust? 

Frustration? 

Perhaps the jumpstart you needed to pursue a new job?

All of this is very common, especially when sales teams are blind-sighted by increased quotas, less support, and no explanation behind the logic of the changes. 

According to our report, 97% of revenue leaders face challenges with their compensation plans, primarily due to plan design, communication, and management ​issues. 

Sales reps often struggle with complex comp structures, and many don’t fully understand their earnings until three to six months into the plan​. This lack of clarity and transparency can erode trust and reduce motivation across the team.

However, by following a structured, intentional approach, you can avoid these pitfalls and foster a rollout that improves morale and drives performance. 

As you plan for next year, follow these five best practices to keep your team privy, inspired, and committed during a compensation plan rollout. 

1. Involve Reps Early in the Process

Start by engaging your reps.

One of the most effective ways to secure buy-in from your team is to involve sales reps from the beginning. 

By hosting rep feedback sessions or forming committees during the planning phase, leaders can gain insights into their motivations and identify potential issues before they arise. This collaborative approach will help you surface rep concerns before they snowball into a more significant issue and empowers them to feel a sense of ownership over the plan.

As former HubSpot CRO Mark Roberge noted, overlooking transparent communication and alignment can have severe consequences: he recalls how a company lost “10 amazing salespeople” due to a failed compensation plan rollout. 

Early involvement helps ensure the plan resonates with your reps’ goals and mitigates the risk of disengagement.

2. Communicate Proactively and Clearly

Second, provide clear and consistent communication. This is a must to minimize confusion and build trust. 

From initial announcements to the finer details of how the plan works, be proactive in explaining the mechanics of the new plan and the rationale behind its design. Utilize multiple channels—emails, town halls, Q&A sessions, and interactive discussions—to ensure that every team member understands how the plan benefits both the individual and the company.

Statistics back up the importance of transparency: 75% of sales reps report a lack of trust in their compensation structures​. 

When companies provide clear visibility into how earnings are calculated and projected, reps feel more confident, which can improve their motivation and performance​.

3. Provide Ample Notice and Training

More on that proactive front — it’s super important to let your team know changes are coming, even if you don’t know what those changes are yet. 

You could introduce changes in phases, allowing reps to digest the information and adjust their expectations. Start with a broad overview and then move into specifics, ensuring ample opportunity for questions and clarification. 

Provide training sessions that cover plan mechanics, with practical examples and visual aids, to ease the transition.

As far as the timeline for announcing the launch of the new comp plan, most teams will do this during their Sales Kickoff (SKO), where alignment from the sales, finance, and HR teams sets the stage for successful adoption. This event also gives you the space to show how you’ll support reps with resources (more below), professional development, education, and more. 

4. Offer Clear Tools and Resources

Also, consider equipping your team with the right tools to understand better what they are paid on, how much, and when. 

Resources like FAQs, earnings calculators, and examples illustrating various earning scenarios empower reps to understand how their work translates to compensation. 

You could also enlist the help of a platform like QuotaPath to offer real-time tracking and insights into commission calculations, enabling reps to stay engaged with their sales performance metrics​.

5. Collect Feedback Post-Launch

Lastly, remember that feedback after the rollout is just as important as the feedback leading up to a new plan. 

To ensure ongoing alignment, gather feedback from your reps post-launch to identify any issues and areas for improvement. Regular surveys, one-on-ones, and data analysis on compensation performance—such as quota attainment and motivation levels—can reveal whether adjustments are needed.

Establishing feedback loops helps refine the plan, reinforces transparency, and demonstrates that leadership is committed to creating a fair and motivating compensation structure even as the company goals evolve. 

Communicate. Build trust. Profit. 

A well-executed compensation plan rollout can strengthen trust, boost morale, and drive performance.

 By involving reps early, communicating transparently, providing adequate training, equipping the team with resources, and gathering feedback post-launch, you set the stage for a successful implementation. Tools like QuotaPath offer essential support in managing these components, ensuring your comp plan aligns with broader business objectives and keeps reps motivated to hit their goals.

For those looking to streamline their comp plan rollouts and maintain alignment with growth targets, QuotaPath offers the tools and expertise to guide your process. Schedule time with our team to learn how QuotaPath can support your compensation strategy and create a winning culture for your sales team.

What’s the hottest role in tech… again?

RevOps, of course.

And for good reason. Having a RevOps leader at your organization leads to significant impacts on businesses.

For example, Forrester RevOps Survey revealed that respondents experienced increased revenue growth (41%), customer satisfaction (36%), and profitability (35%) after implementing RevOps in their organizations.

If that’s not the holy trinity of tech metrics, we don’t know what is.

As the department of RevOps evolves, as well as the RevOps leaders, reliable resources help accelerate individual and organizational growth across the industry. So, we curated a list of top RevOps leaders to follow this year.

These 10 leaders are pushing the RevOps movement as strong voices in the many RevOps communities, sharing their learnings, and inviting others to learn with them.

Check out their profiles, then follow them to start learning.

Rosalyn Santa Elena

First up is Rosalyn Santa Elena, one of the most recognized voices in the RevOps community.

As the Founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer at The RevOps Collective and host of the “Revenue Engine” podcast, Rosalyn shares actionable insights and thought leadership around building scalable RevOps functions. Her influence stems from her ability to simplify complex processes for revenue alignment across sales, marketing, and customer success.

Rosalyn’s influence also extends beyond her organization. On a mission to elevate the Ops function and professionals, she provides RevOps-as-a-Strategy to scaling start-ups.

And we’re not the first ones to point out you should follow her. Rosalyn has been recognized as a top Sales and Marketing influencer for five consecutive years since 2020.

Brad Smith

Next on our list is Brad Smith, a well-known advocate for the RevOps movement.

Brad serves as the President, Chief Customer Officer, and Co-Founder of Sonar, a revenue operations tool that helps businesses manage changes in their tech stack.

He is highly active on LinkedIn and shares insights on optimizing tech stacks and scaling revenue teams. Brad’s work focuses on solving common RevOps challenges related to tools and integrations.

Additionally, his influence extends to Wizards of Ops (aka WizOps), a non-profit dedicated Slack community he founded, where operations professionals gather to question and share their expertise.

Taft Love

Taft Love is the Founder of Iceberg RevOps, a consulting company helping businesses optimize their revenue operations functions. He also supports Commercial Strategy and Operations at Dropbox, which acquired DocSend, where he previously served as VP of Sales prior to the acquisition.

He is known for his deep insights into revenue intelligence, sales productivity, and process improvements. Plus, Taft’s leadership has impacted many early-stage companies looking to build efficient RevOps teams, including Rattle, Outset, Scale Venture Partners, and more.

Sarah Jane Hicks

Sarah Hicks is the Chief of Staff at Olympix, a proactive web3 security tool.

In previous roles, Sarah has helped companies streamline sales processes and optimize revenue growth.

Sarah also acts as an instructor at Sales Impact Academy and frequently speaks on RevOps best practices and the importance of a unified revenue function. She brings a data-driven approach to solving RevOps challenges, making her a key influencer in the RevOps space.

Ryan Milligan

Up next, we had to include Pavilion’s Startup CRO of the Year winner, our very own Ryan Milligan.

Ryan is the VP of Revenue Operations at QuotaPath and plays a dual role overseeing both RevOps and the sales team. Under his leadership, the sales team has achieved 100% attainment for four consecutive quarters, a testament to his strategic approach and ability to align RevOps with sales execution.

Ryan’s expertise optimizes revenue processes and ensures that sales strategies are tightly aligned with company goals to drive the right kind of revenue.

His hands-on approach to managing sales and operations empowers teams to hit targets consistently while creating a culture of accountability and transparency. Ryan strongly advocates using data to inform decision-making and streamline processes across go-to-market functions.

Stephen Diorio

Stephen Diorio is the Executive Vice President of Growth Strategy at Green Thread and Managing Director at the Revenue Enablement Institute.

He has played a pivotal role in shaping how organizations think about revenue operations. Stephen’s work focuses on driving commercial transformation through technology, data, and processes, helping align RevOps with long-term business strategies.

Jacki Leahy

To find informative articles and posts on RevOps topics such as strategy, user experience and client services, start following Jacki Leahy.

Jacki is the Head of GTM and Founder at Activate the Magic, a fractional RevOps agency providing expert strategy and execution for scaling start-ups. She also offers month-to-month technical guidance for GTM teams using the Salesforce and HubSpot ecosystems.

You can also check her out on on podcasts, webinars, and events as a key voice in the RevOps community.

Ann Pao

Anne Pao, the founder of Ignite Consulting, is a seasoned revenue leader with over 20 years of experience leading go-to-market strategy, operations, and analytics for high-growth tech and healthcare companies.

Her proven track record includes building go-to-market foundations for companies like Tubular Labs (acquired), Airship (Series F), Heap (Series D), Maven Clinic (Series E), Medallia (IPO), and Gilead Sciences (Fortune 500). Under her guidance, these companies experienced significant revenue growth, scaling from $25 million to over $5 billion.

Anne’s impact extends beyond her role, as she’s a strong advocate for diversity in tech and operations, contributing to thought leadership that emphasizes inclusivity alongside operational excellence through her RevOps community, RevOps Village.

Sarah McConnell

Sarah McConnell is the VP of Demand Generation at Qualified, a fast-growing conversational sales and marketing platform. She has extensive experience in sales operations and has been a strong advocate for integrating marketing and sales strategies into the RevOps framework.

Sarah’s focus on process improvement and data analytics makes her a leader in the RevOps space.

Michael Hanna

Last up is Michael Hanna, the Co-Founder of Hanna Strategy, developing a community of revops leaders through training, coaching, and community. 

He has led Revenue Operations for some of the world’s fastest-growing technology companies, including Shopify, Intuit, and Clio, building RevOps teams from scratch. Michael often speaks about optimizing sales processes, improving lead generation systems, and refining revenue forecasting models. His work focuses on aligning revenue operations with broader business objectives to maximize ROI.

Closing Thoughts

Following these 10 RevOps leaders is sure to expand your RevOps knowledge and influence your day-to-day RevOps practice. We encourage you to take the next 60 seconds to follow them on LinkedIn.

Then, come on back to see how QuotaPath streamlines sales compensation creation and management. Schedule time with a team member to learn more or start your free trial to experience QuotaPath for yourself.

In the words of big-time entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban, “A well-managed pipeline is like a garden. You need to constantly tend to it, weeding out the bad deals and nurturing the good ones.”

— And pipeline reviews are like regular check-ins on your garden’s health. 

These weekly, bi-weekly (or some other cadence) meetings help go-to-market teams identify which areas need immediate attention and which are thriving or have the most potential.

Unfortunately, most reps view these meetings as chores or high-pressured meet-ups where leadership picks apart their pipelines and puts reps on the spot. 

But pipe reviews are far too important to be viewed as a menace.

“Pipeline reviews directly impact the financial forecast, which is crucial for securing resources like headcount. To expand your team and gain the support of the board, you need to demonstrate that your forecasts are reliable and achievable, ensuring continued investment,” said RevOps Leader and fractional Chief Revenue Officer Anne Pao. 

The way to do this is through your pipeline.

And, the way you get your reps onboard is by putting them at the center of it, not to put them on the spot, but instead empower them.

Our CEO AJ Bruno and Anne presented this topic at INBOUND 2024. Below are the main takeaways. 

TIP: RevOps, you run the meeting.

What Good Pipeline Reviews Share In Common

Building on the importance of tending to your sales pipeline like a garden, effective pipeline reviews are crucial for keeping your deals healthy and on track. 

A successful review goes beyond just tracking progress—it provides clarity, fosters collaboration, and ensures the team is aligned for action.

Here are the key elements that all strong pipeline reviews have in common:

Shared Learnings: A well-run pipeline review is a space for continuous learning. It’s an opportunity for team members to share insights from their deals—what’s working, what’s not, and what challenges they’re encountering. These learnings not only help individual reps improve but also enable the entire team to grow by building on shared experiences.

Support and Expertise Offered: These reviews should feel collaborative. When a rep hits a roadblock, it’s not just their problem—it’s a team opportunity to lend expertise. Sales leaders and peers can provide advice, suggest strategies, or even offer direct assistance to help move deals forward. This exchange of support fosters a strong team dynamic and ensures no deal stagnates due to a lack of guidance.

Alignment for Action: A pipeline review isn’t just about tracking progress; it’s about aligning on the next steps. Teams use these meetings to discuss priorities and set clear actions, ensuring everyone is on the same page. Whether following up with a prospect or reworking a deal strategy, these sessions create alignment across the team to drive consistent momentum in the pipeline.

Celebration of Wins: No review is complete without celebrating the victories. Recognizing deals that have closed and milestones achieved keeps morale high. It also reminds the team that their hard work pays off and reinforces the behaviors and strategies that lead to success.

Accountability must exist at all levels, from the rep to the CRO. Everyone, including leadership, should contribute to the forecast and include alignment across marketing, customer success, and even product teams for full funnel visibility. A well-run pipeline review should be engaging and valuable for everyone involved, not just leadership. This fosters ownership and makes it a meeting that people want to attend.

Multi-level Accountability: A good pipeline review creates accountability at all levels. Reps are accountable for their deal progress, managers for coaching and oversight, and leaders for strategic decisions. This multi-level accountability helps everyone drive toward common goals.

Reliable Forecasts: Ultimately, pipeline reviews contribute to building reliable sales forecasts. The team can more accurately predict future revenue by regularly evaluating deal status and progress. This is critical for the company’s broader financial planning and helps secure resources from leadership and stakeholders, such as additional headcount or investments.

What Bad Reviews Share In Common

As important as highlighting what characteristics solid pipeline reviews share, it’s equally important to recognize the common pitfalls that can undermine their success.

Poorly run pipeline reviews can stall progress, drain morale, and result in unreliable forecasts. 

Here are some qualities bad pipeline reviews tend to share:

Top-down; no rep ownership: When pipeline reviews are dominated by leadership without involving reps, the people closest to the deals are left out of critical decision-making. This leads to a lack of accountability and ownership at the rep level, weakening the accuracy of forecasts.

Poor CRM hygiene: A lack of clean, up-to-date data in the CRM can cripple pipeline reviews. When deals are not accurately reflected in the system, it’s impossible to make informed decisions about next steps, resulting in wasted time and missed opportunities.

Weak next steps/future actions: A bad pipeline review often ends without a clear action plan. Without defined next steps, deals stagnate, and progress becomes challenging to track.

Fear-based interrogation vs. collaborative deal strategy: When reviews feel like an interrogation, it creates a culture of fear rather than collaboration. Instead of working together on deal strategies, reps become defensive, and open dialogue breaks down.

No unified customer methodology: Sales and customer success teams struggle to align without a shared language or process for customer stages. This lack of common vernacular leads to miscommunication and inconsistent deal progression.

Sales only (no full GTM): Pipeline reviews focusing solely on sales and excluding other go-to-market teams—such as marketing, customer success, and product—miss the bigger picture. Effective reviews require input from all relevant teams to drive full-funnel success.

Inconsistent cadence: Pipeline reviews that happen sporadically rather than on a consistent schedule lose their value. Regular reviews are essential for maintaining momentum and ensuring deals are progressing.

Low executive support: When leadership doesn’t actively participate in or support the pipeline review process, it signals to the team that it’s not a priority. This lack of engagement leads to a drop in overall effectiveness and commitment.

Limited transparency: Finally, a lack of transparency—regarding deal status, progress, or strategy—erodes trust within the team and results in misaligned priorities.

Who’s Coming to Pipe Reviews: Host by Function

So, how can we avoid those missteps regarding pipeline reviews? Start by dedicating pipeline reviews specific to the GTM function.

“A lot of traditional pipe reviews just involve one team— the new business team,” said AJ. “That’s such a failure of the organization because, at the end of the day, you’re doing that bottom-up forecasting, and you want to see holistically the entire organization. This is a team sport you want to think about with pipe reviews.”

You could follow this format and cadence for pipe reviews:

• Weekly New Business Reviews (Sales Team):
  • Focus: These reviews center on new business opportunities led by the sales team.
  • Action: Reps should come prepared with updates and forecasts already in the system. Weekly reviews are ideal to maintain momentum and focus on the next steps.
  • For teams where sales also handle upsells, you might combine this review with upsell tracking, though it’s typically best to keep them distinct.
    
• Bi-Weekly Renewals and Upsell Reviews (Post-Sales Teams):
  • Focus: This review targets renewals and upsell opportunities managed by the post-sales side of the business.
  • Action: These reviews are critical for identifying customer retention opportunities and cross-sell/upsell initiatives. Customer success teams and account managers should be present, ensuring alignment on long-term customer goals.
    
• Monthly Executive Pipeline Reviews:
  • Focus: Conducted weekly or bi-weekly, depending on your deal cycle, these reviews aggregate the insights from grassroots reps and middle management to create an overarching view for leadership.
  • Action: Executives align on the CRO’s forecast and how it relates to the CFO’s financial forecast. These reviews help assess overall pipeline health and strategy, setting the tone for cross-departmental alignment.
    
• Bi-Weekly Pipeline Generation (Marketing and Cross-Functional Teams):
  • Focus: A pipeline generation review ensures that top-of-funnel efforts effectively contribute to pipeline growth.
  • Action: Marketing, sales, and customer success teams must collaborate here, especially to analyze marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and their conversion into sales opportunities (SALs). Address response times and ensure pipeline targets are met.

Master Forecasting

Mastering forecasting improves pipeline reviews and ensures that your business can hit reliable targets, secure investments, and drive predictable growth.

Methodology Matters: Start by mapping your sales process and lifecycle stages, but remember, stages are not the same as forecasting methodology. Forecast categories—like pipeline, test case, most likely, and commit—should be layered on top at the deal level for more accurate forecasting.

Bottom-Up and Top-Down Forecasting: Effective forecasting includes both bottom-up ownership and top-down analysis. Reps should take ownership of their deals while leadership analyzes trends, conversion rates, and broader financial forecasts to ensure accuracy.

Implement a Reliable CRM: Ensure your CRM is clean and captures key data like win rates, pipeline coverage, and deal progression. This data is critical for financial planning, annual forecasts, and pipeline reviews.

• Tip: Implement QuotaPath so that your reps see their forecasted commissions tied to pipeline.

Accountability at All Levels: Forecasting success hinges on multi-level accountability. Sales leaders should focus on coaching reps while RevOps handles the technical forecasting processes, keeping their roles distinct.

Cadence and Consistency: Pipeline reviews and forecasting meetings should happen consistently to maintain accuracy and momentum. Ensuring regular, predictable meetings fosters better pipeline management and more reliable forecasting.

Customer-Centric Approach: Always consider the buyer’s journey in your forecasting. Understanding their intent and awareness at each stage ensures reps focus on the right opportunities and align with customer needs.

Empower Reps by Tying Commissions to the Pipeline

One of the most powerful ways to engage your sales team and enhance pipeline reviews is by directly connecting their commissions to the deals in the pipeline.

At QuotaPath, for example, every rep uses our system to create a “what if” calculator to visualize and calculate how their deals will impact their paycheck.

By openly discussing commissions and earnings during pipeline meetings, you tap into the natural motivation of your reps. 

When they know exactly how their current and future deals translate into personal earnings, they become more invested in accurately forecasting, pushing deals forward, and staying accountable. This transparency can drive better results across the board.

One innovative way to do this is by leveraging tools like our new native app in Sales Hub, which allows reps to forecast their earnings directly inside HubSpot’s CRM. This integration provides instant visibility into how pipeline movements impact their commissions, all in real time. 

This feature simplifies the process and eliminates common frustrations, especially with split deals where multiple reps share commissions. In traditional setups, tracking individual earnings accurately across shared deals is hard, leading to mistakes and mismatches in attainment reporting. 

By embedding commission tracking directly into your CRM in this first-of-its-kind integration, you empower reps to see exactly where they stand, helping them stay motivated and focused on what matters.

Incorporating this earnings transparency into your pipeline reviews brings a new level of engagement. When reps see that their forecasted deals are directly tied to their commission, it increases their sense of ownership and accountability. 

This leads to more accurate forecasting, higher productivity, and a more motivated

Learn what commission actions you can take directly in HubSpot. 

Parting Thoughts

Effective pipeline reviews and forecasting drive predictable revenue and empower your sales team to succeed. 

By segmenting pipe review by stakeholder function, mastering forecasting, fostering accountability, and tying commissions directly to pipeline performance, you can ensure that your team stays motivated, aligned, and focused on the right deals.

At QuotaPath, we help you improve your pipeline management and commission tracking. 

With features like real-time earnings forecasting directly inside HubSpot’s Sales Hub, we make it easier than ever for your reps to understand their compensation and focus on what matters.

Schedule time with our team to see how we can help you drive better outcomes for your team and your business.

SaaS companies rely on recurring revenue sales compensation models to incentivize sales reps toward long-term customer relationships and revenue stability rather than short-term gains.

By rewarding contract renewals, expansions, and customer retention, these models align sales goals with the company’s growth, making them ideal for subscription-based businesses that depend on sustainable revenue streams.

Research shows that a 5% increase in customer retention can boost profits by 25-95%, highlighting why retention is vital for SaaS growth​.

However, sales compensation plans must carefully align with recurring revenue goals to drive behaviors that support long-term organizational objectives for these strategies to work.

In this guide, we’ll explore recurring revenue models, compensation structures, commission plans, and optimization strategies.

Let’s dive in.

What Is Recurring Revenue and Why It Matters

We’ll start with defining recurring revenue.

Recurring revenue is consistent, predictable revenue streams generated from ongoing customer subscriptions or services. By contrast, traditional one-time sales feature nonrecurring payments that may not happen again. This can make future revenue forecasting and business growth more difficult.

That’s why recurring revenue is critical to consistent long-term business growth.

It’s integral to SaaS subscription model businesses, enabling them to attain higher average customer lifetime value, stable cash flow, greater customer retention and loyalty, and more predictable growth.

Understanding Recurring Revenue Sales Compensation

Now that you understand recurring revenue let’s tie it to sales compensation.

What is recurring revenue sales compensation?

Sales commission plans for recurring revenue are based on ongoing, recurring revenue generated from customer subscriptions or contracts. Sales incentives for subscription sales are typically calculated as a percentage of recurring revenue and focus on long-term customer retention and value.

By contrast, traditional businesses that generate one-time, non-recurring sales prioritize closing individual deals and tie compensation to a single product or service’s total sale price or profit.

Key Components of a Recurring Revenue Sales Compensation Plan

You’ll include the following components when designing a sales compensation plan that promotes recurring revenue.

Common Recurring Revenue Compensation Models

Next, let’s look at some examples of recurring revenue compensation models.

Best Practices for Structuring a Recurring Revenue Sales Compensation Plan

Leverage these tips when building sales compensation for recurring revenue models. 

• Incorporating customer lifetime value (CLTV): CLTV should influence sales compensation decisions. Key considerations include overall customer lifetime value, upsell potential, and cross-sell opportunities. For instance, incentivize renewals, multi-year renewals, upsells and cross-sells within accounts. Then, reward new business opportunities and deals with ICPs as they will most likely renew.
• Aligning compensation with business goals: Ensuring compensation plans motivate the right sales behavior is crucial to achieving business objectives. When aligning sales compensation with customer success, include incentives like bonuses and commissions in the plan. Then leverage upsell, renewal, and customer success metrics to motivate sellers to focus their activities accordingly.
• Flexible compensation plans for scaling companies: As companies grow, compensation plans should adapt to incorporate appropriate incentives based on responsibilities. For instance, early-stage companies often leave renewals with account managers (AMs) or customer success managers (CSMs) allowing AEs to focus on winning new business. However, companies often shift renewal responsibilities to AEs to maintain a direct relationship with customers as they scale.

How QuotaPath Can Help Optimize Recurring Revenue Sales Compensation

For SaaS businesses, managing recurring revenue requires more than a solid compensation plan; it demands tools that enable ongoing tracking, optimization, and alignment with long-term goals.

QuotaPath is a powerful sales compensation platform tailored for businesses dependent on recurring revenue. Designed to support the unique needs of subscription-based models, QuotaPath offers robust tools that allow businesses to track, analyze, and optimize compensation plans that drive renewals, expansions, and customer retention.

With customizable reporting and predictive modeling, QuotaPath enables companies to measure compensation costs, monitor the effectiveness of compensation plans, and adjust strategies to align with recurring revenue goals.

The platform’s real-time earnings forecasting tool also provides sales teams with up-to-date views of their potential commissions, helping them prioritize high-impact deals in their pipeline and motivating them to move opportunities toward renewal or expansion.

Final Tips for Effective Recurring Revenue Sales Compensation

To optimize sales compensation for subscription-based models, include base salary, commissions, retention bonuses and incentives, and upsell and cross-sell compensation. Incentivize these elements through popular compensation models such as flat-rate commissions, tiered commissions, clawbacks, and chargebacks.

Boost recurring revenue sales compensation plan effectiveness by incorporating CLTV, aligning compensation with organizational objectives, and employing a flexible compensation plan as you scale.

Use clear, transparent communication when sharing recurring revenue sales incentive plans to ensure understanding, alignment, and motivation. This serves to increase plan buy-in, adoption, and effectiveness.

Closing Thoughts

Recurring revenue sales compensation is essential for driving desired selling behaviors for long-term growth and retention.

Apply this guide’s best practices and tips to build effective sales compensation for subscription-based models.

Lastly, remember to explore QuotaPath’s solutions for managing and optimizing recurring revenue sales compensation. Schedule time with a team member or start a free trial.

Aligning your compensation plans with broader company goals is not just a best practice but a necessity. 

A recent survey of nearly 500 revenue leaders found that 25% identified “alignment to business goals” as the top area needing improvement in their sales compensation management process​. 

This highlights a critical issue: compensation plans can miss the mark without alignment, driving short-term wins at the cost of long-term success.

That’s why it’s important to create your compensation plans in conjunction with your team’s go-to-market (GTM) strategy as your budgeting for the following year. 

GTM-strategy-aligned compensation plans can directly influence key metrics such as pipeline growth, customer retention, and average contract value, all of which are vital for achieving sustainable revenue growth.

Below are some ways to think about driving your GTM strategy via your compensation plan.

 Start By Identifying Your Most Important Metric

Under no circumstances should your comp plan creation proceed by identifying the biggest driver of your business.

Instead, start with the business objective.

Then, create ways to incentivize all branches of your GTM team to drive them.

A successful GTM strategy is built on clearly defined business objectives, such as increasing average deal size and boosting customer lifetime value. 

However, these objectives are only meaningful if your teams are motivated to achieve them. 

This is where compensation planning plays a role. 

By structuring comp plans directly tied to your GTM goals, you can influence the behaviors that matter most. This ensures that every deal closed, lead generated, and customer retained contributes to your overarching business objectives.

Key GTM Metrics

So, which metrics should you be thinking about?

Below is an overview of the core GTM metrics you should consider when structuring your comp plans:

Demand Generation

• Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs): MQLs represent the leads most likely to convert into sales. Incentivizing demand generation teams or business development reps (BDRs) based on the number of MQLs generated encourages a steady pipeline of high-quality leads for the sales team.
• Pipeline: A healthy sales pipeline is critical to future revenue. Compensation plans can include bonuses or rewards tied to pipeline growth, ensuring that teams focus on building a sustainable flow of opportunities that can be converted into closed deals.
• Average Contract Value (ACV): ACV measures the average revenue per customer contract. Deals with higher ACV tend to bring more value to the business, and by offering higher commission rates or bonuses for deals that exceed a certain threshold, you can encourage your team to pursue larger opportunities​.

Sales

• Qualified Pipeline: Focusing on the qualified pipeline ensures that reps aren’t just filling the funnel with leads but actively engaging prospects more likely to convert. Compensation plans can be structured to reward reps based on the number or value of qualified opportunities they generate.
• Win Rates: Improving win rates—the percentage of deals closed versus deals in the pipeline—directly reflects a sales team’s effectiveness. Tying comp plans to increase win rates motivates reps to focus on closing quality deals and refining their sales approach.
• ACV: Similar to demand generation, incentivizing sales teams based on ACV ensures that reps target larger, more profitable accounts, ultimately contributing to higher revenue growth​.

Account Management

• Gross Revenue Retention (GRR): GRR measures the percentage of revenue retained from existing customers before considering upsells or expansions. Compensation plans that reward account managers for maintaining or increasing GRR encourage them to build long-term relationships and reduce churn.
• Net Revenue Retention (NRR): NRR takes into account upsells, expansions, and cross-sells and reflects the total revenue retained from existing customers. Aligning incentives with NRR helps drive a focus on both retaining customers and expanding their accounts over time.
• Product Adoption: For SaaS businesses, encouraging customer adoption of new products or features can drive long-term value. Account managers can be rewarded based on product adoption milestones, ensuring that customers fully utilize the solutions, leading to higher satisfaction and retention rates​.

Finance

• Lifetime Value (LTV): LTV measures the total value a customer brings over their entire relationship with the company. By linking commissions to LTV growth, sales, and account management teams are encouraged to focus on closing deals and nurturing long-term, high-value relationships​.
• Burn Rate: This metric tracks the rate at which a company spends capital. Keeping the burn rate within acceptable limits is crucial, especially for startups and growth-stage businesses. Compensation plans can include financial performance incentives, helping align all teams with the company’s budgetary goals.
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): CAC measures the cost of acquiring new customers and is a critical factor for growth and profitability. Compensation models that reward reps for keeping acquisition costs low (while still closing quality deals) help drive more efficient sales processes.

Identifying the Key Metric to Improve

Now that you know which metrics to look at, it’s time to identify the metric.

Choose this based on the one most directly tied to your financial plans and strategic goals. You could start by asking: which metric will make or break our revenue plan? 

Example: Increasing Average Contract Value (ACV)

If your goal is to break into the enterprise market, increasing the average contract value (ACV) should be a top priority. This focus will influence how you design compensation plans, from higher commission rates for larger deals to bonuses for enterprise-level customers. 

By focusing on the most critical metric, you can ensure that your compensation plan motivates sales reps and supports the company’s long-term growth goals​.

In the past, many teams have relied on traditional methods to improve metrics like ACV or win rates, such as:

• Attending Enterprise Events
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
• Hiring Specialized Talent

While these approaches have proven effective in driving progress, they often fall short without a well-aligned compensation plan. 

Compensation plans should be structured to support these efforts, ensuring reps are consistently incentivized to pursue and close larger, more complex deals​.

But, it would be best if you first recognized the challenges that hold back your key metric. 

One of the main reasons enterprise deals are harder to close than small-to-medium business (SMB) deals is the complexity and length of the sales cycle. Enterprise sales often involve multiple stakeholders, longer decision-making processes, and more complex contract negotiations. Additionally, enterprise customers typically demand more customized solutions, further adding to the challenge.

It’s often easier for reps to close multiple smaller SMB deals in the same time it takes to close one enterprise deal. However, the payoff from larger deals is usually significantly higher. 

Compensation plans should provide substantial incentives to motivate sales reps to focus on these larger opportunities. For example, offering a higher commission rate or bonuses for deals that exceed a certain value threshold can encourage reps to invest the time and effort required to close enterprise accounts​.

Compensation Levers:

• Account Executives: Higher commission rates for deals over a certain value.
• Business Development Reps (BDRs): Bonuses for demos or opportunities created with large deals.
• Account Managers: Bonuses for expanding accounts over a threshold value.

Understanding your metric’s opportunities and challenges and structuring compensation plans accordingly can drive meaningful improvements in your GTM performance. 

Add Organizational-wide Incentives

Another tip: Don’t stop at your immediate GTM teams. 

Consider adding incentives for every department that could drive change.

If we continue on our example from above, you could look into the following:

• Marketing: Bonuses for generating enterprise pipeline.
• Product & Engineering: Bonuses for delivering enterprise-grade features.
• Customer Experience (CX): Rewards for driving enterprise customer adoption.

Measuring the Success of Your Comp Plan

Once your compensation plans are in place, tracking its success to ensure that it’s driving the desired outcomes.

To measure the effectiveness of your comp plan, focus on up-funnel metrics—the early indicators that show whether your strategy is moving in the right direction. These metrics provide valuable insights long before your end-of-year results are finalized, allowing you to adjust and optimize real-time performance.

Tracking Up-Funnel Metrics

Up-funnel metrics offer an early view into how well your compensation plan influences behavior. By identifying early signals of success, you can course-correct if needed and ensure your team is on track to meet your key GTM objectives. When you tie compensation plans to specific GTM goals, it’s important to track indicators that signal improvements before larger results, like revenue or retention, become apparent.

Key Up-Funnel Metrics for Predicting Success

To evaluate the success of your compensation plan in driving improvements in areas like ACV or customer retention, consider monitoring the following up-funnel metrics:

• % of enterprise customers adopting the product in the first 90 days: This metric indicates how quickly new enterprise customers are seeing value from your product, which strongly predicts long-term retention and revenue expansion.
• Average selling price (ASP) of new customers: Tracking the ASP of new deals can help you assess whether your comp plan motivates reps to close larger, more profitable deals, directly impacting ACV.
• % of pipeline from enterprise customers: By monitoring how much of your pipeline consists of high-value enterprise opportunities, you can gauge whether your sales team is focusing on the right accounts, as incentivized by your comp plan.
• Enterprise product usage rates: High customer usage rates are a leading indicator of future upsells, expansions, and renewals. Tying part of your compensation plan to product adoption can help ensure account managers are driving this key metric​.

Iterating on Your Plan

Lastly, compensation plans should not be static.

Tracking these up-funnel metrics and regularly analyzing their trends can refine your comp plans to better align with company goals and evolving market conditions.

If specific metrics aren’t showing the expected progress, consider adjusting incentives or shifting focus to other key areas. This iterative process helps ensure that your compensation plan remains a powerful tool for driving the right behaviors and delivering on your GTM strategy​.

Key Takeaways for 2025 Planning

As you prepare for 2025, here are the key takeaways for building compensation plans that align with and enhance your GTM strategy:

1. Expand Incentive Programs Across the Company: Compensation plans shouldn’t just be the sales department’s responsibility. Aligning incentives across teams like marketing, customer success, and finance ensures that every part of the organization works toward the same key business goals.
2. Drive the Right Metrics: Focus on the metrics that will have the most significant impact on your GTM strategy. Whether it’s increasing ACV, boosting pipeline growth, or improving customer retention, make sure your comp plan is structured to drive these specific outcomes.
3. Measure Early and Often: Continuously track up-funnel metrics to ensure your compensation plan works as intended. Regular measurement and iteration help keep your team aligned with company objectives and responsive to changing market conditions.

Want more help?

Connect with our team to learn compensation planning best practices and how QuotaPath can help you run and manage sales compensation more efficiently and strategically.  

Compensation planning is the strategic process of designing and implementing a fair, effective, and motivating compensation structure for your sales team. 

It’s a crucial component of any successful sales and go-to-market organization, directly impacting employee morale, performance, and overall business outcomes.

However, many companies struggle with their compensation planning efforts. 

Our recent study revealed that 44% of sales reps aren’t motivated by their compensation plans, and 75% don’t trust they are paid fairly. This indicates the need for a well-thought-out and executed compensation strategy.

Easier said than done, though, right?

These challenges experienced by the reps stem from problems at the management levels.

For instance, only 1% of RevOps leaders are confident that their compensation plans align with key business metrics. If retention is your organization’s most important business driver, your compensation structures (across teams) do not include payouts that foster growing retention. 

Solving the Biggest Sales Compensation Challenges

Over 450 Finance, RevOps, and Sales executive leaders identified the top pain points surrounding sales compensation.

Get Report

What’s more, revenue leaders said maintaining simplicity ranks as their biggest challenge during compensation planning, attributing to another alarming statistic: 60% of reps take 3 to 6 months to understand their comp plan.

So, as you plan for next year, how can you get ahead in your compensation planning to avoid these missteps?

In this blog post, we’ll explore the key steps in compensation planning, including strategies for large and small teams, and discuss the nuances of executive and individual contributor compensation. 

We’ll also provide insights into how compensation planning and administration are typically done and introduce how compensation planning software like QuotaPath can streamline the process.

What Are The Steps Involved In Compensation Planning

Creating an effective sales compensation plan requires careful consideration of various factors, including team size, deal value, selling motion, sales complexity, team member roles, and pricing models. These factors can change over time, making it crucial to tailor your plan to your current situation rather than simply copying a previous one.

The key steps involved in compensation planning include:

1. Define your company objectives: Identify the specific business goals you want to achieve through your compensation plan, such as increasing revenue, shortening sales cycles, or improving customer retention.
2. Review the role for whom the comp plan is for: Consider the responsibilities, skills, and contributions of the role to your company’s objectives.
3. Set your budget: Based on your company’s financial resources and market competitiveness, determine how much you can allocate for compensation.
4. Choose your compensation mix: Decide on the combination of base salary, commissions, bonuses, and other incentives you will offer.
5. Establish payout frequency: Determine the appropriate frequency for paying out compensation, such as monthly, quarterly, or annually.
6. Design your commission structure: Select the commission structure that best aligns with your business goals and motivates your sales team.
7. Define quotas and performance metrics: Set clear and achievable quotas and metrics that are fair, objective, and aligned with your objectives.
8. Implement tracking and reporting systems: Use tools to track performance, calculate payouts, and generate reports to ensure transparency and efficiency.
9. Calculate OTE: Determine the on-target earnings (OTE) for each role to ensure fair compensation.
10. Communicate your plan effectively: Clearly communicate your compensation plan to your sales team to ensure understanding and motivation.

Key considerations when designing a compensation plan:

• Alignment with business goals: Ensure your plan supports your company’s strategic objectives.
• Clarity and fairness: Keep the plan simple, transparent, and equitable.
• Motivation: Consider both monetary and non-monetary incentives to motivate your team.
• Flexibility: Be prepared to adjust your plan as your business evolves.

By following these steps and considering these factors, you can create a compensation plan that attracts, retains, and motivates top talent while driving your company’s success.

Compensation Planning For Large And Small Teams

While the core principles of compensation planning remain consistent across team sizes, some specific strategies and considerations are more suitable for larger or smaller startup sales organizations.

Similarities:

• Alignment with business goals: Both large and small teams need compensation plans that align with their company’s objectives.
• Fairness and equity: Ensuring fair treatment and avoiding favoritism is essential for both team sizes.
• Motivation: Using a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives is necessary to motivate employees in both types of teams.

Differences:

Larger Teams:

• Complexity: Compensation plans for larger teams can be more complex due to factors like multiple sales roles, diverse territories, and varying deal sizes.
• Communication: Effective communication is crucial in larger teams to ensure everyone understands the compensation plan and its implications.
• Technology: Leveraging technology can help streamline compensation processes, improve transparency, and facilitate data-driven decision-making.
• Tiered commission structures: Implementing tiered commission structures can incentivize high achievers and reward top performers.
• Regular adjustments: Larger teams may require more frequent adjustments to their compensation plans to accommodate changes in market conditions, sales goals, and team dynamics.

Smaller Teams:

• Simplicity: Smaller teams can often benefit from simpler compensation plans that are easier to understand and implement.
• Flexibility: Smaller teams may have more flexibility to experiment with different compensation structures and adjust their plans quickly.
• Personal relationships: Building strong relationships between team members and management can foster trust and motivation in smaller teams.
• Direct communication: Open and direct communication can be more effective in smaller teams, allowing for better understanding and feedback.

Executive Compensation Planning

Now that we’ve explored compensation planning for both large and small teams, let’s get into executive compensation.

Executive compensation can be tricky because it is often tied to a percentage shy of 100% of the financial goal, involves equity, and higher, negotiated base pay and benefits (sign-on bonus, relocation stipend.)

Key Tactics and Best Practices:

• Align with company strategy: Ensure executive compensation is aligned with your company’s long-term strategic objective and financial plan. This helps drive focus and accountability.
• Consider performance metrics: Use a mix of financial and non-financial performance metrics to evaluate executive performance and determine compensation.
• Balance short-term and long-term incentives: Incorporate a mix of short-term incentives (e.g., bonuses) and long-term incentives (e.g., stock options) to encourage a focus on both immediate and sustainable results.
• Benchmark against peers: Regularly benchmark executive compensation against similar companies in your industry to ensure competitiveness.
• Transparency and disclosure: Maintain transparency in executive compensation practices and comply with regulatory requirements for disclosure.
• Consider company size and stage: Tailor executive compensation to your company’s size and stage of development. For example, startups may prioritize equity-based compensation, while mature companies may offer a mix of cash and equity.
• Evaluate regularly: Regularly review and evaluate your executive compensation plan to ensure it remains effective and competitive.

Much of that will hold for your individual seller compensation plans, but there a few differences.

Key Differences Between Executive Compensation Plans and Individual Contributor Comp Plans:

• Scope: Executive compensation plans typically cover a more comprehensive range of benefits and incentives than individual contributor plans.
• Complexity: Executive compensation plans are often more complex, involving factors like perquisites, deferred compensation, and performance-based bonuses.
• Alignment with company strategy: Executive compensation is more closely aligned with the company’s overall strategic goals and objectives.
• Regulatory requirements: Executive compensation is subject to stricter regulatory oversight and disclosure requirements.
• Benchmarking: Executive compensation is typically benchmarked against peers in the same industry and at similar levels of seniority.

Following these tactics and best practices, you can design an effective executive compensation plan that attracts and retains top talent, aligns incentives with company goals, and supports your organization’s long-term success.

Individual Contributor Compensation Planning

You’ll follow similar best practices for your reps with a few differences, underlined below. 

1. Alignment with Business Goals:

• Company Objectives: Ensure the plan aligns with your company’s strategic goals and objectives.
• Sales Team Goals: Clearly define the specific goals and metrics that the rep will be responsible for achieving.

2. Role-Specific Considerations:

• Responsibilities: Understand the rep’s specific role, responsibilities, and contributions to the company.
• Skills and Experience: Consider the rep’s skill set, experience level, and growth potential.

3. Compensation Structure:

• Base Salary: Determine a competitive base salary that attracts and retains top talent.
• Variable Pay: Choose appropriate variable pay components, such as commissions, bonuses, or incentives, that align with the rep’s role and performance metrics.
• Commission Structure: Select a commission structure that motivates the rep to achieve their goals, such as single-rate, tiered, or accelerator-based.

4. Quotas and Performance Metrics:

• Attainability: Set realistic and achievable quotas that challenge the rep but are not overly burdensome.
• Relevance: Ensure that performance metrics are relevant to the rep’s role and align with the company’s objectives.
• Fairness: Avoid bias or favoritism in setting quotas and metrics.

5. Communication and Transparency:

• Clarity: Communicate the compensation plan clearly to the rep, ensuring they understand the rules, expectations, and potential earnings.
• Transparency: Maintain transparency in the calculation and payment of commissions and bonuses.
• Feedback: Provide regular feedback on performance and address any questions or concerns.

6. Flexibility and Adaptability:

• Market Changes: Be prepared to adjust the compensation plan as market conditions, company goals, or the rep’s performance change.
• Individual Needs: When designing the plan, consider individual needs and preferences, such as flexible work arrangements or additional benefits.

Consider these factors to create a sales compensation plan that motivates the rep, aligns with company goals, and supports overall business success.

How Compensation Planning and Administration Is Done

Next, we look into the administration and accounting of commission reporting.

Compensation planning and administration are multifaceted processes that involve designing, implementing, and managing your company’s compensation programs. They require collaboration among various departments, including human resources, finance, sales, and legal.

To effectively manage this process while ensuring ASC 606 compliance, follow these steps:

1. Define your company objectives: Clearly outline your company’s strategic goals and how compensation can support them while adhering to ASC 606 principles.
2. Conduct a compensation survey: Gather data on market rates and industry standards to ensure your compensation is competitive and compliant with ASC 606 requirements.
3. Design your compensation structure: Determine the appropriate mix of base salary, variable pay, and benefits for different roles, ensuring that commission payouts align with revenue recognition criteria.
4. Set quotas and performance metrics: Establish clear and measurable goals for employees to achieve, ensuring they are consistent with ASC 606 principles.
5. Implement tracking and reporting systems: Use technology to track employee performance, calculate pay, and generate reports that accurately reflect ASC 606 requirements.
6. Communicate your compensation plan: Clearly explain the plan to employees, ensuring they understand the rules, expectations, and potential earnings while emphasizing the importance of ASC 606 compliance.
7. Monitor and evaluate: Regularly review and evaluate your compensation plan to ensure it remains effective, aligned with your company’s goals, and compliant with ASC 606.
8. Address compliance: Ensure your compensation practices comply with all applicable labor laws and regulations, including ASC 606.

While motivating your employees and driving business results are important, you must remember to be compliant and mitigate bookkeeping risks. 

QuotaPath, Your Compensation Planning Tool

Lastly, one way to immediately improve your sales compensation process is to partner with trusted experts and implement user-friendly technology to support and automate your strategy.

QuotaPath is a powerful tool that can streamline your compensation planning and administration process. 

With QuotaPath, you can:

• Create and manage compensation plans: Easily design and customize compensation plans for different roles and teams in partnership with their team.
• Track performance and calculate payouts: Accurately track employee performance, calculate commissions and bonuses, and generate detailed reports to measure success.
• Ensure compliance: Maintain compliance with ASC 606 and other relevant accounting regulations.
• Improve communication: Enhance transparency and communication between employees, managers, and finance teams.

By leveraging QuotaPath, you can optimize your compensation planning efforts, improve efficiency, and drive better business outcomes.

To learn more, schedule time with our team. 

In recent years, Revenue Operations (RevOps) has emerged as a powerful function driving cross-departmental alignment and optimizing revenue generation.

As businesses increasingly recognize the strategic impact of RevOps, the demand for tools that empower these teams has skyrocketed. The global market for revenue operations platforms is expected to continue its rapid growth, reflecting the need for solutions that integrate data across sales, marketing, and customer success, enhance operational efficiency, and provide valuable insights.

With over 90% of companies prioritizing data-driven decision-making, the availability and diversity of RevOps tools have expanded dramatically, offering more specialized options for data management, automation, and real-time analytics​​.

Selecting the right RevOps tools is crucial for streamlining operations and driving revenue growth, yet the sheer volume of available software can make it overwhelming to know where to start.

To help you navigate this landscape, we’ve curated a list of top RevOps tools for 2024.

From commission automation to data enrichment and predictive analytics, these platforms support your team’s goals for efficiency and transparency, helping you stay competitive in today’s fast-paced market.

Clay

Clay helps go-to-market teams uplevel their data enrichment and automate personalized outreach. You can start with a list of leads, either prospected through Clay or from your own CRM.

“Huge fan of Clay, which allows our GTM and RevOps teams to have the latest enriched data and AI-powered insights on our prospects and customers through their 75+ data providers. This data powers key initiatives that ultimately drive revenue growth for the QuotaPath team.”

~ Brandon Smith, RevOps Manager, QuotaPath

HubSpot

HubSpot is an AI-powered CRM that offers integrations and resources to unite marketing, sales, and customer service. It serves as a single source of truth for managing the entire customer lifecycle.

“The best thing about HubSpot is that the interface and seamless integration with the ecosystem is best. This CRM is easy to navigate, allowing for efficient lead management and tracking. Its automation tools like email sequencing and task reminders save a lot of time by automating repetitive tasks which frees up more time for meaningful sales interactions.”

~ Fazal Mohammed Y. on G2 (source)

QuotaPath

QuotaPath is a sales compensation management tool. The platform offers real-time data syncs and personalized dashboards for greater earnings transparency and understanding across the sales team, boosting quota attainment. It helps gauge sales performance and drive consistent outcomes while automating commissions.

“We’re starting to scale up and we wanted to make sure that we could scale up properly without using Excel sheets.

QuotaPath is a perfect tool, not only for our team to have less of a hassle with commission calculation, but it solves the issue of our sales team waiting a full quarter to see a finalized commission statement after going through multiple levels of emails and slacks going back and forth.

Reps can see how much they’ll earn right after closing a deal.

Then, the cool part that we really hope is going to benefit the sales team is forecasting earnings on any deal, to motivate teams to have more Salesforce cleanliness because if you have a clean pipeline, you can see how much money you will make.”

~ Pete Tenaglia, Director of Finance at Blueconic

PandaDoc

PandaDoc is a document automation platform. This tool helps streamline document management processes allowing businesses to seamlessly create, send, track, and sign digital documents. This streamlines workflows, improves collaboration, and boosts productivity.

“PandaDoc is an awesome e-signature platform that truly stands out! It’s incredibly user-friendly, making it easy for anyone to create, send, and sign documents without any hassle. The interface is intuitive, and the setup process is smooth, which saves a lot of time compared to other tools.

PandaDoc also comes packed with all the necessary features you need—from templates, document tracking, and custom fields to seamless integrations with other apps. It has everything you’d want for managing documents in one place, making it perfect for both small teams and large organizations.

Overall, it’s a well-rounded solution for e-signatures and document management, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an efficient and reliable platform.”

~ Quali V. on G2 (source)

Gong.IO

Gong is a revenue intelligence platform for B2B sales teams. It helps teams improve their performance by analyzing customer interactions. Gong captures interactions, provides insights, and improves efficiency through automatic follow-up reminders and next steps. It also offers AI-powered deal warnings and account insights that help sales teams strengthen pipeline inspections and address deal risks.

“Everyone knows that following up with a personalized email is the right thing to do, but it eats up a tremendous amount of time.

Gong’s AI is mind-blowing. In just three short months, I feel like I know more about what’s going on in my team’s sales cycle than I did in the previous nine months of working with them. Their productivity is incredible.

Being able to nail those key messages at the right time and map that process in a repeatable way has led to giant growth in our pipeline.

Gong helps us be ruthless in our pipeline prioritization. After all, we need an accurate forecast. Otherwise, what’s the point of having one?

Having one platform for every aspect of our sellers’ jobs creates insane efficiency for us. Our revenue growth has been astounding.”

~ Matt McGonegle, Director of Inside Sales, SpotOn (source)

Mozart Data

Mozart is a data management platform for growing businesses. This all-in-one data application makes it easy to centralize, organize, and analyze data without engineering resources to get the most from your data. The platform facilitates data management, automation, visualization, monitoring, cataloging, and data reliability.

“Mozart made it super accessible for somebody who’s slightly technical enough to write SQL and build dashboards, but not somebody who really wants to maintain a full-fledged ETL layer or stand up a data warehouse myself.”

~ Ryan Milligan, VP of RevOps, QuotaPath (Source)

MadKudu

MadKudu is a predictive lead-scoring solution designed to help high-volume B2B SaaS companies accelerate their growth. This platform integrates data from multiple sources to help revenue teams prioritize where to focus their revenue-generating efforts.

“Within one month of onboarding MadKudu, we saw our best month ever in terms of meetings booked and quality of opportunities. I couldn’t be happier with MadKudu.”

~ Brett Rizzo, OutSystems, Director of Sales Development (source)

Looker

Looker is a business intelligence (BI) platform that makes it easier to access, analyze, and act on business data. It facilitates data modeling and includes a user-friendly interface for easy dashboard creation. Looker is part of the Looker product family, owned by Google.

“I recently started using Looker for my data analytics needs, and it has been a game-changer. Its ability to transform complex data into insights is remarkable. The intuitive interface makes it incredibly easy to build and customize reports, while the robust data modeling capabilities ensure that we have a single source of truth.

It is very flexible. Whether you’re a data scientist or a business user, Looker’s user-friendly design helps all skill levels. The integration with various data sources is seamless, and the real-time data exploration feature has significantly improved our decision-making process.”

~ G2 Verified Looker User (source)

Chili Piper

Chili Piper is an all-in-one demand conversion platform that automates lead appointment scheduling to increase inbound conversion rates. This tool allows prospects to book appointments directly through applications including web forms, chat, email, and G2. It enables real-time lead qualification plus lead and meeting routing while updating CRM records instantly.

“Within the first full month of having the Chili Piper integration setup, we saw a 40% increase in our contact requests, which is exactly what I want to see within my role. Having this integration was a game changer!”

~ Mary Nelson, BambooHR (source)

Anaplan

Anaplan is a cloud-based business planning platform that helps businesses plan, analyze, and manage performance. It provides a single source of information, integrates planning across the organization into one platform, scenario modeling, and predictive insights.

 “I work in the programmatic ad tech space which is super complicated, due to the supply chain nuances, and planning for multiple business units in Excel is a nightmare. Forecasting tools like Anaplan enable connected planning and help break information silos. Thereby leading to more predictable scaling.”

~ Atul, Revops Co-Op Member

Tools for 2025

If you’re building out your wish list for 2025, this is a great place to start.

These RevOps tools streamline processes, improve collaboration, and optimize revenue generation.

Whether you want to boost inbound conversations, streamline document management, or boost sales productivity and performance, we’ve got you covered. Check out these top-rated RevOps tools as you seek to improve your operations and achieve your goals.

QuotaPath supports comp plan alignment, management, tracking, and CRM hygiene to drive better business outcomes. To learn more, schedule time with a QuotaPath team member.

Hi there! I’m Graham Collins, Head of Partnerships here at QuotaPath. I’ve spent pretty much my whole career in sales—from leading 40-person sales development teams to heading both Sales and Marketing at QuotaPath—and I can tell you that you need to think about discount strategies as both an art and a science.

Discounting is an integral part of winning deals today especially in software.

But remember that doing so can undermine the value of your product or service.

To do so effectively, you must strike a balance and find innovative ways to “discount” that don’t risk your organization’s revenue (and the value you’ve worked to build with the customer).

In this post, I’ll cover discount strategies so you can close deals without giving away too much or losing control over future revenue opportunities.

Why Discount at All?

First, let’s consider why we offer discounts.

It’s more common than many realize—unless you’re Chili Piper, almost every SaaS business offers strategic, process-driven, or ad hoc discounts. 

This can happen for several reasons (some better than others):

1. Timing Alignment: A client might want to wait on signing, and as reps, we want to hit our targets by EOQ. Discounting can help align timelines.
2. Competitive Pricing: Occasionally, discounts will match a competitive offer, but ideally, this isn’t the main driver.
3. Budget Mismatches: Sometimes, the prospect’s budget falls short. Offering a discount helps bridge that gap without drastically altering the scope of the project.

Discounting as a Tool, Not a Crutch

Still, discounting should be seen as a strategic tool rather than a default move. 

If you start relying on discounts as the primary lever for closing every deal, value and positioning will quickly diminish. 

If your team discounts consistently, it may signal a misalignment between your product’s perceived value and pricing. 

When discounts are routine, customers might start viewing them as an expectation rather than an exception, which can dilute your brand’s value proposition.

This situation offers a crucial opportunity to reassess your pricing model and value positioning. 

For instance, it may be time to refine your messaging to emphasize unique value drivers that set your solution apart. Or, if your product regularly competes in pricing discussions, consider adjusting features at various pricing tiers to more clearly reflect the value delivered at each level.

Ultimately, a well-positioned product should have a price point that feels justified to the buyer, making discounting a helpful but rarely needed tool rather than a requirement. 

Then, when it’s time to offer a discount, you can get strategic about how to do so. 

6 Types of Strategic Discounts

Discounts aren’t one-size-fits-all. 

Here are a few ways to use them that keep long-term value and flexibility intact.

1. Flat Discounts

The flat discount is straightforward and easiest to offer—simply reduce the cost by a set percentage. 

While flat discounts are what customers typically expect, they also pose risks. 

For example, if you reduce the per-user price, it can be challenging to upsell at a higher rate in the future. Customers may also expect that lower price to apply for any new users or add-ons. 

My recommendation? Keep flat discounts as low as possible and ensure your renewal terms clearly state that any additional users will be charged at the original rate.

2. Extended Contract Terms

Offering 3 months free as part of a 15-month contract (for the price of 12) is a great way to keep ARR steady while incentivizing the client to lock in sooner. 

This approach gives the buyer a tangible benefit without impacting the renewal cost. When renewal time comes around, the client pays full price, making it easier to raise prices in the future if needed. Remember to include in the terms that the renewal will return to the standard 12 months.

Alternatively, you can reduce the cost by two or three months but retain the 12-month structure. 

This clearly states that the customer receives a discount now, but future contracts will revert to the standard price.

3. Adding Free Users

If your client’s team is expanding, offering a “pay for 15, get five free” user package can help them onboard additional users while preparing for growth. 

This approach is especially beneficial if the customer is in a growth phase and may add more seats later. While this may limit upsell opportunities during the contract period, it can effectively secure a multi-year commitment or create goodwill with the client.

4. Discounted or Free Implementation

You could also offer discounted implementation fees to reduce the customer’s upfront costs while preserving annual recurring revenue (ARR). 

However, implementation can be costly if you’re not careful, especially if you outsource this work.

If you choose this route, be strategic—consider offering partial discounts or reducing the upfront fee rather than waiving it completely. This way, you maintain margin while helping the customer get started without high initial expenses.

5. Multi-Year Contracts

One of our favorites is the multi-year contract.

Encouraging a client to sign a two- or three-year deal can be a win-win for everyone involved. 

However, since it locks in revenue and provides the client with a fixed rate, you might miss out on potential price increases over time. 

The decision to offer a multi-year discount depends on retention rates. If your churn is high, it might be more valuable to lock in longer terms, even if it means fewer opportunities for price increases.

6. Flexible Billing Terms

Lastly, offer flexible billing terms.

Offering quarterly (even monthly) or delayed billing can be a good alternative to traditional discounting, especially if budget constraints are the issue. With flexible billing, you can accommodate the client’s financial flow without cutting into your ARR.

Give-and-Take Approach

One of the best discount strategies I recommend is adopting a “give and get” mindset when discounting. 

Rather than offering a discount with no strings attached, ask for something in return, such as a case study agreement, logo placement on your site, or favorable contract terms (like no price increase cap). 

When you clarify that discounts come with specific requirements, you create a mutually beneficial relationship rather than simply giving away value.

Navigating Renewal Conversations

Finally, always keep the renewal stage in mind (yes, even if you’re a new biz rep!). 

Whatever discount you offer now will impact future conversations. 

Be upfront with clients about the temporary nature of discounts and how standard pricing will apply at renewal. Building this into the contract terms is essential for setting expectations early and avoiding surprises later.

Drive Value without Compromise

Discounting can be an effective way to close deals, but it should be used strategically. 

The goal is to leverage discount strategies without eroding your product’s perceived value or losing out on upsell potential. 

Remember that discounting is a tool to help you achieve your revenue goals, not a crutch to close every deal. With a thoughtful, strategic approach to discounting, you can close deals that support your long-term business goals and strengthen your client relationships.

As always, if you’re looking to simplify your sales compensation management, QuotaPath can help. We offer tools to track and manage deals, ensuring your reps understand how each contract term impacts their earnings. With better visibility and smarter discounting strategies, you’ll drive sustainable growth and close deals that benefit both you and your clients.

What Is A Sales Performance Report?

A sales performance report is a structured summary of key sales data that measures how well a sales team, individual rep, product, or territory is performing over a specific period of time.

It typically includes metrics like revenue generated, quota attainment, win rates, average deal size, and sales activity. These reports help leaders evaluate team productivity, identify trends or bottlenecks, and make informed decisions about forecasting, resource allocation, and sales strategy.

At its core, a sales performance report turns raw sales data into actionable insights.

Real-time data helps leaders make informed, timely decisions and course corrections. Tools like QuotaPath, which offers real-time reporting features, provide leaders with easy access to the data they need to take appropriate action.

These reports commonly include data such as sales revenue, the number of deals closed, quotas vs. attainment, sales by region, and multi-contributor sales.

Types of Sales Reports

In addition to the many benefits offered, there’s also a variety of sales performance reporting to draw insights from based on what you’re hoping to measure and drive.

Sales Performance Report for Forecasting and Planning

To drive smarter sales strategies and more accurate planning, here are five essential sales performance reports and how each serves a different purpose:

Sales Forecast Report
Predicts future revenue based on deal stage, historical conversion rates, and rep performance. It helps leadership understand whether targets are within reach and if adjustments are needed.

Sales Pipeline Report
Breaks down current opportunities by stage, deal size, and expected close date. It’s a snapshot of what’s in play—ideal for assessing deal health and identifying bottlenecks.

Sales Trend Report
Analyzes performance over time, surfacing patterns like seasonality or month-over-month growth. Use this to inform quota setting and hiring plans based on historical momentum.

Win/Loss Analysis Report
Compares closed-won vs. closed-lost deals, revealing what’s driving success or contributing to drop-off. It’s critical for refining messaging, targeting, and objection handling.

Sales Activity Report
Tracks rep-level actions—calls, emails, meetings—to correlate effort with outcomes. Helps managers identify top performers, coach underperformers, and improve team efficiency.

Key Components of a Sales Performance Report

After choosing which kinds of sales reports best address your needs, it’s time to create your report. What should a written sales summary report look like? Every effective sales analysis report should include the following fundamental components.

• Key Metrics: Depending on the report’s purpose, key metrics typically include measurements such as quota attainment, win/loss ratios, sales velocity, and average deal size.
• Visualization: Tools like graphs, bar charts, and performance dashboards help translate numbers into actionable, at-a-glance insights, making data easier to understand and digest.
• Customizable Filters: Drill down into data to view details for specific periods, teams, reps, territories, products, and deal types, tailoring the report based on the purpose and audience.
• Comparative Data: This is used to compare current performance to past periods, such as year-over-year, quarter-over-quarter, or month-over-month, and identify trends. It is useful for decisions like coaching and compensation planning or optimization.
• Integration Point: Pull in data from multiple sources for up-to-date information that creates a more complete picture. For instance, QuotaPath integrates seamlessly with HubSpot to build reports using CRM and compensation data easily.

Sales Report Example

Here are two sales reports examples using earnings and attainment values, along with descriptions of what they tell about sales performance.

Our Attainment Over Time report highlights which sellers maintain the most consistent performance over a specified period.

For example, in a year-long quota, leaders can track the team’s performance trends across the year, identifying steadiness from month to month.

In the example shown, Marty (indicated by the brown line) consistently reaches 100% of quota, while the rep represented in blue peaks at 250% before dropping to 50% of the target in the following month.

This type of report is ideal for leaders looking to pinpoint seasonal patterns, as it visualizes these trends clearly.

The Earnings vs. Attainment report provides insights into who is generating the most sales and earning the highest commissions, while also revealing any imbalances, such as someone earning significantly more despite lower sales.

On its own, this data might not stand out. But in comparison, you can see that although Ben sells nearly double what Arwen does, Arwen actually earns more in commission.

Why could that be?

This might suggest that Ben frequently sells a product with a lower commission rate, or that Arwen reached her accelerators in Q1 and now benefits from a higher commission rate on each sale for the remainder of the year.

Sales Commission Reports in QuotaPath

See what other sales performance reports and commission analyses QuotaPath offers.

Read Blog

Steps to Build an Effective Sales Performance Report

A well-structured sales performance report helps leadership make faster, more informed decisions. Here’s a step-by-step approach to building one that drives insight and action.

Step 1: Define the Purpose of Your Sales Report

Start by identifying the question your report is answering. Are you forecasting revenue? Coaching reps? Understanding why deals are lost? The goal should guide what data you include—and exclude.

Step 2: Identify Key Sales Metrics to Track

When it’s time to build out your reports, consider leveraging the following sales metrics.

Step 3: Organize and Segment Your Sales Data

Group your data by team, individual rep, time period, deal stage, or region—whatever best aligns with your goals. Segmentation lets you spot patterns, outliers, and performance gaps more easily.

Step 4: Make the Sales Report Visual and Actionable

Use tables, charts, and filters to highlight insights at a glance. Include clear next steps, KPIs, and owner assignments so that your report doesn’t just inform—it drives action.

How QuotaPath Simplifies Sales Reports

QuotaPath takes the complexity out of building and managing sales performance reports. By syncing directly with your CRM and commission data, QuotaPath automatically pulls in the right metrics—like attainment, earnings, and quota progress—so you can skip the spreadsheets and manual updates.

With built-in dashboards, flexible filters, and exportable views, teams can segment performance by role, rep, or time period in just a few clicks. Whether you’re forecasting, reviewing rep productivity, or analyzing plan effectiveness, QuotaPath gives you the clarity and accuracy to act quickly and confidently.

If you’re looking to improve transparency, save time, and align performance tracking with your comp plans, QuotaPath makes it easy. Book a demo today to learn more.

The rise of Product-Led Growth (PLG) has fundamentally transformed how B2B SaaS companies drive revenue.

Companies can nurture product engagement and drive organic growth by allowing users to experience the product firsthand—often through free trials or freemium models. In fact, PLG has been adopted by 58% of B2B SaaS companies as part of their go-to-market strategy​. 

Yet, as effective as PLG can be for scaling, the need for a sales team becomes increasingly critical, especially when converting free users into enterprise-level deals.

While freemium models boast impressive conversion rates—12% at the median, 140% higher than free trials—they are often just the starting point for larger opportunities​. 

That’s why as PLG companies grow, many add a sales-led motion to close bigger deals. 

For instance, nearly 61% of PLG companies launch enterprise sales teams by the time they reach $50 million in annual revenue​. 

This hybrid approach of PLG and Sales-Led Growth (SLG), known as Product-Led Sales (PLS), is becoming essential— which requires strategic alignment and collaboration across your GTM and product teams.

Below, we share 10 best practices for running a combined PLG-SLG motion, offering practical insights to help leaders balance both strategies. By leveraging PLG’s organic growth potential alongside the precision of a sales-led approach, companies can achieve long-term, scalable success.

 10 Best Practices For Running a PLG and Sales-Led Motion

To successfully manage a blended PLG and SL motion, implement best practices that ensure clear data separation, flexible attribution, and cross-team collaboration. 

You can start with these 10 best practices, such as defining separate revenue types and creating distinct pipelines for each motion, to help your teams maximize efficiency and drive growth in both models.

Separate Revenue Streams and Pipelines

Best Practice #1: Define Separate Revenue Types

Track PLG and SLG revenue streams separately. This is a “must” to understand how each model contributes to overall business growth. 

With PLG revenue driven by user-initiated actions such as free-to-paid conversions and SLG revenue driven by traditional sales efforts, maintaining separate streams allows for clearer performance measurement and attribution. 

This separation helps companies identify which motion is more effective in specific market segments and informs resource allocation decisions based on actual revenue impact.

Best Practice #2: Create Distinct Pipelines for Each Motion

Creating distinct sales pipelines for PLG and SLG ensures accurate tracking of deal progress and process management.

For instance, in a PLG pipeline, the focus is on product usage signals, such as trial activations or feature engagement, which trigger actions like sales outreach or automated nudges. 

Meanwhile, an SLG pipeline follows traditional sales stages, from prospecting to closed deals, allowing teams to manage high-touch customer interactions more effectively. 

By holding separate pipelines, you can tailor your strategies to the specific needs of each motion, improving overall operational efficiency and forecasting accuracy.

Building Data Flexibility and Attribution

Best Practice #3: Utilize a Data Warehouse (Optional)

While totally optional, you might want to consider utilizing a data warehouse.

A data warehouse offers flexibility when integrating both PLG and SLG data, enabling companies to combine product usage metrics with traditional sales data in one place. 

This centralized approach helps scale PLG operations by keeping data unified while allowing for more complex analysis, such as tracking product-qualified leads alongside sales-qualified leads. 

Best Practice #4: Establish Clear Attribution and Source Data

Next up, you have to establish clear attribution. 

This is essential for tracking how leads move between PLG and SLG. By mapping different lead sources—whether they originated from product usage or sales outreach—you ensure that each touchpoint is accurately recorded and attributed to the appropriate team. 

Doing so will set your GTM team up to optimize marketing efforts and provide a clearer picture of cross-sell and expansion opportunities, particularly as customers shift between PLG and SLG motions.

Collaborating Across Teams

Best Practice #5: Collaboration Between RevOps, Sales, and Product Teams

Our fifth best practice involves none other than collaboration across RevOps, Sales, and Product teams. This is key.

Sales teams can prioritize high-value PLG leads based on product usage, while RevOps can facilitate smooth transitions between PLG and SLG as customers move from self-service to enterprise sales. 

You should also collaborate with leaders to define clear roles and responsibilities across teams so that no opportunities are lost. 

Best Practice #6: Involve Sales Reps in PLG Feedback

Additionally, remember to source your reps for feedback.

Sales reps are often the first to identify trends and behaviors among PLG leads that may signal readiness for sales engagement. 

Incorporating their feedback into PLG processes allows for more accurate lead scoring, which can help your team prioritize which users receive the proper attention. This feedback loop improves overall conversion rates by fine-tuning how product signals are interpreted and acted upon by the sales team.

Leveraging HubSpot to Manage PLG and SLG Together

Best Practice #7: Using Custom Objects and Deal Types

This wouldn’t be a RevOps-focused article if we didn’t recommend implementing technology to help; this time, we suggest HubSpot.

HubSpot’s custom objects and deal types provide a powerful way to differentiate between PLG and SLG processes.

You can automate actions based on customer behaviors by setting up distinct deal types for product-led and sales-led opportunities. For example, trial users in a PLG motion might trigger sales-assist actions when they reach certain product milestones, ensuring timely outreach from your sales team.

Best Practice #8: Automate Where Possible

If you haven’t realized this yet, automation is generally critical, especially when simultaneously managing PLG and SLG.

You can reduce manual tasks by automating deal creation, lead scoring, and movement based on product usage or engagement signals. A good example of this is found in HubSpot, which can automatically move a deal to “won” or “lost” based on trial outcomes or subscription payments, streamlining your pipeline management.

Starting Simple and Scaling into Complexity

Best Practice #9: Start Simple with Minimal Complexity

Lastly, our final two best practices focus on simplicity and adding complexity as you grow.

When beginning with PLG and SLG motions, simplicity is key. 

Start with a single sales pipeline and gradually layer in more complex automations and deal types as your company grows. 

Focus first on capturing the basic signals of both motions—such as trial conversions and outbound sales—before expanding into more sophisticated tracking and lead management processes.

Best Practice #10: Iterative Improvements

And, of course, iterate.

Based on data and customer behavior, you should refine your PLG and SLG processes. 

Review your performance metrics, conversion rates, and handoff processes regularly to optimize both motions. As your business evolves, make iterative improvements to your systems, automation, and collaboration efforts to keep up with changing customer needs and market conditions.

Seamless Integration for Growth

In conclusion, managing PLG and SLG requires a unified yet distinct approach to ensure that each motion operates effectively while contributing to overall growth. 

By defining separate revenue types, creating distinct pipelines, and fostering collaboration between teams, you can optimize both motions for success. 

Leveraging tools like HubSpot for automation and data tracking further enhances your ability to manage these motions efficiently. 

You can also use QuotaPath to support comp plan creation and automate and manage compensation strategies that drive team behaviors behind your PLG motion and your sellers. (To learn more, schedule time here). 

More than 150,000 customers worldwide depend on Salesforce as their CRM (source).

This number puts Salesforce at the top position in the CRM market, largely due to its comprehensive feature set, robust ecosystem of partners and apps, and commitment to innovation for customers across industries.

Despite this, Salesforce commission capabilities remain a complex problem.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, which is pretty classic Salesforce.

Rather, Salesforce commission calculation is a flexible process that can be customized to meet your organization’s specific needs. 

Read on to learn the ins and outs of Salesforce commission tracking. 

What Is Salesforce Commission Tracking?

We’ll start with what Salesforce commission tracking is.

Salesforce commission tracking refers to the process of monitoring and managing sales commissions using the Salesforce CRM platform. 

This involves keeping a real-time record of sales deals, calculating commissions based on defined criteria (like deal size or percentage), and automating payouts for sales reps.

While Salesforce doesn’t offer this out-of-the-box, admins can create custom workflows to streamline the process.

However, the most efficient and accurate way to do this is by integrating Salesforce with a commission automation tool, like QuotaPath.

By adding QuotaPath’s app directly into Salesforce, admins can leverage Salesforce to build detailed reports that track earnings data, including Total Earnings, Earnings by Compensation Plan, and Earnings by Rep according to their Salesforce commission structure.

This data displays directly in Salesforce, offering real-time visibility into how commissions are calculated and earned. Providing sales reps with direct access to their earnings data not only increases transparency but also boosts motivation as they can clearly see how their performance impacts their compensation. (Visit AppExchange to learn more.)

Key Use Cases:

Simplifying Commission Calculations: Salesforce with commission tracking tools automate the calculation of commissions based on pre-set rules, such as percentage of deal value, specific product sales, or tiered commission structures. This removes the need for manual tracking, reducing the risk of human error.

Automating Processes: With payout eligibility rules set in the commission tracking platform that’s integrated with Salesforce, you can automatically trigger commission payments once a deal is marked as closed. This ensures timely and accurate payments, boosting morale and trust among the sales team.

Reducing Errors: Centralizing commission tracking within the CRM eliminates the need for spreadsheets and manual data entry, leading to fewer mistakes in calculating commissions.

These features ultimately allow businesses to increase the efficiency and accuracy of their commission structures, keeping sales teams and management aligned on performance and goals.

How Does Salesforce Track Commissions?

While Salesforce doesn’t have a built-in commission tracking module, several effective methods for managing commissions within the platform exist.

Here are the primary approaches:

1. Custom Commission Objects:
   
   • Create custom objects to store commission-related data, such as commission amount, commission type, and payment schedule.
   • Use custom formulas to calculate commission amounts based on specific criteria automatically.
     
2. Third-Party Apps:
   
   • Explore the Salesforce AppExchange for specialized commission tracking apps like QuotaPath, Spiff, Performio, and Xactly. These apps often provide advanced features, real-time data, and in-depth reporting.
     
3. In-House Administration:
   
   • Leverage Salesforce’s built-in features and formulas to calculate commissions manually. This approach requires technical expertise and can be time-consuming.

Beyond Calculation:

Salesforce commission tracking can be used for more than just calculations. You can also:

• Create commission schedules: Define payment terms and frequencies.
• Assign commission schedules: Associate specific schedules with individual salespeople or teams.
• View commissions in quotes, policies, and producer records: Track commission information across various Salesforce objects.

By effectively managing commission tracking in Salesforce, you can streamline your sales operations, ensure accurate payments, and gain valuable insights into your sales team’s performance.

EverView cleans up commissions with QuotaPath’s Salesforce Integration

SaaS company achieved record sales in 3 months following QuotaPath implementation. Leaders cite “rep visibility” into earnings and comp plans as key reason why.

Read More

How Does Salesforce Calculate Commissions?

Although Salesforce doesn’t offer a built-in commission calculation module, you can either create custom objects and formulas to calculate commissions manually, or use third-party apps from the AppExchange that specialize in commission tracking.

Steps to Calculate Commissions in Salesforce:

Benefits And Limitations Of Using Salesforce To Calculate And Track Commissions

Overall, Salesforce is a powerful tool for calculating and tracking commissions. 

However, it’s important to weigh the benefits and limitations to determine if it’s the right solution for your organization. If you have a complex commission structure or limited technical resources, you may want to consider a specialized commission tracking app.

Benefits:

• Customization: Salesforce allows you to create custom objects and fields to tailor your commission tracking to your specific needs.
• Integration: Salesforce integrates seamlessly with other sales tools and systems, providing a comprehensive view of your sales data.
• Automation: You can automate commission calculations using workflows and formulas, reducing manual effort and errors.
• Reporting and Analytics: Salesforce offers powerful reporting and analytics tools to help you visualize commission data and identify trends.
• Scalability: Salesforce can handle the needs of businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.

Limitations:

• Complexity: Setting up and maintaining a custom commission tracking system in Salesforce can be complex, especially for organizations with complex commission structures.
• Third-Party App Costs: If you use a third-party app for commission tracking, you may incur additional costs.
• Limited Out-of-the-Box Functionality: Salesforce doesn’t have a built-in commission tracking module, so you’ll need to configure it yourself or use a third-party app.

FAQ

What is Salesforce?

Salesforce is a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage interactions with their customers and clients. It provides a centralized database for storing customer information, tracking sales activities, automating marketing campaigns, and managing customer service interactions. Salesforce has become a popular choice for businesses of all sizes due to its flexibility, scalability, and extensive ecosystem of partner applications.

Founded in 1999, Salesforce launched its initial CRM product in 2000. Since then, the company has experienced rapid growth and adoption with over 150K customers and north of 20% marketshare. 

What tools should you use for commission tracking?

For effective commission tracking, consider these tools:

• QuotaPath: A specialized tool designed for commission tracking and management, offering features like automated calculations, real-time reporting, and integration with popular CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot that put commission data directly in your CRM. Recognized for its ROI, support, and platform adaptability to accommodate changes throughout the year. 
• Xactly: A dedicated commission tracking and sales performance management platform with advanced features specializing in enterprise customers.
• Spiff: Another specialized commission tracking tool,Spiff provides features for automating commission calculations, tracking sales performance, generating reports, and managing sales incentives