Show me your comp plan and I'll tell you what your sales team actually does, regardless of what your strategy deck says. Comp is the most powerful behavior lever a revenue leader has, and it's the one most often designed by accident — copied from a previous company, patched year over year, riddled with incentives no one intended. If reps are chasing the wrong deals, discounting too hard, or ignoring renewals, don't start with a motivation speech. Start with the plan, because the plan is what's actually talking.
Comp design is one of the highest-leverage pieces of any revenue architecture. Get it right and behavior follows for free. Get it wrong and no amount of coaching fixes it.
Rule one: pay for the behavior you actually want
This sounds obvious and is violated constantly. If you want net-new logos but pay the same rate on expansion, reps will farm the easy expansions. If you want annual contracts but commission is flat regardless of term, you'll get monthly deals. If you want healthy margins but pay on top-line bookings with no discount penalty, you'll get discounts. Every dollar of commission is a signal — make sure it points where you want reps to run.
Look at what your best reps are doing to maximize their own paycheck. Is that identical to what's best for the company? If there's a gap, the plan is broken — and rational reps will exploit the gap every time, because you told them to.
Get the pay mix right for your motion
The base-to-variable split should match how much control a rep has over the outcome. The classic AE benchmark is 50/50 — half of on-target earnings guaranteed, half at risk on quota. Adjust from there:
- Transactional, high-volume sales: lean variable-heavy (60/40) — reps control outcomes and velocity rewards hustle.
- Complex enterprise sales: lean base-heavy (60/40 or 70/30 base) — long cycles and few deals mean more variance a rep can't control.
- SDRs: heavier base with variable on meetings and pipeline created, tied to the quality of the handoff, not just raw activity.
Never cap. Use accelerators instead.
Capping commission is one of the most self-defeating things a company can do. It punishes your best reps at the exact moment they're producing the most, and it tells the whole team that overperformance isn't welcome. The extra commission on an over-quota deal is funded by the extra revenue that deal brought in — it costs you nothing net. Replace caps with accelerators: pay a higher rate above 100% of quota (say, 1.5x the base rate from 100–125%, 2x beyond) so your top performers have a reason to keep pushing in Q4 instead of sandbagging into next year.
Keep it simple enough to sell against
If a rep can't calculate their own commission on a whiteboard, the plan is too complex to motivate. Every extra kicker, multiplier, and SPIF dilutes focus. A plan with one primary measure and one accelerator will out-motivate a plan with six components, because reps can see the line between the deal in front of them and the money in their pocket. Complexity is where good intentions go to die — and where comp efficiency quietly erodes.
Is your comp plan driving the wrong behavior?
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Get your free revenue checkup Meet KorySet it annually, then hold the line
Reps build their year — and sometimes their lives — around the comp plan. Changing it mid-year, even for good reasons, torches trust and momentum. Do the hard work up front: model the plan against last year's deal data, pressure-test it for edge cases and gaming, tie it to realistic quota setting, and get it right before launch. Then communicate it clearly and hold it stable for the year. If you're building or fixing a plan from scratch, our how-tos library has the templates and modeling steps.
Frequently asked questions
For a closing AE, a 50/50 base-to-variable split is the classic benchmark — half the on-target earnings guaranteed, half at risk on quota. Shorter, more transactional cycles push toward 60/40 variable-heavy plans, while long, complex enterprise sales lean to 60/40 or 70/30 base-heavy because a single rep influences fewer, larger deals over a longer time.
No. Capping commissions punishes your best reps exactly when they are producing the most, and it signals that overperformance is not welcome. Instead of caps, use accelerators that pay a higher rate above quota. The extra commission is funded by the extra revenue, so uncapped upside costs you nothing and motivates everything.
Set the plan annually and hold it stable through the year unless something is truly broken. Reps make decisions and even life plans around comp, so mid-year changes destroy trust and momentum. Model the plan carefully before launch, communicate it clearly, and resist the urge to tweak it every quarter.