How Do I Stop My Reps From Only Selling the Easy Product?

Why reps quietly collapse onto one product

Reps are rational. Give a team a comp plan or a leaderboard that pays the same commission on every dollar, and they will chase the dollar that is cheapest to earn — the easy product with the shortest cycle, the fewest objections, and the highest close rate. That is not laziness; it is optimization. If the flagship widget closes in two calls at a 40% win rate and the high-margin service contract takes six calls at 18%, an hour spent on the widget produces more commission per hour of effort. Every rep on the floor is running that math whether or not they can articulate it.

The failure is almost never the rep and almost always the scoreboard. When leadership tracks a single headline number — revenue, units, or quota attainment — the team correctly reads that as "this is the only thing that gets rewarded." The leaderboard then fills with one-trick reps who crushed the easy line and ignored everything else, and newer reps copy the pattern because it visibly works. Meanwhile the hard, sticky, high-margin lines that actually protect the business go cold, churn climbs because nobody is selling service plans or retention add-ons, and RevOps ends up staring at a product-mix chart that is 80% one SKU.

The fix has to change what "winning" means. Selling the easy product is fine — it should still get sold — but it can no longer be the whole game. You need a scoreboard that puts the harder lines on the same surface, gives them real weight, and makes the composite the thing everyone competes on. Until the measurement changes, no amount of pep talk or "sell more service!" emails will move behavior, because the incentive underneath is still pointing the other way.

The two levers: rebuild the comp plan or run a weighted scorecard

There are broadly two ways to stop reps from coasting, and mature RevOps teams usually use both, but they solve the problem from different ends.

Lever one — redesign compensation. Here you change the money directly. Instead of a flat commission on all revenue, you attach different rates to different products, add accelerators on the lines you want pushed, cap or de-emphasize the easy product, and pay SPIFFs or bonuses on attach, cross-sell, retention, and the strategic SKUs. The teeth are financial: the easy product alone stops maxing the check, so reps physically cannot earn top-tier pay without touching the harder book. Incentive-compensation platforms and homegrown comp spreadsheets both live here. The strength is that it is the most powerful behavior lever there is — reps respond to comp faster than to any dashboard. The weakness is that comp is slow and dangerous to change: reps read every plan change as a threat, plan overhauls take a quarter, and a botched formula can gut morale or trigger unintended gaming.

Lever two — a weighted multi-KPI scorecard. Here you change the measurement and the coaching, and let the money follow. List every KPI a complete rep should produce — the easy core product, the harder high-margin lines, attach and accessories, service plans, retention, and activity. Give each a weight set with leadership. Score every rep one-to-five on each line. Roll it into one composite. The formula is simply *composite = sum of (weight × level) across all KPIs*. A rep who is a level 5 on the easy product but a level 1 on everything else lands a low composite, and the gap becomes impossible to hide. The scorecard is faster and safer than a comp overhaul — you can re-weight it overnight when a partner shifts terms or a new product launches — and it drives coaching, not just payout. Its weakness is that a scorecard with no consequence is just a report; it only bites when the composite is visibly tied to recognition, promotion, or pay.

Most teams get the best result by using the scorecard to define and pressure-test the full-book picture, then wiring the comp plan to the same weighted lines so measurement and money finally agree.

How to decide which lever to pull first

Sequence matters. If you rip open the comp plan before you know which KPIs actually matter and how they should be weighted, you will pay for the wrong behavior and spend the next quarter unwinding it. The safer path is to build the scorecard first, watch what it exposes, and only then move money.

The decision usually turns on three questions: how urgent the mix problem is, how much trust you have to spend on a comp change, and whether your current pay plan is actively rewarding the wrong thing. If the easy product is 70%+ of mix and comp explicitly overpays it, you have a comp problem and need both levers fast. If mix is skewed but comp is roughly neutral, the scorecard plus coaching alone often fixes it, because reps were coasting on habit rather than on a rigged payout.

Whichever branch you land on, publish the matrix so every rep sees exactly where they stand, and keep the weights yours to control so you can re-aim the team without a plan rewrite. The point of deciding deliberately is to avoid the classic trap: paying more for the hard lines before you have agreed what the hard lines even are.

The numbers behind each option

Put rough figures on it so you can size the effort before committing. These are illustrative planning ranges, not vendor quotes — your real numbers depend on your book.

The scorecard. A workable matrix is usually eight or nine KPI lines. A common weighting for a team fighting easy-product drift might cap the easy core product at 15–20% of the composite, push high-margin and strategic lines to 30–40% combined, put attach and cross-sell at 15–20%, retention at 10–15%, and activity at 10%. The exact split is yours; the discipline is that the easy product can never dominate the weight. Scoring is one-to-five per line, reviewed monthly or once per sales cycle. Build cost is essentially your time — a spreadsheet version is free, and PULSE's free Pulse Check Matrix builds and weights it in the browser and rolls every rep into one composite number without spreadsheet upkeep.

Comp redesign. Here you are spending real money and real risk. Typical moves: set a lower commission rate on the easy product and a 1.2×–1.5× accelerator on the strategic lines; run a time-boxed SPIFF (often a few hundred dollars per qualifying deal) on the specific SKU you want moved this quarter; and pay retention or attach as a separate plan component so it cannot be ignored. Incentive-compensation platforms that administer this at scale — the CaptivateIQ / Xactly tier — are custom-priced and generally an enterprise spend, justified once plan complexity and headcount outgrow spreadsheets. Lighter commission-tracking tools that tie attainment across multiple plan components to pay commonly start in the low double digits per user per month, with free tiers available for small teams.

What each buys you. The scorecard buys visibility and coaching signal fast and cheap, and it is safe to iterate. Comp redesign buys the strongest behavior change but costs a quarter of change-management and carries real downside if the formula is wrong. The reason to run the scorecard first is that it de-risks the comp change: you learn which lines actually need teeth before you touch anyone's paycheck, and you avoid overpaying for a KPI that turned out not to matter.

Implementation and sequencing

Rolling this out badly — dropping a new scorecard and a new comp plan on the team in the same week — is how you trigger a revolt. Sequence it so reps see the logic before they feel the consequence.

Start by defining the KPIs and weights with leadership, not in a vacuum, so the matrix reflects real strategy. Then run the scorecard in a visible-but-not-scored trial for one cycle so reps can watch their composite without their pay moving; this surfaces the gaps and lets you calibrate weights before anything is at stake. Coach against the low lines in one-on-ones during the trial — a level-1 on a hard product is a specific, teachable next move, not a vague "sell more." Only after the matrix is trusted do you wire the composite to recognition, promotion criteria, and finally pay. Keep it re-weightable so a market shift or a new product means you change the weights overnight and the team re-aims the next day.

The loop back to coaching is the whole point: this is a living system, not a one-time launch. RevOps owns keeping the matrix current and honest, managers own the weekly coaching against it, and leadership owns the weights. When all three are aligned on one picture, the easy product still gets sold — but the path to a bigger paycheck now runs straight through the harder lines, and reps stop coasting because coasting no longer wins.

Related questions

How do I coach a rep who is technically strong but only sells one product?

Use the composite score to make the imbalance visible, then coach the specific low line, not the person. Role-play the harder pitch, pair them with a rep who is strong on that SKU, and set one concrete level-up target for the next cycle rather than a vague "diversify."

Should I just cap commission on the easy product?

Capping alone often backfires — reps hit the cap and stop selling entirely. Pair any de-emphasis of the easy line with accelerators or SPIFFs on the strategic lines so there is somewhere better to put the effort, not just a wall on the comfortable one.

How many KPIs should the scorecard have?

Usually eight or nine lines for a full team; four or five for a small one. Enough to represent the whole book — core product, high-margin lines, attach, retention, activity — but few enough that reps can hold the picture in their head and act on it.

How fast can I change the weights?

Overnight. That is the advantage of the scorecard over a comp overhaul. When a partner shifts terms or a new product launches, re-weight the matrix and communicate why, and the team re-aims the next day without a plan rewrite.

FAQ

What if my reps resist a weighted scorecard? Resistance is common, especially when reps are used to being paid purely on revenue. Explain that the matrix rewards total contribution, not just easy wins, and show how selling across the full line can raise their overall earnings. Run a visible trial period so they see the composite in action before it affects pay.

How do I choose the right KPIs? Pick lines that reflect every product and key behavior you want driven — typically eight or nine. Include units per product line, average deal size, attach and cross-sell attempts, retention rate, and activity. Involve leadership so the weights map to actual strategy, not just what is easy to measure.

Can I change the weights after launch? Yes. Adjust them as priorities shift — increase a new product's weight overnight and the team adapts the next day. Communicate the change and the reason clearly so reps understand why their targets evolved and do not read it as a moving goalpost.

What if a rep is great at one product but weak on others? The composite reveals the imbalance immediately: a high score on one line cannot rescue a low overall number. That visible gap becomes the incentive. Use one-on-ones to turn it into a specific coaching plan on the weaker lines rather than a general reprimand.

How often should I review the scorecard with reps? Update monthly or per sales cycle, and review individual composites in one-on-ones. Frequent, specific review keeps the matrix a living tool rather than a static document reps forget between quarters, and it catches drift back to the easy product early.

Is this suitable for small sales teams? Absolutely. The weighted scorecard scales down cleanly — simplify to four or five KPI lines for a handful of reps. The core principle, rewarding the full book instead of the easiest line, holds at any size, and a small team can run the whole thing in a free browser tool or a single sheet.

Sources

• https://hbr.org/2012/07/motivating-salespeople-what-really-works
• https://hbr.org/2015/07/how-to-really-motivate-salespeople
• https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights
• https://www.gartner.com/en/sales
• https://www.xactlycorp.com/
• https://www.quotapath.com/
• https://www.salesforce.com/resources/articles/sales-compensation/
• https://www.forrester.com/blogs/category/sales/

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