When you are leading a commercial interiors and workplace solutions company like Circadia and your market demands sales professionals who can navigate complex, multi-stakeholder deals across furniture, AV technology, construction, and design, finding the right tech sales recruiters is not a Google search away. Jim Scheer needed to add sales capacity without disrupting the momentum his team had already built.
Sales Compensation Plans That Drive the Right Behavior
For the leader whose comp plan pays for the wrong things
Most comp plans are downloaded templates or a calculator bolted onto last year's numbers. We design the plan to the behavior your strategy needs, wire it to your data, align it to how each rep is motivated, and run it with the team.
What Is a Sales Compensation Plan
A sales compensation plan is the structured framework that determines how salespeople are paid, combining a base salary with variable pay such as commission and bonuses tied to defined targets, designed to reward the selling behavior a company's strategy needs. A revenueify sales compensation plan is designed to your data: we start with the A.I.M. assessment to find the metrics that matter, build the plan to drive the right behavior, align it to how each rep is motivated using Everything DiSC®, then implement and coach it inside your team on Customer Focused Selling®.
A sales compensation plan is more than a commission rate. It is the contract between what you want the sales team to do and what they get paid to do, and reps will do what the plan pays for. When the plan rewards the wrong thing, you get the wrong behavior no matter what the strategy says. A good plan starts from the metrics that actually move the business and pays for them on purpose.
A complete sales compensation plan defines four things:
- The pay mix and on-target earnings, the split between base salary and variable pay and the total a rep earns at 100 percent of target.
- The quota and on-target logic, what a rep has to do to earn the variable pay and how that ladders up to the number.
- The accelerators and decelerators, the upside above target and the dampening below it that steer behavior toward the goal.
- The rules and timing, draws, clawbacks, ramp pay for new hires, and the cadence the plan is paid and reviewed on.
The difference between a template and a plan that works is whether those four pieces are designed to your data, your strategy, and your people, or copied from someone else's spreadsheet.
When the Plan Pays for the Wrong Things, the Team Delivers the Wrong Things
A sales compensation plan is the loudest instruction your company gives the sales team. If any of these sound like your plan, the plan is the problem.
Your plan pays for activity, not outcomes
The team is busy. The dials are turning, the dashboard is green, and the revenue still misses. Somewhere along the way the plan started rewarding motion instead of results, and now your best people are optimizing for the number that pays them rather than the number that matters to you.
Your best reps are leaving over comp
The rep who carries the team got a call from a competitor with a richer plan, and you found out when the resignation hit your inbox. When the plan caps the upside or buries the top performer in the same curve as everyone else, the people you most need to keep are the easiest to poach.
The plan is a spreadsheet no one trusts
Every pay period turns into a negotiation. Reps cannot calculate their own checks, finance and sales argue over the math, and a plan that should motivate the team instead breeds suspicion. A plan no one understands cannot drive anything.
Comp does not match the strategy
You decided this is the year you push margin, or land the new segment, or sell the recurring offer, and the comp plan never got the memo. The reps keep chasing whatever paid last year, and the strategy stays on the slide deck because the plan never funded it.
New-hire ramp pay is guesswork
You hire someone good, then improvise their first two quarters. Pay them too little and they leave before they ever produce. Pay them too much with no structure and you train them to coast. Without a real ramp, every new hire is a gamble you take with your own payroll.
You do not need another commission calculator. You need a plan designed to your strategy, wired to your data, and built to motivate the people you actually have.
That is what we design, and then we stay to roll it out and run it with the team. Here is how it works.
Get startedThree Ways We Build and Run Your Comp Plan
The comp plan is never a standalone deliverable. It is part of how we manage, or help you manage, the sales team.
The comp-software vendors will sell you a calculator. The listicles will hand you a generic template. Neither one designs the plan to your strategy, neither one knows your people, and neither one is in the room when the plan goes live and a top rep pushes back on it. A plan is only as good as the design behind it and the rollout in front of it.
We design the plan to your A.I.M. data, align it to how your team is motivated with Everything DiSC®, and then we are there to roll it out and run it. How much of the team we run is up to you. Choose the path that fits where you are.
Full Outsourced Sales Management
We lead your sales team and design the comp plan as part of running it. The plan is wired to the A.I.M. data we are already managing the team against, so it pays for the behavior we are coaching every week. Best fit when there is no sales leader in place and you want the plan designed and run for you.
Get startedSales Leadership Management
We work with the managers you already have, design the comp plan with them, and coach them to roll it out and defend it. You keep your leaders; we make sure the plan they own is built on data and communicated in a way the team believes. This is the leadership-tier path, owned through the fractional CRO.
See the leadership pathCustom or Dedicated Comp Design
A focused engagement on the comp plan itself: redesign a plan that pays for the wrong things, build a plan for a new segment or a recurring offer, or fix a broken ramp. A blend of design and hands-on rollout, scoped to the one issue.
Scope a comp projectThe Named System Behind Every Plan We Design
A comp plan is only as good as the system it sits in. Four named pieces work together so the plan pays for the right behavior, on your data, and actually gets run.
Customer Focused Selling®
The methodology your plan should pay for. Customer Focused Selling® is our outcome-based system, built around customer lifetime value rather than one-off wins. A comp plan that rewards discounting and quick closes quietly works against it; a plan designed on CFS® pays for the behavior that builds lasting revenue. We install the method with the team and tie the plan to it, so what gets paid and what gets taught are the same thing.
The A.I.M. operating system
The data engine behind the plan. A.I.M. stands for Analyze, Implement, Move Forward, and every engagement starts with the A.I.M. assessment. It surfaces where your revenue really comes from and which lead and lag metrics drive it, so the plan is built around your numbers instead of assumptions. As the plan runs, the monthly A.I.M. cadence keeps it pointed at the metrics that matter and flags drift while there is still time to adjust.
The 12 Week Year®
The execution cadence that keeps the plan honest. A comp plan set in January and ignored until December is just a hope. On the 12 Week Year® the plan runs in twelve-week sprints with a weekly accountability meeting and a measured execution score, so reps see how this week's behavior maps to their pay and you see whether the plan is working long before the quarter closes.
Everything DiSC®
The behavioral foundation. Different reps are motivated by different things, so the same plan lands differently across the team. Everything DiSC® tells us how each rep is wired, which shapes both how we structure the rewards and how we communicate the plan when it goes live. It is the difference between a plan that motivates the team and one that only motivates the few people who happen to think like the person who wrote it.
Sales Management
The Bowtie Funnel: Solidifying a Sales Management Process
Outcome Based Selling
Monthly A.I.M. Sessions
1 on 1 Sales Coaching
Foundational Sales Skills
Why a revenueify Plan Is Not a Template
The reason our plans drive behavior that a downloaded template never will.
Built for your industry
Comp norms are not universal. Pay mix, quota logic, and what a fair OTE looks like all change by industry and sales cycle. Our associates work inside your vertical, so the plan is benchmarked and structured to how deals actually get done in your market, not to a generic SaaS template.
Designed, not templated
We do not hand you a downloaded spreadsheet with your logo on it. Every plan is built from your A.I.M. data, your strategy, and your team, which is why two revenueify clients in different situations get two different plans. The design is the product.
Founded in behavioral science
A plan is a behavior-change tool, so we build it like one. Everything DiSC® tells us how your reps are motivated and how they need to hear the plan, so the structure and the rollout are designed for the people who have to live inside it.
Built to hand back
We design and install the plan, then build your team's ability to own and run it. The goal is a plan and a cadence that keep working after we step back, documented and handed over, not a dependency you can never leave.
How We Design a Comp Plan to Your Data
Most plans start with a number someone liked and work backward. We start with your data and design forward, on the A.I.M. operating system.
1
Start with the data, not the spreadsheet
Every plan begins with the A.I.M. assessment. We analyze your sales data to see where revenue actually comes from, which deals carry margin, and which behaviors separate the reps who hit from the reps who miss. That is the evidence the plan gets built on, so you are paying for what works rather than copying what a template guessed.
2
Turn the data into the objectives the plan must fund
Using OBJECTIVELens® we translate the assessment into the specific outcomes this plan has to drive this year: protect margin, win the new segment, sell the recurring offer, keep the top performers. The plan is designed to fund the strategy on purpose, not to reward whatever happened to pay last year.
3
Build the plan around lead and lag metrics
Now we design the mechanics: the pay mix and on-target earnings, the quota and on-target logic, the accelerators that reward the right behavior, and the rules that keep it clean. Each lever is anchored to a lead or lag metric from the assessment, so the plan steers the day-to-day behavior that actually produces the number.
4
Align the rewards to how your team is motivated
A plan that motivates one rep can demotivate another. We use Everything DiSC® to make sure the structure speaks to the range of behavioral styles on your team, so the plan pulls the whole team forward and not just the few people wired like the person who wrote it.
5
Run it on a cadence that keeps it honest
A plan is only real if it is executed. We roll it out and run it on the 12 Week Year® with a weekly accountability meeting and a measured execution score, and the monthly A.I.M. cadence checks whether the plan is producing the behavior it was designed for, adjusting before a bad quarter becomes a bad year.
How to Design a Sales Compensation Plan That Works
Before you talk to anyone, it helps to know how the pieces fit together. A sales compensation plan is built from a handful of levers, and the art is in choosing them on purpose. Here is what goes into a plan and how each part shapes behavior.
Start with the structure and the pay mix
Most B2B plans land on a base salary plus variable pay, because base-only stops rewarding effort and commission-only scares off good reps who want stability. The real decision is the pay mix: how much of total pay is guaranteed base versus at-risk variable. A 50/50 split suits a true hunter closing net-new business, while a 70/30 or 80/20 base-heavy mix fits a relationship or account-management role where the rep protects revenue more than they chase it. The number that ties it together is on-target earnings, or OTE: what a rep takes home at 100 percent of quota. Get the pay mix and OTE right and the rest of the plan has a frame to hang on.
Set the quota and the on-target logic
Quota is the line that earns the variable pay, so it has to be both reachable and tied to the real number. If most of the team cannot clear it, the plan stops motivating and starts demoralizing; if everyone clears it easily, you are overpaying for performance you would have gotten anyway. Good quota design ladders the company number down to a rep number that the rep can actually influence, and it pays variable in proportion to attainment rather than as an all-or-nothing switch.
Use accelerators, decelerators, draws, and clawbacks on purpose
Accelerators raise the commission rate above target to reward overachievement, and decelerators lower it below a threshold to discourage coasting. A draw is an advance against future commission that carries a new or ramping rep through a slow start; a recoverable draw is paid back from later commission, a non-recoverable draw is not. Clawbacks let you reclaim commission on a deal that churns or refunds, which protects you on recurring and subscription revenue. Each of these is a lever that steers behavior, and each one can backfire if it is bolted on without a reason. Caps are the classic mistake. Capping commission to control cost tells your best reps to stop selling once they hit the ceiling.
Design ramp comp and role-by-role differences
A new hire cannot hit a full quota in month one, so ramp compensation sets a lower, climbing quota with a draw or guarantee for the first one or two quarters, which buys time to produce without training the rep to coast. And one plan rarely fits every seat. An SDR is paid on meetings and pipeline, an account executive on closed revenue and margin, a manager on team attainment, a farmer on retention and expansion. The plan should reflect what each role actually controls.
Pay the three groups you actually have
Research backs up what good managers feel. In their Harvard Business Review study of sales compensation, Thomas Steenburgh and Michael Ahearne found that a sales force is really three groups, and most plans wrongly treat them the same. Stars respond to uncapped upside and overachievement pay, so capping commissions to save money is the surest way to slow your best people down. Core performers, the largest group, are motivated by tiered targets and well-designed contests that pull them up the curve. Laggards respond to quarterly bonuses that keep them on track. The takeaway is to treat comp not as an expense to rein in but as a portfolio of investments to manage. Steenburgh and Ahearne, Harvard Business Review
Connect the plan to your planning, not just your payroll
A comp plan designed in isolation drifts from the business within a quarter. The plan should fall out of your sales and operations planning, where leadership and finance align the forecast, the resources, and the targets, and then feed those directly into quotas and comp. We wrote more about that rhythm in our guide to smarter sales and operations planning: when the plan is reviewed monthly against real data, quotas and comp stay tied to market realities and individual performance instead of last year's assumptions.
This is exactly where our method earns its keep. The A.I.M. assessment gives us the data to set the metrics, the quota, and the accelerators on evidence instead of habit, and Everything DiSC® tells us how to structure and communicate the plan so it motivates the stars, the core, and the laggards on your specific team. A good plan is designed, aligned, and run. That is the work.
A Plan the Whole Team Believes,
Delivered the Way Each Rep Hears It
Designing a great comp plan is only half the job. How you roll it out and communicate it decides whether the team buys in or digs in, and a brilliant plan delivered badly still fails.
We use Everything DiSC® for both. It shapes how we structure the rewards so the plan motivates across your team, and it shapes how we communicate the plan to each rep so the message lands in the way they actually take it in. Same plan, four conversations.
D
The driven closer
Motivated by winning and control, so the plan needs real stretch upside and uncapped accelerators to keep them in the game. When you roll it out, lead with the headline number and how much they can make, keep it direct, and show them exactly how to win. Cap their commission and you will watch them stop at the ceiling.
i
The relationship builder
Motivated by recognition and visibility, so contests, spiffs, and public wins pull them forward more than a quiet bigger check. Communicate the plan with energy, tell the story of what is possible, and recognize them in front of the team. A plan rolled out as a dry spreadsheet leaves this rep cold.
S
The steady producer
Motivated by stability and fairness, so a reasonable base, an attainable quota, and rules that do not change mid-year keep them confident. Roll the plan out with reassurance, give them time to absorb the change, and emphasize that it is fair and built to last. Spring a volatile new plan on this rep and you risk the quiet resignation.
C
The analytical seller
Motivated by clarity and logic, so transparent formulas, clear thresholds, and documented rules earn their trust. When you communicate the plan, give them the math in writing and the rationale behind it, and let them verify their own pay. Hand-wave the details and this rep will distrust the whole plan.
This is why we are in the room when the plan goes live, not just at the design stage. A plan that motivates the team and a rollout that earns their trust are two different skills, and we bring both.
From a Plan That Pays for the Wrong Things to One That Pays for the Number
Here is what changes once the plan is designed to your data and run with the team, from the cracks you feel today to a plan that earns its keep. Read it top to bottom.
Right now the plan pays for activity, and activity is what you get.
The first thing we change is what the plan rewards. We re-anchor it to the lead and lag metrics the A.I.M. assessment says actually drive revenue, so the dials the team chases are the ones that close margin-rich business. Within a sprint you can see the behavior shift, because reps move toward whatever the plan pays for, and now it pays for outcomes.
Your best reps are one richer offer away from leaving.
We open up the top of the plan instead of capping it, so your stars have real upside to stay for and overachievement pays. The people who carry the team stop feeling punished for winning, and the plan becomes a reason to stay rather than the reason a recruiter's call gets answered.
The plan is a spreadsheet no one trusts, so every pay period is a fight.
We rebuild it as a transparent plan tied to the visible A.I.M. metrics, with rules a rep can read and math a rep can run. The arguments between sales and finance fade because everyone is looking at the same numbers, and a plan people understand is a plan people will chase.
Comp does not match the strategy, so the strategy never gets funded.
We wire the plan to the strategy that comes out of your sales and operations planning, so the segment you want won, the margin you want protected, and the offer you want sold are the things that pay the most. The plan stops working against the plan, and attainment starts to mean progress on the goals you actually set.
And every new hire is a payroll gamble you take in the dark.
We build structured ramp comp with a draw and a climbing quota, so a new rep is carried while they learn and held to a real bar as they grow. Time-to-productivity gets shorter and more predictable, and you stop losing good hires in the first two quarters or training them to coast.
By the time we hand the plan back, comp has gone from the thing that quietly worked against you to the clearest instruction your strategy gives the team.
It is not a promise, it is measured. One client team we managed and built the plan around on this system improved gross margin by 5 percent and finished the year at 102 percent of quota.
What Our Clients Say
Real Results from Real Organizations
When you are leading a business that delivers communication solutions for business clients across Atlantic Canada, and your sales team is selling complex, high-stakes AV systems to hospitals, government agencies, and corporate clients, generic sales training is not enough. Backman Vidcom needed a way to help their salespeople connect more effectively with different buyer types. And when the time came
revenueify helped PCD Inc., a Northern California AV integrator, get clear on strengths, opportunities, and priorities, then turn that clarity into a practical action plan. The outcome was measurable progress toward managed services and stronger design build execution, supported by consistent sales training and coaching that the team could use in real customer conversations. PCD is based in Santa Rosa and
To deliver successful construction projects that improve the built environment, VVA prides itself on acting as an extension of its clients’ organizations. As a national project management and cost management service provider, VVA adds value at every stage of a project and makes sure client spaces are built for success.
SiteOne Landscape Supply serves landscape and maintenance contractors, golf courses, and municipalities across the United States and Canada. As the nation’s largest and only national wholesale distributor of landscape and irrigation supplies, SiteOne offers more than 90,000 products through nearly 600 branches across 45 states and five provinces, supported by approximately 8,000 industry experts.
Designed Here, Run With Your Team
We do not design a plan and hand you a deck. The plan is implemented and coached inside the engagement, and who runs it depends on how much of the management job you want us to carry.
Own the whole number: fractional CRO
When comp is one piece of owning revenue across sales, marketing, and customer success, the plan belongs to a leadership-tier owner. Our fractional CRO sets the comp strategy as part of the whole revenue engine.
See the fractional CRORun the team to the plan: outsourced sales manager
When you want us accountable for running the team day to day against the plan we designed, the outsourced sales manager owns execution on contract and reports the number back to you.
See the outsourced sales managerYour own part-time manager: fractional sales manager
When you want a named, part-time manager who is yours running the plan inside your company a few days a week, the fractional sales manager is the fit.
See the fractional sales managerA Perfect Plan Cannot Pay People You Have Not Hired
Sometimes the comp plan is not the real gap. If the seats are empty or the wrong people are in them, no plan will fix the number. Our sales recruiting finds and screens reps who fit the role and the plan, using the same behavioral science, so the plan you design has the right people to motivate.
Explore sales recruitingOne Assessment. One Named System. One Plan Your Team Believes
Every plan we design runs on the same foundation: the A.I.M. assessment to find the metrics, Customer Focused Selling® as the behavior the plan rewards, the 12 Week Year® to keep it honest, and Everything DiSC® to motivate and communicate it. That is why the plan holds up when a top rep pushes back on it, and why it keeps working after we hand it over.
When You Need the Skills, Not the Whole Outsourced Solution
A comp plan pays for behavior the team has to be able to perform. If the gap is the selling skill itself, you may not need us to run the team at all, just to teach it. Our Customer Focused Selling® training builds the outcome-based skills the plan is meant to reward, on its own or alongside the plan.
Explore Customer Focused Selling® trainingThe Plan Is One Part of Managing the Team
A comp plan works best inside a managed sales function. Explore the rest of our outsourced sales management programs, from the leader who owns the number to the manager who runs the team day to day.
Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Compensation Plans
Stop Paying for the Wrong Behavior
Start With a No-Obligation Assessment
Lets design a sales compensation plan to your data, your strategy, and your people, then roll it out and run it with the team. Start with a conversation about what your plan is paying for today..
