Do Commission Caps Help or Hurt Sales Performance?
Commission caps are one of the most hotly debated topics in sales leadership, and the argument has stretched on for years. Finance teams want predictable costs. Sales teams want no ceiling on what they can earn. Both sides have a point – and yet the structure most businesses wind up with tends to leave both […]
When Should You Offer Sales Quota Relief to Reps?
Sales leaders usually balance accountability with fairness, and it’s one of the harder parts of this job to get right. Quota numbers can start to feel unrealistic, and when that happens, you want to protect your top performers, but you also need standards to stay the same for everyone on the team. During the pandemic, […]
How to Phase Out an Old Incentive Program Gracefully
Canceling an incentive program that your employees have been relying on for years is one of the riskiest moves a leader can make. Your team members have already built those bonuses into their household budgets and monthly bills. Plenty of them also use those rewards as a measuring stick for how valued they are at […]
How to Set Ramp Quotas for New Sales Representatives
When a new sales rep burns out and quits within their first year, it costs the company well over $100,000 – it’s a massive hit to the bottom line, and the worst part is that most of this financial damage comes from the ramp periods that weren’t set up right from the start. These onboarding […]
What Are Clawback Provisions in Sales Compensation?
A sales rep celebrates a big commission check, and then a few months later, the company comes back and wants that money returned because the customer cancelled or defaulted on their payments. This scenario happens all of the time in subscription and recurring revenue businesses, where the difference between closing the deal and when the […]
How Accelerators Work in Sales Commission Plans
When a rep moves from the mindset of “I hit my number” to “earning double on everything from here,” how they treat every deal is going to change. Flat commission structures just don’t create that same level of drive and motivation that you get with accelerators. Most businesses have a hard time with accelerators, though. […]
How to Prevent Sandbagging in Sales Compensation
Sales leaders know this pattern well, and they can usually see it take shape long before it becomes a big problem. The same top performers who hit 150% of quota in Q1 and Q2 start to go quiet once Q3 rolls around. Deals that looked ready to close suddenly get pushed to the next quarter, […]
Sales Commission Reconciliation: Process & Best Practices
Every month when commission checks go out, sales leaders are on edge. A single disputed payment can create a heated argument between the reps and the finance team, and even one spreadsheet error means your entire team has to scramble to make last-minute corrections that delay everyone’s payroll. Commission reconciliation mistakes don’t stay contained to […]
How to Build Split Credit Rules for Team Sales
Problems like to multiply once a company grows past a handful of salespeople. A single deal might need an SDR who books the first meeting, an account executive who runs the discovery calls, a sales engineer who builds out the demo and a closer who hammers out the final terms. Without a system for determining […]
How to Build a Powerful Channel Incentive Program in 2026
The way that businesses work has changed quite a bit over the past few years. But most incentive programs are still stuck in the past. Partners have to manage the relationships with multiple vendors and take care of their own technology upgrades all at the same time. The customer needs just pile up and become […]