If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all, you’ll know my belief that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to sales compensation. Creating a comp plan that is motivating and fulfilling for your sales team while at the same time achieving your organizational goals takes consideration of many factors, including the goals of the company, the place of the organization in its life cycle, the culture, the behaviors you want to incentivize, etc. However, one of the most important factors in how you design your sales compensation program is the length of your sales cycle. For organizations with very long sales cycles, comp design isn’t as easy as offering a percentage commission on final closing. It will require a bit more thoughtfulness. What is a “long” sales cycle? For the purpose of this article, I’m defining a long sales cycle as any average sales process that extends beyond one year. And I’m not including the lead generation or initial discovery stages into that average – as we all know, it can sometimes take years to make progress with an organization or contacts before engagement in the initial phases of the selling process. Products or solutions in engineering, development, and construction services, government sales, and health system business development are good examples of offerings that take a long time to come to fruition. However, the key thing to take away from identifying roles with long sales cycle length is the experience of the salesperson - the longer the wait time between beginning the sales process and deal closure, the more challenging it is to connect the actions with the reward. How to Provide Compensation During Long Sales Cycles The goal when you have a long sales cycle, is to compress long-term actions into short-term incentives. Obviously, this is complicated by the fact that your organization doesn’t receive a payout until after the close of the deal—and depending on the contract, it may still be very far off from then. Some contracts come with payment terms where the full monetary benefit of the transaction isn’t seen for years. So, how do you keep your salesperson engaged during the long process? What does a reward program look like when it is five years from the time the salesperson starts to engage with the customer and the company receives initial payments? Here are a couple of things to consider. • Pay Mix: The split between base pay compensation and variable pay compensation should be commensurate with the risk (and corresponding reward) that the individual takes on in the role – meaning that generally, existing client sales carries less risk than new business sales. The size and scope of the job (e.g., Field Sales vs. Inside Sales) also come into play with the final equation. Generally, the split on pay for new business sits at around 50/50 to 60/40 (base to variable). Existing Client sales generally start around 60/40 and may go to 75/25 depending on the specifics of the role. Base Salary: With a long sales cycle, there needs to be financial coverage while they’re doing the work of moving a sale forward. It also means making sure their compensation doesn’t rely solely on the close of a sale—because the win rate is rarely 100%. Enterprise salespeople have very high base pay. And for good reason. Ideally, we want the sales incentives to be the star attraction, but too much pay at risk can prompt desperation (and potentially other side effects) rather than motivation and engagement. Creating Milestones: During long sales cycles, there are usually milestone moments or phases in the deal progression that increase the likelihood of the transaction getting to contract. One way to design a short-term incentive program is to identify these important milestones and build financial rewards associated with deal progression. If that isn’t feasible, putting more emphasis on recognition and praise at each of these milestones is considerably beneficial to morale during the long slog towards the deal win. Pay Curve: Thresholds and Accelerators are important components of the way variable pay is delivered. Much of this is related to the accuracy of the target (quota) and performance management as well. With the greater risk of these long-term transactions, the upside potential should be commensurate with the postponement of short-term incentives. The most common accelerators are in the 2x to 3x (times) base rate of pay. Ultimately, the performance levels for long-term transactions need to be modeled for the best fit and affordability specific to your organization’s financial sustainability. In short, you have to think about rewarding the process more than the outcome in order to improve the retention and motivation of your sales team. To learn more about the many complexities and nuances of creating a sales comp plan that attracts, retains, and motivates talent, sign up for my biweekly newsletter .

In a way, we’ve already talked a lot about several components of sales incentive plan mechanics. We’ve covered the importance of culture , fundamental financial model ing, establishing job content , determining pay mix , and setting objectives . The next step will bring it all together. Some Important Sales Compensation Vocabulary We’ve previously described, at length, the two primary types of sales comp models (bonus plans and commission rate plans) as well as how to determine which plan best supports different sales roles. But there are a few other terms that are important to know when developing the underlying plan mechanics. The following list comes straight from my book Starting Simple: Sales Compensation . If you want a full but easy-to-understand breakdown of sales compensation, that book is the place to start. Accelerator--An increase in the rate of pay that occurs at a certain level of performance. Generally, this starts after the achievement of 100% of the target performance objective. Deal Cap--The maximum amount of pay on any single transaction Leverage--The sales incentive that would be paid out for performance between the target and the point of excellence. It is represented as a multiple of the target incentive Pay Curve--The slope of the line of the rate of pay throughout all levels of performance. Think of performance as the x-axis and payout as the y-axis. The pay curve represents the relationship between the two. In a fixed-rate plan, this is a straight line, representing a fixed rate of pay for every unit of measured performance (activity completed, dollar of revenue acquired, or percentage point of margin sold, etc.) Plan Cap--Maximum amount of pay under the construct of the plan Point of Excellence--The point on the pay curve that represents the 90th percentile of salespersons’ performance levels (should be greater than 100% of performance achievement) Rate of Pay--The amount of pay per unit of measurement. This encompasses the relationship between performance and payout at any point along the pay curve. Target--A point on the pay curve that represents 100% payout and 100% performance or (100%, 100%) Target Incentive--The sales incentive amount paid for achieving 100% of sales performance objectives Threshold--The point at which pay for performance starts. The threshold point should sit somewhere between 0% and 100% performance levels. It can be zero, which essentially means there is no threshold. Zero--The first point on the pay curve, represented by (0%,0%) for zero level of payout and zero level of performance Best Practices for Plan Mechanics A well-structured sales compensation plan aligns with your business objectives while keeping your team motivated. You need to balance risk and reward, ensuring that pay mix, thresholds, and accelerators drive the right behaviors. To evaluate whether your plan is driving the right behaviors, map your sales team’s performance along the pay curve—identifying where top, mid-level, and low performers fall. If most reps cluster near the threshold, the plan may not be motivating enough, while a heavy concentration at the high end could indicate overly generous payouts. A well-balanced distribution should show a clear progression, with incentives effectively encouraging continuous improvement and rewarding top achievers appropriately. Caps are controversial, and while they can help control costs, they can also discourage high performers. Accelerators, on the other hand, can be a powerful tool to motivate salespeople to exceed expectations. The key is to strike a balance—rewarding overachievement without creating unsustainable payout structures. Finally, sales compensation plans should evolve with business needs. In a future post, I’ll be talking about the importance of a regular review cadence for maintaining performance and fairness. When done right, plan mechanics create a system that doesn’t just pay salespeople but actively inspires them to excel.

Setting objectives is a constant balance between meeting your organizational goals and being realistic about the capabilities of your sales team. You want to be aggressive enough to reach revenue and profitability expectations as well as keep everyone motivated, but you don’t want to be so aggressive that your team feels it is impossible to succeed and just gives up. In part 5 of my Best Practices in Sales Compensation Series, we’ll go over some of the top things to consider for keeping your sales team engaged and successful. (Read Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 ) When setting objectives for your organization, consider what you absolutely need versus the ideal you want; take into account the resources you have to work with (as well as the market situation and sales productivity); and create a target range ranging from easy to impossible—and place your target somewhere in the middle of that range. Types of Objectives There are several different types of objectives you might set for your sales reps. They can be sales process activities like making calls or qualifying leads. They can be progression milestones like hand-off triggers between internal teams or customer signoffs. But for our purposes, we’re going to focus on financial objectives such as revenue and profit. Best Practices for Setting Objectives Objectives need to align with organizational goals and provide achievable but challenging targets for the sales team. To accomplish this, consider these practices: Make sure that the salesperson has the ability to influence if not fully control, their capability to meet and exceed the objectives. Set realistic expectations. Unrealistic targets will stagnate your growth potential and give you a poor reputation with employees (as well as the labor market). Provide a clear and visible path to achieving the objective. Try to limit the quantity and types of objectives. More is not better. It’s better for a sales rep to be able to focus on a singular goal than to have their attention split in too many directions. Lastly, make a plan for what to do if your salesperson exceeds the target as well as underachieve target objective levels. These are just a few of the very important considerations in setting your objectives. Take some time to explore my blog or check out my books for a more in-depth look into sales compensation.

Best Practices in Sales Compensation Part 4

In my first Best Practices post, I talked about the importance of knowing what you can pay for your sales roles before worrying about what the market is saying. In my second post, I covered ways to utilize culture in a sales organization . The following Best Practice in sales compensation involves job content. Job content plays several roles in your compensation plan: 1. It gives your salesperson a guide to what success looks like in their role. 2. It gives you a guide to evaluating the performance of your salesperson. 3. It rationalizes differing levels of variable pay outcomes for varying performance levels. 4. It provides your organization with the structure needed to comply with any reporting, pay transparency, or other regulations. Hopefully, that’s enough to convince you of the importance of taking the time to define your new roles and revisit the definition of your existing roles. Now, here’s how job content actually does those things. Defining the job The first role of job content is to define the who, what, where, when, and how of the function. It can be tempting to borrow a job description from LinkedIn, Glassdoor, etc., with the assumption that the content will be similar enough to fit your needs. However, the way a specific role performs is unique to the organization it’s acting in, which is why it’s important to take the time to define the job from scratch. Here are the questions you should be answering in your job content: What does the person need to do on a daily basis? How does this individual pursue sales, and in what segment or with what type of customer? Where should they focus their time and attention when building a pipeline of deals? Who should they be interfacing with, both internally and externally? When do they engage with customers and/or prospects? What portion of the sales process do they own or support? How do they interface with and influence decision-makers? Now, even though I said to write your job description from scratch, that doesn’t mean this is the time or place to get too creative. Job seekers are going to be searching by job title or category, so it’s essential to stick to the common vernacular regarding industry jargon and expected job titles. Job Description: A Byproduct of Job Content Another positive outcome of creating job content for your roles is that you will have generated much of the information needed for a job description if or when you’re ready to hire. Information such as: Job duties and responsibilities that clarify the type of work and engagement with customers. Qualifications/Requirements that are both minimum and desired. Those include education, knowledge, skills, capabilities, and competencies. Performance measures of the role include items like achieving sales targets, new logo acquisition, development of pipeline, accuracy in forecasting, etc. With all of this information on file, it will not only be easier for you to prepare to hire for the roles you want, but it will also be easier to evaluate existing employees in those roles. Beyond all of that, you’ll be well prepared for competitive market research and establishing your variable pay program. I’ll be posting more best practices on the blog, but if you’re anxious to dive deeper into the subject of sales compensation, you can grab a copy of my book Starting Simple: Sales Compensation and consider working through the companion Workbook to build a sales compensation plan from scratch.

Best Practices in Sales Compensation Part 2

Best Practices in Sales Compensation Part 1

Aligning Compensation Strategies with Sales Leadership Objectives

Key Strategies to Align Your Sales Team for Success Next Year