Sales Compensation Plan from SalesGlobe
SalesGlobe designs sales compensation plans that connect your sales strategy to front-line performance. We bring the Sales Compensation Diamond, the Revenue Roadmap, and a proven sales compensation design process developed over hundreds of companies.
What goes into a stronger sales compensation plan.
- Strategy and sales role foundation
- Pay mix and target pay
- Measures, mechanics, and accelerators
- Quotas and territory alignment
- Communication, governance, and evolution
The sales compensation plan trumps almost everything else.
A sales compensation or sales commission plan creates the critical link between the sales strategy and front-line performance. The compensation plan trumps leadership messages, sales strategy, sales management, and sales training. The sales organization will go where the compensation plan leads.
Too many executives squander the opportunity effective compensation planning presents. SalesGlobe’s plan-design work is built to change that — demonstrating how to improve the return on investment in your sales compensation plan, in returns that are both financial and strategic.
Better plans. Better behavior. Better return on investment.
SalesGlobe starts by asking the big questions around your C-Level Goals: What’s important to accomplish strategically and how can sales compensation support it? How can sales compensation support your sales roles and goals? How does sales compensation align with your sales strategies and sales process?
How SalesGlobe designs a sales compensation plan
Our consulting work covers strategy and sales roles, pay mix and target pay, measures and mechanics, quotas and territory alignment, governance and evaluation, and plan communication — anchored in the sales compensation design process described in What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation.
Strategy & Sales Role Foundation
Understand C-level goals and define the sales roles that meet those goals as a foundation for the compensation plan.
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SalesGlobe anchors every compensation plan design to the Five C-Level Goal Areas: grow revenue, increase profitability, improve customer satisfaction, drive product mix, and acquire new accounts. Each goal area translates into specific incentive measures and performance metrics that connect seller effort to executive-level outcomes.
By starting with C-Level goals rather than historical plan mechanics, SalesGlobe ensures that compensation redesigns address the real strategic needs of the business, not just incremental adjustments to existing plans.
Pay Mix & Target Pay
Frame the compensation plan with target pay, pay mix, and upside potential.
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Pay mix defines the ratio between base salary and variable pay for each sales role. SalesGlobe analyzes role complexity, sales cycle length, seller influence on the buying decision, and market pay data to determine the optimal pay mix for each role.
Target pay, the total compensation a seller earns at expected performance, must be competitive with market benchmarks while remaining affordable for the organization. SalesGlobe uses proprietary benchmarking data and industry comparisons to set target pay levels that attract and retain high-performing sellers.
Measures, Mechanics & Performance Linkage
Link incentive compensation and performance with thresholds, measures and priorities, levels and timing, and mechanics.
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Performance measures define the focus area that is most important to each role. Measures included in the plan should be the top two or three financial or strategic priorities that align to the company strategy — and that sales reps have control over.
SalesGlobe organizes plan mechanics into three types: rate-based (a percentage of revenue or gross profit, or a dollar amount per unit of sale), quota-based (a target incentive for reaching a specific quota or goal), and link mechanics (relationships and interdependency between two measures). The right mechanics are easy to understand and create alignment to goal attainment.
Quota Setting & Territory Alignment
Align the team and financials with objectives and sales quotas.
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SalesGlobe uses a top-down, bottom-up methodology that begins with corporate revenue targets and works down to territory-level assignments, while simultaneously building up from account-level opportunity data. This dual approach produces quotas that are both strategically aligned and achievable.
We also analyze historical attainment distributions, territory coverage, and market potential to ensure quotas motivate sellers across all performance tiers, not just the top ten percent.
Governance & Continuous Evaluation
Operate through a solid governance and change management program with continuous evaluation.
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A compensation plan is only as effective as the governance structure that supports it. SalesGlobe helps organizations build compensation governance frameworks that include regular plan evaluation, exception management, and ongoing performance monitoring.
SalesGlobe recommends annual plan evaluations and a comprehensive redesign every two to three years. Between redesigns, ongoing governance protects plan integrity and ensures that compensation continues to drive the right behaviors.
Plan Communication & Rollout
Deliver the plan to leaders, managers, and sellers with a clear, consistent strategic message.
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SalesGlobe’s Sales Communications and Design practice helps you develop and deliver a clear, consistent strategic message that gets results. We use Information Visualization, Motion Design, and Interaction Design to translate the plan into engaging, accessible communications across web, mobile, and live formats.
Pair this with our Change Management practice to build organization advocacy for the change, design the communications campaign and change story, and support the implementation.
Let’s talk about your sales compensation plan.
Tell us where your plan is today and what you’re trying to solve. A SalesGlobe consultant will follow up to scope what an engagement could look like.
The Sales Compensation Diamond
The Sales Compensation Diamond is SalesGlobe’s proprietary framework for designing, evaluating, and optimizing sales compensation programs. Developed through decades of research and implementation across industries, the Diamond addresses four interconnected dimensions that must work together for a compensation program to succeed.
Each dimension influences the others. Changing one element without considering its impact on the rest creates imbalances that undermine plan effectiveness — which is why SalesGlobe addresses all four together.
A framework for building a sales organization that performs
The Revenue Roadmap is the framework SalesGlobe uses to assess, design, and improve sales organizations. Four connected layers — Insight, Sales Strategy, Customer Coverage, and Enablement — work together to translate market reality into measurable sales results. Each layer has four working components, and the order matters: the answers you reach in one layer shape the questions worth asking in the next. Your sales compensation plan lives in the Enablement layer.
Insight
Before SalesGlobe changes a sales organization, we listen. The Insight layer grounds every decision in what customers value, how the market is shifting, where competitors are winning, and what your own performance data shows. Without it, the rest of the work is guesswork.
- Voice of the Customer
- Macro Market Environment
- Competitor Performance
- Business Performance
Sales Strategy
Sales Strategy answers four questions: what we’re selling, who we’re selling it to, why they should buy, and how we’ll reach them. Get these four right and the rest of the Roadmap has somewhere to go.
- Products & Services
- Segmentation & Targeting
- Value Proposition
- Approach to Market
Customer Coverage
Customer Coverage turns strategy into structure: the channels, roles, processes, and deployment that put the right seller in front of the right customer. It’s where most sales organizations leak revenue, often because the model was built for a market that has since moved.
- Sales Channels
- Sales Roles & Structure
- Sales Process
- Sales Deployment
Enablement
Enablement is where execution lives. Compensation and quotas drive behavior, recruiting and retention build the bench, development sharpens skill, and the right tools make it repeatable. It sits last by design, because pay plans should serve the model, not define it.
- Incentive Compensation & Quotas
- Recruiting & Retention
- Talent & Development
- Tools & Technology
Built for the leaders responsible for the sales compensation plan
A great sales compensation plan touches every team that owns or influences how sellers get paid — and every team that has to live with the outcome.
Methodology, not just opinions.
SalesGlobe was started to go beyond the benchmarking and common practices that many firms dispense to their clients as the answer. We’re a data-driven, creative problem-solving firm for sales — committed to bringing new problem-solving approaches to sales effectiveness that make a difference and deliver results.
Our approach to sales compensation plan design is grounded in the Sales Compensation Diamond and the proven sales compensation design process described in Mark Donnolo’s book What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation.
Mark Donnolo
CEO & Founder, SalesGlobe
Mark is CEO and Founder of SalesGlobe and author of multiple books on sales compensation and sales effectiveness, including What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation, The Innovative Sale, and Quotas! Design Thinking to Solve Your Biggest Sales Challenge.
Sales compensation plan resources
Free tools, frameworks, and content from SalesGlobe to help your team build a stronger sales compensation plan.
Sales Compensation Report Card
Take a quick quiz to receive a report card from SalesGlobe analyzing your current plans.
What a Sales Comp Plan Is
A SalesGlobe primer on what a sales compensation plan is and how to build one that drives the right behavior.
Best-in-Class Plan Design
SalesGlobe’s walkthrough of the steps we take when helping companies design best-in-class plans.
Sales Compensation Diamond
The four interconnected dimensions — pay mix, mechanics, quotas, and governance — of every effective comp plan.
Revenue Roadmap Assessment
SalesGlobe’s diagnostic across Insight, Strategy, Coverage, and Enablement — where your comp plan fits.
Sales compensation plan FAQs
Common questions about sales compensation plan design, SalesGlobe’s approach, and how engagements work.
What is a sales compensation plan?
Sales compensation is the combination of base salary, variable pay, and incentive mechanisms that organizations use to reward and motivate their sales teams. A well-designed compensation plan connects seller behaviors directly to business outcomes, ensuring that every dollar spent on sales pay drives measurable revenue growth.
At SalesGlobe, we view sales compensation as more than a pay structure. It is the primary lever for shaping how sellers prioritize their time, which deals they pursue, and how aggressively they close.
What are the key components of a sales compensation plan?
The major components are sales role definition, target pay and pay mix, incentive measures and mechanics (thresholds, measures, levels and timing), quota setting and alignment, plan communication, and governance and evaluation.
SalesGlobe’s Sales Compensation Diamond organizes the design work around four interconnected dimensions: pay mix and target pay, incentive mechanics, quota setting and alignment, and governance and evaluation.
How do you design an effective sales compensation plan?
An effective sales compensation plan starts with understanding corporate goals and translating them into measurable seller behaviors. SalesGlobe uses its Five C-Level Goal Areas (grow revenue, increase profitability, improve customer satisfaction, drive product mix, acquire new accounts) to anchor every plan design.
From there, we determine the right pay mix, incentive measures, performance thresholds, and quota allocation to connect seller effort directly to business outcomes — following the sales compensation design process described in What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation.
What is the right pay mix for a sales compensation plan?
Pay mix depends on the role. Roles with high seller influence and shorter sales cycles typically carry more aggressive pay mixes, while roles with longer cycles and team-based selling warrant a higher base component.
SalesGlobe analyzes role complexity, sales cycle length, seller influence on the buying decision, and market pay data to determine the optimal pay mix for each role.
How are quotas set in a sales compensation plan?
Quota setting at SalesGlobe starts with a top-down, bottom-up approach. We begin with corporate revenue targets and work down to territory-level assignments, while simultaneously building up from account-level opportunity data. This dual approach ensures quotas are both ambitious and achievable.
We also analyze historical performance, market potential, and territory coverage to create quotas that motivate all seller tiers, not just the top performers.
When should a company redesign its sales compensation plan?
Companies should consider redesigning their sales compensation program when they experience significant changes in strategy, go-to-market model, or market conditions. Warning signs include high performer attrition, quota attainment that is either too high or too low, pay that has become disconnected from performance, or incentive plans that no longer reflect current selling motions.
SalesGlobe recommends evaluating your compensation program annually and conducting a full redesign every two to three years.
What is the Sales Compensation Diamond?
The Sales Compensation Diamond is SalesGlobe’s proprietary framework for designing and evaluating sales compensation programs. It covers four interconnected dimensions: pay mix and target pay, incentive mechanics, quota setting and alignment, and governance and evaluation. By addressing all four together, organizations create compensation plans that drive the right seller behaviors and align with corporate strategy.
How does the Revenue Roadmap relate to the sales compensation plan?
The Revenue Roadmap is SalesGlobe’s framework that provides an integrated view of the four major competencies of successful sales organizations: Insight, Sales Strategy, Customer Coverage, and Enablement. Sales compensation, quotas, recruiting and development, and other support programs live in the Enablement layer.
None of these programs can succeed without a solid foundation of Insight, Strategy, and Coverage upstream. The Revenue Roadmap Assessment is often the starting point for organizations that want to surface that strategic context before moving into focused sales compensation plan design.
What makes SalesGlobe’s approach to sales compensation different?
SalesGlobe brings a data-driven, research-backed methodology grounded in decades of sales compensation design. Unlike generalist consulting firms, SalesGlobe focuses exclusively on revenue growth, bringing deep specialization in comp plan design, quota setting, and incentive mechanics.
Our proprietary Sales Compensation Diamond ensures that every element of a compensation program works together, and our team has implemented programs across industries including technology, healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
Talk to a SalesGlobe expert about your sales compensation plan.
Tell us about your challenge — plan design, pay mix, mechanics, quotas, communication, governance, or a full redesign — and a SalesGlobe consultant will follow up.
How we engage
- Sales compensation plan design and redesign
- Pay mix analysis and competitive benchmarking
- Quota setting and territory alignment
- Measures, mechanics, and accelerator design
- Plan communication, motion design, and field rollout
- Plan governance, administration, and amendments
- Revenue Roadmap Assessment and M&A plan-transition support
Tell us about your sales compensation plan