Planning season is comp season. Most plans quietly reward the wrong thing.
It is planning season. Which means somewhere in your organization, someone is building next year's sales comp plan right now. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there is a good chance it will quietly reward the wrong thing.
Most plans pay for activity. They pay on the whole book. They pay on renewals that would have happened anyway. They pay for showing up. Then leadership wonders why nobody is hunting.
Here is what convinced me. I have not just advised clients on comp or swapped tips with fellow C-suite leaders. I tested it in my own business. At one point I ran three compensation plans in parallel, each built to reward a different result. One group was paid to expand existing clients. One was paid to generate new business. One was paid to cross-sell across our service lines, real account penetration, not just handoffs. All three plans paid out the same percentage of gross margin, so my risk was controlled. The only thing that changed was the behavior we rewarded.
Guess what happened? All three worked. Every group got very good at exactly the thing we paid them to do. The expansion group expanded. The hunters brought in new logos. The cross-sell group collaborated and drove deeper into accounts. Different teams, different leaders running them, and still the same pattern held. Same payout, three very different results. That is the whole point. People do what you pay them to do. So you had better be sure you are paying for the right thing.
None of this means base pay is the enemy. Some base, some retention pay, that is healthy. The problem is when the plan pays a rep more for maintaining than for winning. Do that, and you did not build a sales plan. You built an annuity. And your best people know it before you do.
The hunters feel it first. The people who can actually go create new business look at a plan that rewards tenure and inheritance, and they leave for one that rewards the kill. What you are left with is a team that manages the book and calls it selling.
The fix is not complicated. It is uncomfortable.
Set a minimum expectation to jump start the payout. No threshold means no urgency.
Weight new and profitable production above renewals.
Kill the vanity metrics. Three weighted components and a scorecard nobody trusts just gives everyone something to argue about.
Say the quiet part out loud. Go get profitable work, we will pay you well for it, that is the plan. And do not overengineer it. Nobody likes the fine print.
Before you lock your 2027 plan, ask one question. Does a rep make meaningfully more for landing new profitable business than for coasting on the book? If the answer is no, you are not budgeting for growth. You are budgeting for stagnation, and paying a premium for it.
Comp is the clearest message you send about what you value. Make sure it is saying what you think it is saying.
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