Most sales comp problems don't announce themselves. They show up as quota attainment that's inconsistent quarter to quarter, top reps leaving for no obvious reason, or a commission expense that keeps climbing without a proportional lift in revenue. By the time leadership connects those symptoms to the comp plan, the damage is usually already embedded in the culture.
The irony is that the mistakes are predictable. After nearly 20 years designing incentive programs at IBM, Equifax, and Moody's, I've seen the same patterns repeat at growth-stage companies regardless of industry or funding stage. Here are the five that cost the most.
Paying on revenue when the business has outgrown it
Top-line commission works at early stage when you need volume at any cost. By Series B, it's funding bad-fit customers, heavy discounting, and churn. The fix is a shift toward gross margin, ARR, or a multi-metric structure, but most companies don't make that transition until after it's already hurt them.
No quota methodology, just math
"Take last year's number, add 20%" isn't a quota. It's a hope. Without territory-level analysis, pipeline conversion data, and role-based capacity modeling, quotas are arbitrary — and arbitrary quotas destroy rep trust faster than anything else. Reps know when the number was made up.
Leverage so low it doesn't change behavior
A 70/30 base/variable split for a sales role that needs urgency is basically a salary with paperwork. If a rep can hit 80% of quota and still take home 94% of their target pay, the plan isn't driving behavior, it's just tracking it. Most growth-stage companies underestimate how much leverage actually needs to move to change what a rep does on a Tuesday afternoon.
Complexity that reps can't model themselves
The behavioral value of a commission plan is directly proportional to how well a rep can predict their own payout before they close a deal. SPIFs stacked on accelerators stacked on product mix multipliers collapse that predictability. If your rep needs a spreadsheet to know what they'll earn on a deal they're about to close, the plan has lost its motivational function entirely.
Thresholds and caps that punish the wrong people
A threshold set at 75% sounds reasonable until a rep hits 74% and earns nothing. That's a cliff, not a threshold, and it creates exactly the wrong incentive in Q4. Caps are the mirror problem: they tell your best rep that their ceiling is someone else's budget decision. Both are common in growth-stage because nobody modeled the distribution of outcomes before publishing the plan.
These are fixable, and faster than most companies expect
A focused diagnostic surfaces the highest-impact issues within days. A redesigned structure can be ready before your next plan year.
Schedule a 30-Min Assessment