Your Sales Team Is Only As Good As the Plan Behind It.

Nobody had looked at the comp plan holistically since the Series A. Within two weeks I completed a full audit of their plan architecture, internal ICM tool configuration, quota-setting methodology, and payout history.

What I found: three separate plan design flaws that were actively demotivating mid-tier performers, a quota model that was set 31% above market for their stage, and 90+ open commission disputes that had been sitting unresolved for an average of 47 days.

There was no OTE framework, no quota methodology, no documentation, and no plan for how to scale any of it. I built their comp infrastructure from the ground up; designed role-specific OTE structures and base/variable splits benchmarked against Series A fintech market data.

I built a quota-setting framework tied to their ARR targets and average deal size, created accelerator structures designed to motivate above-quota performance, and implemented everything in a plan document and quota letter template.

The entire build was completed before their first new cohort of AEs started, so every new rep hired into a clean, documented, legally sound comp structure from day one.

Finance was managing commissions manually in spreadsheets. The RevOps team was fielding comp questions they weren’t equipped to answer. I came on as their Fractional Head of Sales Compensation on a monthly retainer.

In the first 90 days I rebuilt the core plan architecture for all four sales roles, migrated their commission operations from manual spreadsheets to a fully configured Xactly implementation, and established clear payout milestones.

I also created a rep-facing comp FAQ and plan walkthrough that eliminated 80% of inbound comp questions. Twelve months into the retainer the company had a clean, scalable comp infrastructure running without me.

KPI weighting at 40% was diluting the revenue signal. And bi-annual payout timing was disconnecting effort from reward in a business where deals take months to close.

The redesign shifted pay mix to 50/50 — holding OTE constant — restructured quota/KPI weighting to 90/10 to make revenue the dominant outcome, and moved to quarterly payouts to create faster feedback loops.

Every structural change was modeled across the full attainment distribution before recommendation, and a complete communication and change management plan was built alongside the design.