Consider a common scenario. A global organization has grown to 500 sales reps across multiple regions. Over time, they have accumulated 25 different compensation plans. Titles vary by region. Pay decisions are made locally without consistent benchmarks. Manual processes make it difficult to answer basic questions.
When the VP of Sales asks, "Are we paying our enterprise AEs competitively?" no one can give a confident answer. When Finance asks, "What should we budget for next year's headcount growth?" the response requires weeks of spreadsheet work. When a top performer asks, "What do I need to do to get to the next level?" the answer depends entirely on their manager.
This organization has not failed. They have simply outgrown their informal approach. They need a connected career architecture.
The Flow: From Strategy to Execution
Career architecture is not a standalone item. It sits at a critical juncture in the flow from strategy to execution.
Customer
Segmentation
Who you serve and how
Career Architecture
Role levels and structures
GTM Roles
Who does what at each stage
Compensation
Design
Rewards that drive success
Each element builds on the one before it. Segmentation determines what types of customers you serve and how. Career architecture translates those requirements into role levels and structures. GTM role design specifies who is responsible for what at each stage of the sales process. Compensation design rewards the behaviors that drive success in each role.
Throughout this flow, two elements act as enablers: Talent Strategy ensures you have the right people with the right skills, and Financial Alignment ensures cost efficiency across segments.
The 5 Building Blocks
Career architecture encompasses five interconnected building blocks:
Job Families
are groupings by function such as Account Executives, BDRs, Customer Success, and Sales Engineering.
Level Definitions
provide clear progression criteria from IC1 Entry through IC2 Developing, IC3 Senior, and IC4 Principal.
Competency Exepectations
describe what good looks like at each level, including core competencies, role skills, and leadership capabilities.
Role Specifications
outline responsibilities, decision authority, and reporting structure.
Compensation
Bands
connect market alignment, internal equity, and career visibility to each level.
These five building blocks work together within a unified structure. Grades map across three tracks—Management, Professional, and Support—creating a framework that spans from entry-level roles through executive leadership. This structure enables consistent leveling across job families while providing clear progression paths within each track.
What Career Architecture Provides
Career architecture creates a shared vocabulary across the organization. It establishes clear definitions for each role and level. It builds logical progression paths that reps can see and work toward. Most importantly, it creates a foundation for consistent, competitive compensation.
With career architecture in place, organizations can benchmark roles accurately because role definitions are clear and consistent. They can maintain internal equity through a structured framework for comparison. They can build defensible pay ranges grounded in market data and internal logic. They can answer questions about competitive positioning with confidence because the data is in a usable format.
Career architecture is how an organization systematically defines, levels, and values its roles. It answers the fundamental questions that leaders, managers, and employees ask every day: What roles exist and how do they differ? How do roles relate to one another? What does progression look like? What skills and behaviors are expected at each level? And how does compensation reflect role value and individual contribution?
Customer Segmentation as the Foundation
Customer segmentation is the basis for effective GTM design and execution. Not all customers are created equal. They vary in their needs, priorities, customer lifetime value, and the level of sophistication required to serve them. Everything downstream flows from how you segment your market.
Why Segmentation Drives Career Architecture
Segmentation determines the types of sellers you need. An organization selling exclusively to enterprise accounts requires different capabilities than one focused on high-velocity SMB sales. The sales motions are different. The skills required are different. The career paths look different.
Customer segmentation ensures alignment with three critical elements:
Talent Strategy
Segmentation ensures you deploy the right talent against each segment. Entry-level AEs serve SMB. Mid-level talent serves Mid Market. Senior talent serves Enterprise. It reflects the complexity of each segment and the skills required to succeed.
Coverage Model
Segmentation determines how internal cross-functional teams support sales teams with the appropriate span of control. Enterprise accounts may require dedicated solution architects, while SMB can be served with shared resources.
Client Engagement Model
Segmentation shapes what is needed at each level. The Enterprise segment may require separate sales roles for AEs and Relationship Managers. An SMB can have a single point of contact who handles the full customer lifecycle.
The Cost Efficiency Imperative
Segmentation also drives financial efficiency. When talent is correctly mapped to segments, the cost of sales becomes progressively more efficient as you move upmarket.
You might spend more on SMB through customer acquisition because deal sizes are smaller and require higher volume. But as you move to Mid Market and Enterprise segments, your cost of sales decreases because higher-value deals justify more senior talent and longer sales cycles.
Without this alignment, organizations either overspend on lower-value segments by deploying senior talent to small deals, or underinvest in high-value segments by assigning junior reps to complex enterprise opportunities.
Common Segmentation Approaches
Most organizations segment by some combination of company size and revenue potential:
SMB
Smaller deal sizes, higher volume, shorter sales cycles, more transactional motion.
Mid Market
Medium deal sizes, moderate complexity, balance of volume and relationship.
Enterprise
Large deal sizes, high complexity, longer cycles, relationship driven.
Some organizations add vertical overlays for industry specialization, or carve out strategic accounts that receive dedicated coverage regardless of size.
The specific definitions matter less than the principle: your segmentation scheme must be clear before you can build career architecture that aligns to it.
Key Point
If you are designing career architecture and your segmentation strategy is not clear, that is worth addressing first. Career architecture built on unclear segmentation will not align properly to your GTM reality.
From Segmentation to Career Architecture
Once segmentation is clear, career architecture translates those strategic choices into a structured framework of roles and levels. This is where the connection between "who we serve" and "who serves them" becomes explicit.
Mapping Talent to Segment
Career architecture should align talent levels to customer segments. This creates natural career progression as reps develop capabilities to serve increasingly complex customers.
A typical alignment might look like this:
IC1 aligned to SMB. Entry-level Account Executives work high-velocity accounts with shorter sales cycles and more transactional buying. This is where new sellers learn the fundamentals: discovery, qualification, presenting value, and closing.
IC2 aligned to Mid Market. As reps demonstrate consistent quota attainment and own the full sales cycle, they move to more complex accounts. Deals are larger. Sales cycles are longer. More stakeholders are involved.
IC3 and IC4 aligned to Enterprise. Senior and Principal-level sellers manage strategic accounts that require sophisticated engagement, multi-threaded relationships, and long-term account development.
This progression reflects growing capability to handle complexity and drive larger outcomes. It also reinforces the talent strategy and financial alignment principles established earlier: deploying the right level of talent against each segment ensures both effectiveness and cost efficiency.
Building the Architecture Structure
Career architecture organizes roles along two dimensions: job families and levels.
Job Families group roles by function. Typical sales job families include Business Development or SDR, Account Executive, Account Management or Relationship Management, Customer Success, and Sales Engineering or Solutions Consulting. Each family has distinct responsibilities and skill requirements.
Levels define progression within each family. A typical IC progression might include IC1 at the entry level, IC2 at the developing level, IC3 at the senior level, IC4 at the principal level, and, in some organizations, IC5 at the distinguished level. Management tracks typically include Team Lead, Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, and VP.
The intersection of job family and level creates specific roles. An IC2 Account Executive is different from an IC2 Customer Success Manager, even though they share the same level. An IC2 Account Executive is different from an IC3 Account Executive, even though they share the same family.
From Career Architecture to GTM Roles
Career architecture provides the framework. GTM role design specifies exactly who does what at each stage of the sales process. This is where architecture meets operational reality.
Segmentation tells you who your customers are. Career architecture tells you what level of talent serves each segment. Now you need to design the actual roles: what do those people do every day, and how does that differ by segment?
Career architecture must be in place before this step. You need to define the full set of levels—perhaps four AE levels from IC1 through IC4—and benchmark each one to ensure competitive pay. But not every level applies to every segment. SMB might only need IC1 and IC2 AEs. The Enterprise segment might only need IC3 and IC4. The architecture is complete; deployment is selective based on segment needs.
Benchmarking also sets expectations for what each level should do. When you benchmark a Senior AE, the market data reflects what Senior AEs typically do: larger deals, smaller book sizes, longer cycles, and more strategic work. Role design aligns the actual work with those market expectations. If you're paying Senior AE compensation, the work should match what a Senior AE expects to do and what their skills are suited for.
How Segment Shapes Role Design
The work looks different depending on the segment. An AE covering SMB accounts does different things than an AE covering Enterprise accounts, even if they share the same title. The segment determines the sales motion, and the sales motion determines the sales role.
SMB roles tend to be generalist
One rep often handles the full customer lifecycle, including prospecting, closing, onboarding, and renewals. Deals are smaller and faster, so efficiency matters. Reps manage larger books of business and rely on shared support resources. Success comes from volume and velocity.
Mid-market roles start to specialize
As deals get larger and cycles get longer, it becomes harder for one person to do everything well. Organizations often separate prospecting (SDRs), new business (AEs), and post-sale (Customer Success). Each role focuses on what it does best. Manager's span of control narrows because reps need more coaching on complex deals.
Enterprise roles are highly specialized
Large, complex deals require dedicated attention at every stage. AEs focus exclusively on acquiring new logos. Account Managers or Relationship Managers own existing accounts for expansion and renewal. Solution Architects support technical sales. Customer Success drives adoption and long-term value. Strategic accounts may have entire teams assigned to them.
Designing Roles Around the Sales Process
Role design should map to your sales process. Each stage of the process has a primary owner, and that ownership should be clear in both the role definition and the compensation plan.
In a land and expand model, the stages might look like this:
Lead Generation
SDRs create a qualified pipeline through outbound prospecting and inbound follow-up.
↓
New Logo Acquisition
AEs run discovery, build business cases, and close initial deals.
↓
Onboarding
Implementation teams and Customer Success drive initial adoption and time-to-value.
↓
Expansion
Account Managers identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts.
↓
Renewal
Customer Success or Renewal Specialists secure ongoing revenue.
Who owns each stage varies by segment. In SMB, one person might own all five stages. In Enterprise, you might have five different roles.
From Roles to Compensation Design
Role design determines compensation design. Different roles across the sales process and across segments require different OTE, pay mix, accelerator structures, and performance measures. Career architecture makes this differentiation systematic rather than ad hoc.
How Segment Shapes Role Design
The day-to-day deployment of a role should align to how that role is compensated. This principle sounds simple but is frequently violated when organizations copy compensation structures without considering role differences.
Pay Mix should reflect the role's impact on outcomes. SDRs and BDRs typically have a 70/30 base-to-variable mix because they have high activity metrics and shorter cycles. SMB AEs earn 50/50 or 60/40 because they have high influence and quick feedback loops. Enterprise AEs earn 60/40 or 70/30 because long sales cycles require income stability. Customer Success roles typically earn 80/20 or 70/30, given their focus on retention.
OTE Levels should reflect segment value and role complexity. Enterprise AEs command higher On Target Earnings (OTE) than SMB AEs, not just because of experience but because the deals they work are larger and more complex. Career architecture creates the framework for this differentiation.
Performance Measures should align with role responsibilities. A hunter should be measured primarily on new logo acquisition. A farmer should be measured on expansion and retention. A role with split responsibility needs blended measures that reflect actual time allocation.
Compensation Differentiation by Segment
Segmentation flows through to compensation in predictable ways:
SMB Compensation tends toward a balanced base-to-variable mix to drive activity. Quotas are smaller, and typically, you see more variability in performance. Accelerators kick in at lower absolute dollar levels but deliver meaningful upside. Base salaries are lower, reflecting the entry-level talent deployed.
Mid-market Compensation balances stability and incentive. Pay mix moves toward 60/40 or 50/50. Quotas are larger and require more sophisticated selling. Accelerators reward both deal quality and quantity.
Enterprise Compensation emphasizes stability and relationship building. Pay mix often reaches 70/30 base-to-variable. Quotas are substantial but acknowledge longer sales cycles. Accelerators may include strategic account bonuses and multi-year deal incentives. Base salaries are significantly higher, reflecting the senior talent required.
Career Progression and Compensation Bands
Career architecture connects levels to compensation bands. Each level should have a defined OTE range that provides room for growth within the level and meaningful increases at promotion.
This creates clear visibility for reps. They can see what the next level looks like and what it pays. Managers can have specific conversations about what it takes to get there.
Related
The Sales Compensation Growth Model provides the complete framework for how segmentation, roles, and compensation connect.
Talent Strategy as the Enabler
Talent strategy sits at the intersection of corporate goals and sales compensation design. While segmentation drives career architecture and roles drive compensation, talent strategy ensures you have the right people with the right skills to execute. It is the enabler that makes the entire system work.
The Seven Dimensions of Talent Strategy
Talent strategy for sales organizations must address seven key dimensions that work in concert:
Workforce Planning
Ensures you deploy the right number of people with the right skills against your sales process. It follows and complements career architecture by determining headcount requirements at each level for each segment.
Performance Management
Creates the framework for evaluating, developing, and rewarding talent. An effective framework evaluates sales professionals not just on results but on how they achieve them: leadership behaviors at approximately 30% weight, operational excellence at approximately 30% weight, and results at approximately 40% weight.
Employee Engagement and Productivity
Directly impacts retention and performance. Connection between engagement and compensation is particularly strong in sales. Perceived fairness, quota achievability, line of sight, and career path clarity all drive engagement.
Total Rewards Strategy
Extends beyond base and variable compensation to include equity, benefits, work life balance, recognition, career development, and culture. Different segments of your sales force may value different components.
Compensation and Benefits
The core of total rewards. Effective design requires careful consideration of role definition, pay architecture, pay mix, performance measures, thresholds and accelerators, and payment timing.
Retention
A critical outcome of effective talent strategy. The cost of sales turnover extends beyond recruitment to include lost revenue, disrupted relationships, and diminished productivity. Compensation plan design significantly impacts retention through quota setting, pay mix, earnings potential, and plan consistency.
Competency Model
Defines the specific knowledge, skills, and behaviors required for success at each level. It is the foundation that connects talent strategy to career architecture.
The Competency Model: Foundation for Career Architecture
The Competency Model ensures that the skills required for reps to succeed are clearly defined. It forms a symbiotic relationship with Performance Management, providing the basis for evaluation, development, and advancement decisions.
Competency Architecture
A well-designed competency model includes three categories of competencies:
Leadership Capabilities
Progressive Development of Strategic Thinking, People Management, and Influence
Strategic Thinking, Team Development, Change Leadership
Role-Specific Skills
Technical and functional expertise unique to each position
Technical Skills, Tool Proficiency, Domain Expertise
Core Competencies
Foundational capabilities required across all commercial roles
Customer Focus, Collaboration, Business Acumen
Illustrative Sales Competencies
The specific competencies will vary by organization, but here is an illustrative set of twelve sales competencies that organizations commonly define:
1
Collaborates Internally
Engages cross-functional partners effectively
2
Sales Operational Excellence
Manages pipeline and forecasting accurately
3
Account Planning
Prioritizes opportunities and creates strategic account plans
4
Customer Understanding
Comprehends business challenges and objectives
5
Buyer Engagement
Connects with technical and economic decision makers
6
Solution Expertise
Applies product knowledge to solve customer problems
7
Negotiation Skills
Navigates complex agreements effectively
8
Gaining Commitment
Drives the decision-making process toward closure
9
Value Realization
Ensures customer success after purchase
10
Adaptability
Responds to changing conditions and requirements
11
Tactile Expertise
Applies appropriate techniques to different situations
12
Systems Proficiency
Utilizes sales technology and tools effectively
Proficiency Levels by Career Level
For each competency, the model defines proficiency levels that align with career progression. Capabilities develop across three levels:
Level 1: Foundational Capability
Demonstrates understanding and basic application. The focus is on building core skills and consistent process execution.
Example at IC1
A rep at Level 1 proficiency develops Account Plans to define Objectives and Key Results for the performance period, completes forecasts with accuracy, engages in team meetings to discuss quota progress, and follows established processes for stakeholder engagement.
Level 2: Applied Proficiency
Shows advanced application and analytical ability, analyze situations, evaluate options, and adapt their approach based on circumstances.
Example at IC2 / IC3
A rep at Level 2 proficiency adapts account planning approaches based on deal complexity, evaluates which
opportunities to prioritize, analyzes pipeline health, and adjusts strategy accordingly.
Level 3: True Mastery
Exhibits mastery and teaching capability. At this level, enterprise AEs can execute at a high level, but also innovate, teach others, and drive for talent impact.
Example at IC4
A rep at Level 3 proficiency creates account planning frameworks for others, mentors junior reps on strategic planning, innovates on methodology based on market conditions, and shapes organizational best practices.
This structured approach creates transparency around expectations at each career level and provides objective criteria for
advancement decisions.
Talent Impact
When competency models are well designed and integrated with career architecture, organizations see measurable impact:
• Hiring Precision: Competency based selection improves quality of hire
• Performance Clarity: Defined expectations increase performance consistency and reduce ambiguity in evaluations
• Development Focus: Clear competencies enable targeted training with stronger return on investment
• Career Pathing: Transparent progression improves retention and internal mobility
Connection to Enablement and L&D
The Competency Model serves as the basis for Enablement and Learning and Development roadmaps. When competencies are clearly defined by level, Enablement can build training modules that target specific skill gaps. Development planning becomes focused on capabilities that matter for advancement rather than generic training.
This creates a virtuous cycle: career architecture defines the levels, competency models define what “good” looks like at each level, Enablement builds capability to achieve those standards, and compensation rewards progression through the levels.
Related
Talent Strategy provides the complete framework for the seven dimensions.
Financial Alignment and Cost Efficiency
Career architecture supports financial goals by ensuring the cost of sales is aligned with segment value. When talent is mapped correctly against segments, organizations achieve both effectiveness and efficiency.
The Attract, Motivate, Retain Framework
Every compensation dollar serves one of three purposes: attracting talent, motivating and rewarding performance, or retaining top performers. Career architecture helps you allocate across these intentionally rather than reactively.
Attract
Compensation is your first competitive differentiator. Most candidates eliminate opportunities based on compensation before any conversation begins.
Career Architecture Enables:
• Benchmark right roles at right levels.
• Strategic decisions on positioning.
• Competitive offers to close candidates.
Motivate
Target pay is one thing. Actual pay is another. Accelerators reward excellence without creating windfalls—derived from benchmark data and quota attainment.
Career Architecture Enables:
• Role definitions for calibration.
• Pay-for-performance differentiation.
• Accelerator design grounded in data.
Competency Exepectations
Retention is not just about current pay. It is about future earning potential and career visibility. Clear paths increase retention of top performers.
Career Architecture Enables:
• Visible career progression paths.
• Development planning with clarity.
• Internal fill rate improvement.
Cost of Sales by Segment
When career architecture aligns talent to segments properly, the cost of sales becomes progressively more efficient as you move up market. This is the financial logic of segmentation-based architecture.
SMB: Higher cost of sales as a percentage of revenue because deals are smaller. But you deploy lower-cost talent at IC1 and IC2 levels, keeping absolute costs manageable. High volume compensates for lower margins per deal.
Mid Market: Moderate cost of sales percentage. Larger deals justify higher-cost talent at IC2 and IC3 levels. The ratio of
compensation cost to revenue generated improves.
Enterprise: Lower cost of sales as a percentage of revenue. Large deals justify premium talent at IC3 and IC4 levels. Even with higher absolute compensation, the margin contribution is greatest.
Without this alignment, organizations make costly mistakes. They deploy expensive senior talent against small deals that cannot justify the cost. Or they assign junior reps to complex enterprise opportunities they cannot close, resulting in lost revenue.
Why This Matter for Finance
Compensation is typically 40 to 60 percent of sales costs. Every 10 percent compensation increase creates a 4 to 6 percent margin impact. Misleveled roles create compound inefficiencies. Market misalignment drives unwanted attrition.
Finance or FP&A generally leads the overall top line global and regional revenue forecast. They need career architecture to:
• Model costs accurately by role and level
• Understand capacity requirements by segment
• Account for actual ramp time reality
• Plan for expected attrition rates by level
• Align hiring plans with budget and business needs
The Capacity Planning Reality
Capacity planning is where budget meets reality. Organizations routinely experience gaps between headcount requests and productive capacity. Sales leaders request a certain number of heads, but after approvals, hiring timelines, and ramp periods, the number of fully productive reps is often significantly lower.
Career architecture gives Finance the role definitions they need to build realistic capacity models. When roles and levels are clearly defined, Finance can apply appropriate productivity assumptions for new hires at each level, plan for expected attrition by segment and level, and build realistic timelines for hiring and ramp. This enables more accurate forecasting and helps avoid the common pitfall of setting quotas based on headcount that never materializes.