Case Studies
A sales compensation program built before the first hire and scaled through a year of 4x growth.
Engagement: Ongoing sales compensation design, quota setting, and plan administration
Industry: Consumer Technology / Digital Advertising
Services: Compensation plan design, quota-setting methodology and individual quota allocation, plan administration and commission accruals, crediting policy design, terms and conditions, ramp and capacity planning, governance framework, plan documentation and rollout materials
Written by
Quang Do
A high-growth consumer technology company with an established brand had built a sizable advertising business almost entirely through programmatic channels and was standing up a direct ad sales team for the first time. Everything a sales compensation program runs on still had to be built: plan documents, crediting rules, a quota-setting process and someone to own it, a system to calculate commissions, and a team to administer them. Leadership needed a plan that would let them hire sellers and pay them correctly from the first quarter, and they needed it before most of those sellers had been hired.
The company was also new to digital advertising sales. The program had to be market competitive enough to attract experienced sellers who wanted to help build a new business, while fitting a company that did not yet have the systems and back-office infrastructure of an established media organization.
The business then took off. Within a single year, the direct business grew 4x and went from one salesperson to a team of ten, and the deals the team sold spread across direct and programmatic buying, with an international partner program coming online. Each new deal type, hire, and departure brought questions that a plan written for a team of one had not needed to answer, such as how platform fees affect credit, how a mid-quarter hire is ramped, and how a departing seller is paid.
A first program built to be simple and to evolve
RevEng designed the company’s first incentive plans for the individual contributor and sales manager roles before the team was fully in place. The plans were purpose-built to be simple because the business was going to scale and change quickly: one revenue measure, a simplified pay curve with no caps, quarterly performance periods, and a ramp guarantee for new hires. Alongside the plan mechanics, RevEng wrote the plan documents from scratch, including definitions, the conditions for earning an incentive, payment terms, and the leave and termination provisions, so that a new seller could read the plan once and know how they would be paid.
That simplicity also meant feedback from the field arrived quickly, and it gave the team what it needed to design the next plan in short order. The engagement reflects how RevEng approaches compensation in a growing business: plan design is a continuous process that keeps pace with the business, and each cycle builds on what the last one taught.
Administration as the feedback loop
RevEng also took on the running of the program: monthly commission accruals, quarterly calculations, preliminary and final statements for sellers and leadership, and the reconciliation that accounting signs off on before payment. Each quarterly cycle surfaced new situations for the plans to address as the business grew, from deals recorded after platform fees to a mid-quarter hire’s guarantee and a departing seller’s final payment. RevEng kept a running log of these clarifications and the interpretations agreed with leadership, and that log became the agenda for the next design.
To round out that view, RevEng interviewed sellers and key stakeholders, including talent acquisition, to learn where the plans could better support the team and what would help the company attract and reward the sales talent it needed to scale quickly.
A quota-setting methodology tied to the revenue goal
As the team scaled, RevEng built a quota-setting methodology and now sets each seller’s individual quota every quarter. The methodology combines a capacity view with the sales team’s own account-based forecast. The capacity view starts from ramped headcount, expected revenue per fully ramped seller, and the time a new seller needs to close a first deal, then adjusts for leaves and management judgment. Quarterly quotas roll up to the annual goal, and leadership can see how quickly the team has to ramp, and when hiring has to happen, for the goal to hold.
The result is a disciplined but flexible process. Each quota is fair and achievable for the seller who carries it, and together the quotas stretch far enough to deliver the top-line results the business needs to meet its objectives. The same model gives finance a number it can stand behind and gives sellers a quota they can trace back to the plan.
Designing the next generation
Working with sales leadership, finance, accounting, total rewards, and talent acquisition, RevEng is now designing the next generation of the program for the coming plan year, built on what the first year taught the team. The design sets clear rules for how each revenue stream is credited, including direct sales, programmatic sales, and revenue from the international partner program. It adds split-credit defaults, accelerator tiers, and plans for new sales and account management roles. It also revisits on-target earnings and pay mix so the plans are market competitive for the talent the business wants to attract and keep.
The documentation is being organized into four complementary pieces: an individual plan, a quarterly quota sign-off, a crediting rules document, and a set of general terms and conditions. RevEng is also building the rollout materials, written to be clear for sellers and to meet the requirements of each stakeholder group.
A foundation built to scale.
The company went from no sales compensation program to signed plans, quarterly statements, and a reconciliation that accounting approves before every payment, and the first plan carried the team through a first year in which the business grew 4x. Following a philosophy of continuous design, the next generation of the program builds on that base to create a foundation the plans and the team can scale on. One of the most important additions is a sales compensation governance committee, a formal body that owns the plans, rules on exceptions and disputes, and makes sure the foundation evolves as the business does.
Lessons from the field turned into policy.
Some of what the next-generation plans cover could have been designed for at the start, but much of it could only be learned by running the program, such as how a new deal type should be credited or how a hire late in a quarter should be ramped. Working alongside the team to administer the plans and set individual quotas each quarter gave RevEng a close view of what could and could not be measured, and the clarifications from each cycle are now policy in the plan documents. The next-generation design also puts quota and credit on the same basis, so a dollar counted toward a goal is measured the same way as a dollar credited against it. The test applied to every page, including the rollout materials, is whether a seller or manager can find the answer in under a minute.
Confidence across every stakeholder.
Quarterly quotas roll up to the annual target through a methodology finance and sales both recognize, and the capacity model shows how fast the team has to ramp and when the next hire is needed for the goal to stay within reach. The program now gives sales, total rewards, finance, accounting, and talent acquisition confidence in how sellers are paid, how goals are set, and how the plans will grow with the business. Compensation has moved from a document written before the first hire to a planning tool the business uses to decide how it grows.