Case Studies
Engagement: 6-Week Benchmarking Sprint | Industry: Consumer Electronics & Technology
Services: Compensation benchmarking, pay mix analysis, quota attainment diagnostics, stakeholder interviews, market data synthesis, strategic recommendations
Written by
Matt Haller
A Fortune 50 consumer electronics company, a global leader in mobile devices, televisions, displays, and digital advertising, was experiencing persistent attrition across its UK-based sales organization. With thousands of sellers spanning multiple business units, leadership suspected that compensation was a contributing factor but lacked the data to pinpoint exactly where the program was falling short.
The UK subsidiary needed more than anecdotes. They needed an objective, market-grounded assessment that could quantify the gap between their current pay practices and competitive norms, packaged in a way that would make a compelling case to global headquarters for increased compensation investment.
6-Week Diagnostic Sprint
RevEng conducted in-depth interviews with sales representatives and frontline managers across three business units: Consumer Devices, Advertising, and Mobile. These conversations surfaced firsthand perspectives on how current compensation structures were affecting morale, performance, and retention across the UK sales organization.
Multi-source Market Benchmarking
RevEng synthesized compensation data from multiple industry sources to construct a live market snapshot, benchmarking pay mix, on-target earnings, upside potential, and quota attainment against competitive employers across both the UK and US markets. Special attention was paid to how post-COVID compensation philosophies have shifted, with UK pay practices increasingly converging toward the more aggressive variable structures common in US markets.
Root Cause Analysis
RevEng mapped the interplay between base salary positioning, variable pay mix, quota achievability, and long-term incentive availability to understand how multiple seemingly modest decisions had compounded into a significant competitive disadvantage.
Diagnosed a "death by a thousand cuts" dynamic
The assessment revealed that no single element of the compensation program was catastrophically broken. Instead, a series of conservative decisions had compounded over time, creating an outsized negative impact on rep earnings and retention.
The chain reaction worked like this: pay mix ran approximately 70/30, even though market norms had shifted closer to 60/40, meaning target incentives were smaller to begin with. Quota attainment across business units ran 10-20% below market benchmarks, driven largely by disconnects between sales capacity planning and corporate financial planning, leaving reps struggling to earn even their already undersized variable compensation. And unlike competitors, where sellers spoke about equity grants helping them pay their mortgages, the company had eliminated long-term incentives entirely, removing a critical retention lever that might have offset short-term earnings gaps.
The result: a compensation program that looked reasonable on paper but in practice left reps earning significantly less than they could at comparable companies, with no long-term upside to keep top performers from leaving.
RevEng delivered a strategic business case for global leadership
The engagement produced more than a benchmarking report. RevEng provided UK leadership with a data-backed narrative to advocate for increased investment in compensation at the global level. The findings quantified the competitive gap, connected it directly to attrition risk, and reframed the required changes not as a cost increase but as a strategic investment in talent retention and revenue protection.