Forma.ai

A haunted house, except it's filled with commission disputes. 👻

From unintended gaming to unbalanced territories, most sales compensation professionals admittedly have some horror stories to share... 👀🎃 So at our virtual conference, we chatted with Vincent DaCosta, MBA, CSCP from Databricks and Kristina Plane from Cisco to dissect sales comp nightmares—where well-intentioned incentives backfired. Catch a glimpse below, then dive into our full takeaways linked in the comments to prevent your own disputes.

Last-minute scary Halloween costume:

How do you know if your compensation plan is actually driving the right seller behaviors? Let alone the behaviors aligned to your ever-evolving strategic business goals? Testing the effectiveness might look like: - Collecting a rep sentiment survey mid-year, - Measuring ketosis of attainment quarter over quarter, or - Running short-term pilots and A/B testing. These are a few examples of how you might assess sales comp plan performance, shared by sales effectiveness experts Melissa Fenner of Docusign, Leo Rocha from CHG Healthcare and Forma.ai's Nabeil Alazzam, in their Sales Planning Masterclass on best practices. Watch the full session on-demand here: https://frma.ai/4hv6EKL

As a trend, sales compensation has been moving from macro to micro (when it comes to metrics, that is)... But truly exceptional salespeople? Well, according to Rick Butler—the very best have already been ahead of the game on this. Today, not only are organizations moving toward more specialized compensation models tailored to roles, sales cycles, and activities—but the complexity is dialling up with compensation considerations spanning the customer lifecycle (i.e. land, adopt, renew, expand...) Fortunately, top sellers already take a full-view of the customer and consider how they can create incredible customer outcomes. Which sales stars do you know and appreciate who approach selling like this?

Analyze last year's compensation plans early enough and you can begin to identify data-driven changes for next year well in advance, plus generate the buy-in needed for smoother change management. We asked compensation experts Leo Rocha and Melissa Fenner (from CHG Healthcare and Docusign respectively) all about plan design best practices for 2025 in our recent Sales Planning Masterclass session. And they delivered! See the full conversation on-demand here: https://frma.ai/4hkkb7N

🎃 For some it's spooky season, for others its sales comp planning season- and those shouldn't be synonymous! In this week's 'Here's the Kicker' newsletter we share practical ways to ensure your 2025 comp plan is rolled out on time, as well our recommendations for how to approach data-driven quotas (critical for your growth in the coming year).

Need to queue up a podcast for this Friday's commute? 🎧 Accord's 10/10 GTM show is just the ticket. Our Founder and CEO, Nabeil Alazzam recently sat down with Ross Rich to share how to make sales compensation a true growth lever for your organization. From approaching quota setting as a data science problem—to aligning incentives across GTM teams—the chat is packed with great takes on how to drive better results and stop planning in silos. Catch the episode here 👇 https://frma.ai/3UnkqF7 #SalesCompensation #SalesLeadership

"But Siege-as-a-Service is our core product" 😅 Sales Ops leaders—as you design new plans this year, quota setting is absolutely essential to get right. And you certainly don't want...*this* situation on your hands with gut-feel data or untested methodology. Check out our recommendations on this here: https://lnkd.in/g88Segns

Today, consumption or usage-tied incentives have added a whole new level of complexity to sales performance management. As we discussed with experts Dal Sidhu and Dr. Robert Bieshaar—for a while now, it's been essential to consider the entire customer lifecycle and GTM strategy in order to create nuanced comp plans. See what they had to say about this increasing complexity, what it means for sales roles, interacting with Product, and more below 👇