Listen on YouTube // Apple // Spotify
You can also listen to the full episode on X.
We recently published an interview that explained how sales compensation is one of the biggest levers in go-to-market – you can check out my post about it here. The feedback and demand for more content on this was incredible, so this is a deeper dive into the topic of sales compensation.
Who you’ll learn from
Brian Le (Global Sales Compensation Partner at Notion) breaks down how to build a scalable sales comp operating system.
Brian shares his firsthand experience scaling Notion’s sales comp from 80 to over 400 employees and explains why trust is the ultimate currency in revenue operations. If you are a founder, revenue leader, or sales professional, this breakdown covers everything from structuring pay mix to identifying the earliest signs of comp plan degradation. You will even hear what it takes for top AEs to pull in upwards of $1 million in a single quarter.
Episode highlights
1:15 – Brian Le’s journey through Salesforce, Carta, and Notion
4:33 – Why sales comp is the operating system for go-to-market
7:07 – Phase 1: building a scalable comp foundation at Notion
13:50 – Transitioning from seat-based to usage-based pricing models
18:15 – The 3 core pillars of a successful sales commission plan
22:09 – Early warning signs your quota and comp structures are breaking
31:41 – The real cost of losing sales reps over bad commission payouts
39:35 – How to structure compensation for your first early-stage sales hires
42:39 – Will AI agents replace SDRs and sales compensation?
Key takeaways
1. Sales comp is the operating system for go-to-market.
Most teams treat comp as a derivative of HR: the last thing built, the first thing blamed. Brian flips it. Comp is the lever that translates company strategy into rep behavior. Show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome isn’t a quote to nod at, it’s the job.
2. Trust is the currency of comp.
Before redesigning anything at Notion, Brian’s P0 was to stop the bleeding and earn the org’s trust. Comp had been run by hand in spreadsheets across stitched-together data sources. He ran a full RFP, automated commissions on Everstage, and gave reps real visibility before touching plan design. Earn the trust first, then you have a platform to move mountains.
3. Every comp plan lives on three inputs.
OTE and pay mix, quotas and pay curves, and governance. Pay mix isn’t just a split that adds to 100, it signals to reps what they actually have influence over. Quotas need both top-down and bottoms-up, backtested against real conversion rates, not reverse-engineered from a target. Governance is the policies, terms, and crediting rules. When one pillar stops talking to the others, the plan degrades.
4. Read the degradation before it hits payout.
The earliest warning sign is attainment pacing: if deals bunch at the end of the quarter, the cycle is telling you something. Next is attainment distribution. If everyone is blowing out quota, the quota is wrong, not the reps. Diagnose the root cause by segment and region before you swing a blanket quota hike.
5. A broken comp plan is a capacity problem, not a payroll line.
When a rep quits over comp, you don’t just lose the seat. You lose every dollar invested in ramping them, then eat the ramp cost again on the backfill. Brian’s fix is boring and powerful: minimize surprises. Tell reps exactly how they get paid, then follow through.
6. Comp your first reps with your eyes open.
Two schools for the early-stage founder. Put the first AE on a 100% guarantee to make them whole while you gather data on what’s actually closeable, or set a best-estimate quota with downside and upside protection, a payout cap plus a cash-flow floor. Either way, respect the precedent: once you set a threshold, it’s hard to walk back.
Brian Le
Resources Mentioned
Sophie Buonassisi (Host)
GTMnow
The GTMnow Podcast – subscribe to support
It would mean the world to us if you subscribe to the show on your platform of choice. This helps support our growth, which in turn helps us continuously bring on bigger guests and deliver the content that you want to hear most.
The GTMnow Podcast shares how the best in tech build, scale and invest.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes, The GTMnow Newsletter editions, and other content.
GTMnow is run by GTMfund, an early-stage venture firm made up of 350+ go-to-market executives from the fastest-growing companies.
GTM 198 Episode Transcript
00:00 – 00:01
Sophie Buonassisi: Brian, welcome to GTM now.
00:01 – 00:03
Brian: Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.
00:03 – 00:23
Sophie Buonassisi: It is so great to have you here. I’m really excited to dive in. We recently actually published an interview around sales compensation, but it’s from a bit of a different lens. Yeah, it was kind of, an overarching lens. It was Sephora Germany, the CEO of Ever Stage. And he’s got this purview of many, many, many different companies and their comp structures.
00:23 – 00:46
Sophie Buonassisi: And we got so many questions about comp and demand for more on comp. So we’re going to go even deeper. And from the expert practitioner view that you have having built it at notion at Cada Salesforce. So why don’t we start there with give us just a tiny, tiny bit of background on your work in the sales compensation space?
00:46 – 01:14
Brian: Yeah, I’d say I really started my career in sales comp at Salesforce. And from there you start to see, the downsizing of the organizations that I start to join. And it’s because it allowed me to get a broader breadth of, of impact to the organizations. After building out sales compensation for a massive tech company like, like Salesforce.
01:14 – 01:47
Brian: So kind of understanding comp philosophy to its core so well that you are then able to wear the different hats within revenue, operations and revenue strategy. And then how does that actually drive behavior. Right. Because for me, I think a lot of people tend to view sales comp as a derivative of HR. But in reality, sales comp is actually the operating system for go to market, right?
01:47 – 02:02
Brian: And so it really is a impactful lever for us to double down on, right and and really understand not just the plan mechanics, but actually what drives meaningful behavior for all of our reps and sellers.
02:02 – 02:19
Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. Makes me think of the classic Charlie Munger quote of show me the incentive and I’ll show you the outcome, because it truly is that of relying on sales to actually close revenue. Then the incentive is what is going to dictate that outcome, which is revenue, and what every company is striving to obtain, of course, retention also.
02:19 – 02:52
Brian: Yeah, of course. And you know, I think about sales comp, where sales comp is often something that folks tend to forget about, or it’s the, the, the, the last thing that they build or think about, but it’s also the first thing that also gets blamed, right? When, oh, you know, why is my comp wrong? Or, you know, maybe it’s, it’s a downstream, impact, from a lot of the upstream decisions.
02:52 – 03:19
Brian: And so for me, I’ve been really trying to change that narrative a bit of bringing sales comp to the forefront of the decision making process, because once you understand what the overall strategic objective of a company is or what behavior we then want to drive, then I can’t be effective at my job.
03:19 – 03:27
Sophie Buonassisi: Definitely that overarching goal. So you set up both the strategic and the operational side, really kind of owning it end to end.
03:27 – 04:09
Brian: Yeah. And because I kind of built it from beginning to end. Right. Like being someone who is actually going through that close cycle every month, every quarter, being the one to actually set up and send comp plans on a regular cadence, triaging a lot of the increase, building out the system. You then have an appreciation for this function, but then having a seat at the table to also drive and bring insights to leadership on what needs to change, to then align better align with what the company is trying to achieve.
04:09 – 04:24
Brian: Right. So it’s been rewarding getting to not just do the tactical and operational pieces, but then having a imprint on the strategy and what we’re kind of racing towards.
04:24 – 04:40
Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. And I mean you you started it from the ground up at notion. You scale that tremendously across notion across card, across key Salesforce. How many comp structures do you think you’ve built or how many sales reps do you think you’ve kind of created the comp structures for.
04:41 – 05:10
Brian: It’s kind of I actually don’t know what that number is, but I will say that, you know, when I was at Salesforce, we probably, grew this company from 40,000 employees to by the time that I left, I think it was around 80,000. So kind of doubled in size. And so, you know, there are so many sellers, on different frequency of plans.
05:10 – 05:40
Brian: And so, to even think about what the number of, of touch is quite, it’s, it’s quite jarring, but, you know, at notion, we were able to, to scale to roughly over 400 now. And when I started we were around 80 to 90 total commission more employees. So in the span of, let’s say, like two and a half years, you know, growing that much has been rewarding.
05:40 – 05:46
Brian: But also as a team of one, it’s been, quite a roller coaster, I bet.
05:46 – 05:53
Sophie Buonassisi: So take us through the roller coaster from the beginning on notion, like creating the sales compensation structure from the ground up.
05:53 – 06:21
Brian: Yeah, I’d say I think of it in three different kind of phases of really learning how to to crawl, then learning how to walk. And then now we’re kind of in this phase of like, okay, are we able to run. Right. And so the first phase and kind of my P0 when I started at notion was not necessarily to change the way that Comp actually existed.
06:21 – 06:52
Brian: It was building the foundation of sales comp. And so what that means is actually trying to just stop the bleeding from, from happening. Right. It was trying to, take a step back and build trust with the organization. Right. So before I started, sales comp was just done manually. It was done in spreadsheets. It was done with, you know, different data sources that you kind of compile together to build this model.
06:52 – 07:17
Brian: But knowing the growth trajectory that we were on, it was just not feasible for us to just continue this, this, this wave. Right, and continue to maybe just focus on the comp design change right away. It was actually how do we take a step back and build the foundation? And what that meant was automating and scaling incentives. Right.
07:17 – 08:04
Brian: So we started to go through a full RFP process, because I’ve kind of worked with a lot of the ICM solutions at both Cada and Salesforce. It was a opportunity for me to understand what solution was out there and what solution best fit the needs of notion, and that’s when we decided to go with ever stage and really build the, the foundation of automating sales commissions, providing visibility to our sales reps, and then taking that data and providing, data driven insights to leadership to then allow us to know how and where to move and when to move.
08:04 – 08:29
Brian: And so it’s been really rewarding to kind of see that trajectory and that growth at the organization. And so we did that within year one. And year two was really about, okay, how do we operationally scale? How do we actually get all of the moving pieces to kind of move in a way that kind of makes this flywheel work?
08:29 – 09:05
Brian: And so it was focusing on reporting and analytics, right? Because your data is going to inform, you know, how you should then play this next chess move, where the priorities should really lie. And building out the that the muscle of creating a repeatable system. Right. That you can rinse and repeat because as a team of one, it was hard to do the tactical things while also focusing on the strategic, priorities at the same time.
09:05 – 09:41
Brian: So I needed to make sure that the team was aware of like, okay, this is the cadence that we need to operate on. This is the expectation that we expect from managers from sellers and from leadership. And once you have that buy in, we were able to then focus on like phase three, which is okay, how do we then tweak and fine tune our comp design that allows us to better achieve what we’re looking for and achieve a more cohesive go to market team.
09:42 – 10:08
Brian: And so notion, I’d say, has been around for quite some time. But our go to market, engine has really only been around for I’d say 2 to 3 years. Right. So it’s quite it’s quite young and it’s its maturity curve. And it’s also been a great, like blank canvas for me to really steer us in the right direction.
10:09 – 10:27
Sophie Buonassisi: Well, fascinating to build with that blank canvas. And I think it’s incredible the scale that notion has had up to that point that you mentioned, you came in and there were 80 to 90 sellers. Yeah. Already in place before you even had, you know, the sales compensation automated and these kind of technologies that you mentioned like ever stayed in place before then.
10:27 – 10:32
Sophie Buonassisi: So that’s just incredible. Yeah. Skill and notion has been able to get to it’s a testament to the product.
10:32 – 11:02
Brian: Yeah totally. And you know I knew that you know there’s when everything feels like it’s on fire and there’s so many moving pieces where you know, everything is this nice shiny thing that you can fix. It can often create a lot of like distraction. Right. And and all what I’ve done with leadership was actually telling them, hey, we know these things are on fire, right?
11:02 – 11:35
Brian: But in order for us to be successful, we need to acknowledge that these things aren’t going to be perfect. We need to kind of have it on the back burner. But what is the key 1 to 3 things that we’re going to prioritize and fix now that will allow us to, be successful long term, right? It’s like not just zooming in on this one thing that needs to be to be fixed, but it’s understanding how do you actually sequence some of these fundamental changes.
11:35 – 11:58
Brian: So it actually makes sense. And you can bring the entire go to market, team along that journey. Right. And, and a lot of it is making sure that we move in tandem and we move in lockstep. And, knowing when to make that move versus doing trying to do everything all at once and not doing everything well.
11:58 – 12:22
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, completely make sense of the strategy side to that. You totally it almost makes me think of, like HubSpot because they talk about their their three tiered version in is, you know, between 2007 and 2013, I want to say, but they had essentially their, their revenue goals or go to market goals baked in as the sales lever goal is to your point of it, is the go to market kind of lever that you can pull on.
12:22 – 12:29
Sophie Buonassisi: So yeah, the first one was, land customers obviously get customers. The second one is fixed churn. And the third one was sustainable growth.
12:29 – 12:30
Brian: Yeah.
12:30 – 12:40
Sophie Buonassisi: And it really ties into those goals. So you mentioned right now you’re pulling on certain levers based on your goals. Like what are your goals, if you don’t mind me, ask that notion right now that you’re optimizing for.
12:40 – 13:41
Brian: Yeah. So currently our big focus is around shifting from our traditional SAS, C base, license base, model to unlocking this new moment on how do we actually sell efficiency, right. How do we actually sell work. Right. And you see a lot of customers, and other players in that space moving to usage based pricing, right, to this consumption model, because we’re in the era of efficiencies and we’re in the era of how do we unlock more with not just, not just prompts, but actual work, having someone who could actually, you know, synthesize all of your emails and actually respond to them, right, and, and take action on the user’s behalf.
13:41 – 13:56
Brian: And so we’re starting to shift, to selling seats to selling work or efficiency has been a big priority for, for us at notion, this past couple of months.
13:56 – 14:16
Sophie Buonassisi: Totally, totally makes sense. Appreciate you sharing that. Yeah. And, you know, notion scaled PG for a very long time. But you previously have sales lead organization experience also with Salesforce and Carto. So I’m curious, like how does sales commission strategy change based on the motion, if at all?
14:16 – 14:41
Brian: Yeah, I’d say, you know, at Salesforce you didn’t really have a plan motion or nor did you really have that quarter. So for me, working at a company, like notion where it was plug has, I’d say it’s a double edged sword, in that, you know, you, you start to, have to shift behavior in a different way.
14:41 – 15:13
Brian: And so I’d say what I gained from Salesforce was understanding the critical moments or the critical inputs into sales compensation. At Salesforce, I worked on a lot of the M&A activity. So working through the initial soft acquisition, working through the Tableau and, slack acquisition, slack was the last acquisition that I worked on before big transition over to, to, to my time at Carta.
15:13 – 15:56
Brian: And it was understanding not just Salesforce is comp design and comp philosophy really well. It was understanding it where we could then build out an M&A playbook for bringing over all of these acquisitions into the Salesforce ecosystem. Right. How do we phase out certain, cohorts of roles? How do we move them over to comparable roles? And, and, what that pay mix could look like, what the components could look like at, these acquisition companies and bringing them into that Salesforce ecosystem in a way that makes sense.
15:56 – 16:24
Brian: And that was spread over a, you know, duration of time. Right? Because you can’t just you can’t fix everything all at once and, and just expect it to work. Right. Like you need to be very thoughtful about, what you do when you do it. And, I’d say building trust is really important to me. And in terms of, how I think about, success of of my stakeholders.
16:24 – 16:44
Brian: Right. Because to me, trust is really the currency of sales comp. Once you’re able to earn that trust, you then have a platform for you to then move more, move more mountains and and build that credibility upfront with your stakeholders.
16:44 – 17:00
Sophie Buonassisi: Love that. And for a lot of leaders that want to create that trust also in the organizations that they’re building with their salespeople, you know, what are the the the components? I guess if we were to deconstruct it of a sales comp plan. Yeah, that helps enable that trust to.
17:01 – 17:40
Brian: Yeah, I say sales comp is really if you kind of remove it to its core. Right. Is I think of it in like three simple buckets. One is your OT and paint mix right of okay. Is the pay competitive enough. To market. Right. And and then the next part is well what is the pay mix. Right. Oftentimes people think pay mix is just a easy split that adds up to 100, but it’s actually a signal to the sellers of what they have influence over.
17:40 – 18:05
Brian: Right. And and so I think having a well defined and well thought out pay mix by different roles and cohorts actually signals to the sellers that, you know, okay, this is what the business wants me to focus on or this is what I have influence and control over in terms of like the go to market engine and life cycle.
18:05 – 18:37
Brian: And the second part is around all of your quotas and pay curves, right? Like you can’t have one without the other. And so you then start to look at, you know, what is the top down and bottoms up. You can’t necessarily just decide on what a quota is. Right. And and often oftentimes people try to reverse into this number when they, have a, a certain plan target that they need to meet.
18:37 – 19:01
Brian: So, you know, the easy way is to, to kind of just reverse engineer if I have this many sellers. Right. How do I then kind of divvy up the pie to actually get to these, these quotas? But sometimes you also need to do some backtesting, right. Of of what? Actually, what is the conversion rates between, some of our pipeline?
19:01 – 19:25
Brian: What does, what is our pipeline? Right. Like, do you know, at notion, we have a motion, which is great because it allowed us to kind of bring some of the self-serve customers over into the sales assisted business, and it worked well for us. Right. But then is that cohort going to dry up? And do we then need to think about pivoting strategies.
19:25 – 20:00
Brian: You know, that’s something that we’ve kind of been working through. And something that is very particular on the, the plug to like sales lead motion transition. That is something that’s kind of been top of mind for us and building more of a cohesive journey, for our customers. Right. Because it was initially just like two very separate business units that now we’re trying to unify and make sure that we put the customers first in that entire experience.
20:00 – 20:34
Brian: So I’d say that is the second piece around comp. And then the third piece, is really around the governance, right? The governance of your policies, your terms, what you’re actually crediting on and, making sure that all three pillars are, are working in tandem with each other, right? When one doesn’t speak to the other, that’s when you start to see the degradation of comp plans.
20:34 – 20:55
Brian: That’s when you start to see a lot of thrash and confusion from the sellers. And it just doesn’t, it’s something has to be fixed, within those three pillars to actually make it work. So I’d say when you distill comp down, it’s really these three fundamental like inputs to a comp design.
20:55 – 21:08
Sophie Buonassisi: You know, you’ve got these three components, the three inputs. And like you mentioned, if they’re not working together there’s some degradation. So what would be the earliest signs of degradation that founders and leaders should be conscious of and aware of?
21:08 – 21:39
Brian: Yeah, I’d say the first thing that I tend to look at is actually the quality attainment pacing. Right? So looking at, you know, if you’re on a quarterly plan, right, are deals really being bunched at the end of the quarter or how do we actually spread out, the booking of, you know, attainment across the quarter. Right. And that usually signals, okay, maybe the sales cycle is a lot longer.
21:39 – 22:10
Brian: And so you see, you see these deals kind of closing later or, or taking longer to actually, to, to actually close. So understanding how your deal cycle typically lasts or what that deal cycle looks like is really important before it even gets to the sales comp payout. Right. Like you should, you should really be looking at how the team is actually pacing.
22:10 – 22:54
Brian: Throughout that period, whether it be monthly, quarterly, semiannual or annual. Looking at certain, metrics to actually see how the reps are performing before you actually run your commission cycle, that gives you just more wiggle room to then adjust as needed. Right? Like, is it is it purely just on some seasonality that you need to address? Do you need to, potentially build a spiff to address some of, of the performance, lag and then I’d say on the actual commission payout and attainment is looking at overall attainment distribution.
22:54 – 23:30
Brian: Right. So are you having more of a right skewed, attainment distribution that most people are just blowing out their quotas. Right. And and that signals okay, I need to then either adjust what my quota is or understand what the root cause of, you know, what your attainment distribution is telling you. I’d say everyone in the industry is going to want to to chase after, you know, what is a fairly evenly distributed bell curve.
23:30 – 23:55
Brian: And, and so you start to then, align that with, okay, I need to adjust quotas, a little bit here or do you adjust it at the right, the region level, or if it’s at the segment level, sometimes there’s different levers that you can pull to actually understand, where you need to make these adjustments. Right.
23:55 – 24:22
Brian: And so for me it’s, it’s not just okay, let’s just make a blanket, shift towards, increasing quotas, but it’s actually understanding, some of the inputs to, to how we actually got here. Right. So understanding what sales managers, what some of the root cause is. And, then from there you can make the right changes accordingly.
24:22 – 25:10
Brian: And then on the, the last piece, even after you pay out. Right. It’s looking at, what your plan governance is and, and looking at if you have the right policies and terms in place to actually protect the company from a lot of the that, exposed risk when it comes to massive payouts. Right. And so we started to, you know, when I built out kind of sales comp at notion, it was not just focusing on like the plan design, but focusing on a lot of the documentation around all of the different permutations that can happen when, you know, there is a, quota adjustment that’s needed or, you know, when someone goes out
25:10 – 25:47
Brian: on a leave of absence or how do we think about hold overs, right? All of these things kind of have to work, synchronously to, ensure that you understand the, end to end mechanics of your comp plan. So I’d say those are kind of the three things that I, I look out for, in terms of making sure that your plan is, working as intended or if it requires you to, have, you know, a change mid-year or depending on what your planning cycles look like.
25:47 – 25:58
Sophie Buonassisi: And from planning cycle perspective, can you be a little bit more fluid or would you recommend, for example, you know, maximum quarterly or maximum every H1, H2 making those shifts?
25:59 – 26:30
Brian: Yeah, I you won’t like the answer, but I’d say it depends. Right. It really depends on the organization and where you are in terms of that maturity curve. For notion, we we try to keep things as fluid as possible, giving us the flexibility to adjust on a quarterly cadence because, just how fast the industry moves and giving us that flexibility to adjust as needed.
26:30 – 26:56
Brian: So I’d say most organizations will try to front load all of the planning at the beginning of the fiscal year with some buffer and and room to adjust as needed during the half. And that’s I’d say that’s kind of the the standard. But then you also have, you know, minor adjustments here and there. If needed, on a quarterly basis, on a quarterly basis.
26:56 – 27:10
Sophie Buonassisi: Makes sense. And it’s such an interesting time because, you know, we used to think, at least from the venture perspective, that if you go back a decade, even before that, pricing was something that you could, if you will afford to get wrong.
27:10 – 27:11
Brian: Yeah.
27:11 – 27:31
Sophie Buonassisi: When you’re building and now it really is it, it’s like a pivotal part of your go to market. And then at the same time, products have never been moving so quickly. And so where product used to be, you know, the sticking point now go to market is so I can imagine how tricky that would be as product launches are developing and everything is adjusting, distribution is changing.
27:31 – 27:36
Sophie Buonassisi: To suddenly have to adjust on the comp side is just it’s a lot slower right now.
27:36 – 28:06
Brian: It is. And that’s why we kind of built the the planning cycle to allow for that flexibility, because you don’t know when you need to like pivot, right. And companies who don’t pivot can theoretically just not be successful. Right. And and so you see, a lot of folks trying to figure out this cadence of how much do I change, you know, how frequently do I change?
28:06 – 28:17
Brian: And is it, you know, going to move the needle on what we’re trying to achieve? But to your point, it’s it’s a bit of a roller coaster for a lot of organizations today.
28:17 – 28:30
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. Well it’s coming full circle. You did mention it was a roller coaster out the gate. So here we are on it. Yeah it is. It’s going to be a good one a fun one. And you know this just came out. It just came out. So I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see.
28:30 – 28:31
Brian: It I haven’t.
28:31 – 28:32
Sophie Buonassisi: But it’s the compensator.
28:32 – 28:33
Brian: Wow.
28:33 – 28:54
Sophie Buonassisi: And it’s a journal. I’ll give you a copy here. Yeah. It’s a journal and it’s hilariously satirical. And when you read it, you’re, you’re like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious. But then you’re like, oh no, this like is really relevant, really hits home on the issues that are being faced actually on the sales commission and, and the robots side in entirety.
28:54 – 29:01
Sophie Buonassisi: And there’s this one kind of, page in it. Yeah, it’s called the confession wall I particularly love.
29:01 – 29:02
Brian: Oh, which pages it on.
29:02 – 29:30
Sophie Buonassisi: It’s in the insert page for and there is one confession from an eight and vertical source that says, I quit because of the comp plan. I told H.R. it was an opportunity for growth, but everyone in the room knew. And like we already talked about degradation and what that can cause. Like, what are the implications of ease and sales leaders or reps leaving?
29:30 – 29:40
Sophie Buonassisi: What does it do for sales compensation? What does that do for your fry forecasting overall? Obviously they’re usually backfilled. But what does that actually change about the way that you’re planning.
29:40 – 30:06
Brian: Yeah I mean it’s important. And it just goes to show the importance of sales comp. Right. Because like I mentioned, most people tend to think that sales comp is just a easy calculation. Right. And that you kind of just set it and forget it, but you don’t. You’re not successful. Right? Because this rep literally said he left because of the comp plan.
30:06 – 30:50
Brian: Right? Because when you’re a seller, you’re trying to maximize your earnings. And so that’s the that’s the upside right. And so when you get that wrong it trickles down to the entire go to market engine. Right. And how you need to be more in tune with the behaviors that the comp plan is actually driving and if it actually lines to the business, but, you know, if you were to put yourself in a ref’s shoes, you know, a deal that was maybe promised to me credited at X, Y, and Z, but, when push comes to shove, you actually don’t follow through.
30:50 – 31:18
Brian: Or it was miscommunicated. Right. That’s going to be a sore topic. And you don’t have the luxury of just, like, fixing it. Right? Like it becomes this, this thing that, rubs people the wrong way. Right? So for me, it’s not just the the comp plan design, but also the commitment that you make to reps on minimizing the surprises.
31:18 – 31:45
Brian: Right? For me, that is really important because it builds the trust. Right. And so when you get sales comp wrong, it’s going to bleed down. And what that means, for any organization is that you have lost capacity. Right. So you’re then having to rehire and have to go through that build again to actually get the right capacity in place.
31:45 – 31:55
Brian: So it’s a huge, you know, a huge loss when sales comp is, is is missed.
31:55 – 32:01
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah, absolutely. That that ramp color is a good point. You’re not a full capacity even if you are backfilling right away.
32:01 – 32:27
Brian: Yeah. Right. Because you’re it’s not just like okay you, you lose out on the capacity but then you lose out on all of the investments that the company made in this one rep. Right? When you know, it could be easily solved if you enable them, you actually communicate transparently on how someone is going to get paid and follow through on that.
32:27 – 32:48
Brian: Right? So for for me, building that trust with sellers and managers and the entire kind of go to market, team is really important to not just build your own credibility, but make sure that the implications to the business is not at risk.
32:48 – 33:10
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great, great call out. And you know a lot of sales reps whether they’re in an organization or they’re assessing the next role, they obviously want to be compensated for their work. Well so a lot of reps and and folks are looking at companies and this goes for any role actually people are assessing companies to understand, is this what I’m going to bet my career on?
33:10 – 33:32
Sophie Buonassisi: Is this company what I’m going to bet my career on? So for any sales reps in particular when they are assessing an organization, do you have any insight or advice being kind of on the inside of sales commission? Yeah. How do I identify a opportunity that they’re going to be compensated? Quite a bit. From if we think about like financially, yeah.
33:32 – 33:43
Sophie Buonassisi: Because sales structure often changes year to year, quarter to quarter after half. Yeah. How do people tell from the outside in if it’s going to be the right move for them financially?
33:43 – 34:19
Brian: Yeah. I mean it’s really dwindling down to what that overall OT is going to look like. And how much risk are they betting on the potential upside. Right. So that’s why you see in the ag world right. It’s it’s mostly 5050 because the upside is giving you a bit of that advantage. You know, if I’m going to potentially put my overall take home at risk, I want to be fairly compensated for the risks that I’m taking on.
34:20 – 34:46
Brian: And so my advice to sellers is, you know, what is your actual bet on the company? Because at the end of the day, you’re going to have to sell that product or and you need to be aligned to the overall company, mission and values to then be able to, speak with a lot of conviction. Right. And so, that’s kind of my advice to, to sellers.
34:46 – 35:04
Brian: It’s, you know, how do you assess what the what the potential upside is with the risks that you’re taking on? And do you actually believe in the product and the trajectory of where this product could go? I’d say those things are the two most important things.
35:05 – 35:23
Sophie Buonassisi: That’s great advice. And we always say, you know, on the VC side, you do so much diligence before you make an investment. The same should be said for any operator assessing any position. You know, it is same thing, an investment of your time and your career also. So yeah, the same amount of diligence should absolutely go in, including how the product resonates with you personally.
35:23 – 35:31
Sophie Buonassisi: Yeah. How much have you ever seen an E make? What’s the most you’ve seen an 80 make or an STI?
35:31 – 35:38
Brian: On the A side I, I’ve seen A’s make upwards of $1 million in a quarter.
35:38 – 35:40
Sophie Buonassisi: Easily in a quarter or in a year?
35:40 – 35:41
Brian: In a quarter.
35:41 – 35:41
Sophie Buonassisi: Wow.
35:42 – 36:05
Brian: Yeah. Which is kind of mind blowing. Right. It then starts to make me question did I go to the wrong, to the to the wrong role or the the wrong job? And a lot of it is then having to assess what the. Yeah I think at face value you’re like, okay, well $1 million is a lot of money.
36:06 – 36:34
Brian: Right. But what did they actually close and are they fairly compensated for bringing in that revenue is also the other side of the equation, right. Because it’s not you need both to actually justify whether or not the wrap actually deserves that, that payout or not. So for me, it’s like, okay, it’s a lot of money. Yes.
36:34 – 37:07
Brian: You know, what is the percentage of their overall OTB that they’re taking home? Were there guardrails that company had to ensure that, the pay out is, indicative of the impact that the rep had. So I’m sure there’s been crazy stories across other organizations that folks have seen. And sometimes it’s quite jarring when you start to look at these numbers and then you start to question whether or not you should go into sales.
37:07 – 37:31
Sophie Buonassisi: There’s definitely a lot more, variable total in the sales compensation world. Yeah. Year to year can vary considerably. Now, you talked a lot about the ratio on the OT side. What about for far earlier stage, you know a huge question mark from founders or early stage leaders is how much do I like. How much do I compensate my first couple reps.
37:31 – 37:31
Brian: Yeah.
37:31 – 37:34
Sophie Buonassisi: Do you have any perspective on that earlier stage?
37:34 – 38:10
Brian: Yeah I I’d say it’s an interesting question because sometimes it’s a bit of a shot in the dark, right. In terms of, you know, a founder just having, having hired their first AG, you don’t necessarily know, what the right quota could look like. Right. And so for what I’ve seen is actually different kind of, different combinations of, of setting up this initial comp plan or this comp designed for the first AG.
38:10 – 38:50
Brian: One school of thought is to actually just put them on 100% guarantee, right? Ensure that they have the that they’re made whole, while then using data points to then, shift your understanding of what can be close in in a quarter or close in a set period and then adjusting as needed. The other is actually, you know, providing your best estimate for what quotas could look like, for this rep and then having some downside and upside protection for the company.
38:50 – 39:16
Brian: Right. So do you set a a set threshold of what maximum payout could look like as well as the flip side to that is, you know, are you going to ensure that this rep has some cash flow if we’re kind of, if we’re going to set these targets that, you know, seem very arbitrary or we don’t have enough data to be able to, to have strong conviction over.
39:16 – 39:40
Brian: And so you kind of see two kind of schools of thought in this, I’ve kind of done it in both kind of capacities before. And it really depends on, you know, the level of risk, the company is willing to take on, as well as, you know, is it signaling to the reps that it’s going to minimize what their payout is?
39:40 – 39:59
Brian: Right. Because once you kind of set that that threshold, it’s hard to come back from. Yeah. And so I also think about what is the precedent that we’re setting when we signal to the team or to the rep that this is kind of our stance on, you know, the initial comp plan makes sense.
39:59 – 40:20
Sophie Buonassisi: That’s fantastic. Great advice. And last question for you, Brian. You know, one stat that stood out to me in this report and this is actually taken from a survey of over 200 sales compensation leaders. But is that 80% of sales comp analysts believe I will be the most significant change in their work over the next 1 to 2 years, I can imagine.
40:20 – 40:38
Sophie Buonassisi: At least that rings true for you. But a big question mark around I am sales comp that also comes to mind when I read this a little bit separate, but came to mind is how does the role of AI agents play into this? Are we going to need to compensate AI agents? How are you thinking about this future state with AI?
40:38 – 41:10
Brian: Yeah, I, I think, AI is is very top of mind, for, for us at notion and I’d say it’s meaningfully it’s changing, quite rapidly. And so I don’t necessarily think that it will change overnight, but you start to see a lot of focus around, what is the role of AI and the efficiency of it in the entire go to market?
41:10 – 41:42
Brian: Flywheel. And so, you know, there’s AI companies who are solely built on having, I be the SDR and beta for, for a company. Right. And and so are you starting to see kind of the, that role kind of go away? I my perspective is that it’s starting to slowly shift. But at the end of the day, there’s still a human touch, an element to it.
41:42 – 42:15
Brian: And while maybe that feels a bit farfetched, I still think people really want that human connection and I personally don’t want to buy from an AI like SDR, right? Like how much credibility does that bring to the organization? And so, you know, we still, our focus and doubling down on the screen reader role as a critical function of building pipeline.
42:15 – 42:42
Brian: But for me, AI is is not necessarily replacing specific roles per se, but it’s changing how we spend a lot of that time. And so if you’re spending a lot of time maybe trying to do the discovery or do the research on a specific customer, that’s maybe an opportunity where I could bring more, efficiency for that rep.
42:42 – 43:08
Brian: Right. So I think it’s unlocking the additional efficiencies across all go to market roles, including myself, right within within sales comp. But it’s not necessarily fully replacing, or removing these roles from the equation yet. Right. Like that that that landscape could change, you know, six months from now or a year from now, it’s quite hard to tell.
43:08 – 43:34
Brian: And, and so I’m still very bullish on the fact that there is the human touch or the human connection that is quite important in building the relationship with customers. And, who and how you decide to buy is is still, grounded in a lot of, you know, this interaction, right? Yeah. It’s it’s really important.
43:35 – 43:43
Sophie Buonassisi: Absolutely. I echo the same sentiment. Well, Brian, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the time and for the insight.
43:43 – 43:46
Brian: Well, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
43:46 – 43:47
Sophie Buonassisi: Likewise.