Next week we’ll begin our March series on Sales Comp.
Part I: Designing Rep Comp Plans
Getting the split right: Base vs Variable
Quota to OTE ratio
Baselining achievement
Accelerators
Paying sales managers
A case study: Salesforce’s early comp plans
Part II: The art and science of SPIFFS
Why do spiffs succeed or fail?
When’s the best time to run a spiff?
How should you structure spiffs?
What do common rewards look like?
Part III: Commission Stack Benchmarking
What percentage should an Account Exec (AE) make on a deal?
How much should the rep’s manager, SE, and BDR make?
What does a “good” total commission stack look like?
Does this differ based on pricing model?
In the meantime, I wanted to share some incredible answers I’ve received on the podcast to a simple, yet powerful, question:
What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever had someone try to expense?
A Singing Clown
One person thought their neighbor at their cubicle was having a bad day, so they hired a singing cloud to cheer them up.
-Razzak Jallow, CFO at FloQast
A Chainsaw
We pay people a health stipend to do something fun for their health. Sometimes that includes things for gardening. One time we had someone expense a chainsaw.
-Ivan Makarov, VP Finance at WebFlow
Sneakers
Sneakers. I don’t know if they were basketball, tennis or running. Basically they were at an offsite and the airline lost their bag and they needed shoes.
Michael Tannenbaum, Brex
Annual Flight Pass
A $20,000 annual flight pass from my head of sales. The person was convinced they were going to make that many flights and save the company money. That was a quick no…It’s a perverse incentive to travel. And it may not be the best idea for the company when they are trying to build their team. Maybe they need to have more Zoom meetings.
-Jim Cook, founding team at Netflix, and CFO at Mozilla
Purse
Someone bought a gift for their partner and tried to pawn it off as a client gift. It was a bag… it was a green little bag. Did not get through.
-Sruthi Lanka, CFO at Public.com
Dog Sitting
Unless it’s like a true trip you could not foresee and we ask you got on a plane tonight, I’ve seen people expense dog sitting for a couple weeks time.
-Jenny Decker, CFO at Front
Harry Potter Books
We have a benefit at Carta where we allow people to expense books, for their own use - we want to encourage people to read. It’s mostly for business books, but we want it to be broad. I remember someone put in an expense for 30 books, and it was right around Christmas time. Clearly they were gifts. And they expensed the entire Harry Potter series…And they bought the same series multiple times.
-Charly Kevers, Carta
Haircut
A $100 men’s haircut.
-Olivier Adler, CFO at Shippo
Toothpaste
Toothpaste. And not toothpaste at a hotel, but toothpaste at their home. It was during COVID.
-Sinohe Terraro, Envoy
$3,000 Tip
A $3,000 tip on a $1,000 bill…let’s just say that salesperson wore that one.
-Sonalee Parekh, CFO of Ring Central
Bicycle
Someone tried to expense a bicycle once…what had happened is it was stolen near company property and I guess their manager told them to expense it… I didn’t know bikes cost like $2 to $3 thousand dollars, so it was pretty expensive.
-Rohit Divate, Head of Finance at Gusto
Pottery Class
Pottery class…oh, and a swim lesson. Professional development, I guess.
-Matthew Newcomb, CFO of Chime
