What is an incentive compensation evaluation?

An incentive compensation evaluation is a structured assessment that measures how effectively your organization designs, manages, and optimizes its variable pay programs. It examines critical areas such as plan structure, data reliability, rep transparency, governance workflows, and analytics capabilities to identify strengths and improvement opportunities.

Who should take this evaluation?

This diagnostic is designed for RevOps managers, VP of Sales, CROs, Heads of Sales, CFOs, and anyone responsible for designing, managing, or overseeing sales compensation plans. Whether you manage commissions for a team of 10 or 500, the evaluation adapts to your context.

How long does the evaluation take?

The evaluation includes 20 questions and takes approximately 8 minutes to complete. Each question offers four answer options, so there is no open-ended writing required.

What do I get at the end?

You receive an overall maturity score out of 100, a visual radar chart showing your performance across five dimensions, and a maturity level rating (Early Stage, Developing, Advanced, or Best-in-Class). By entering your work email, you also unlock detailed, personalized recommendations for each dimension.

What are the five dimensions evaluated?

The evaluation covers Plan Design & Strategic Alignment, Automation & Data Reliability, Transparency & Rep Engagement, Governance & Payout Process, and Analytics & Performance Optimization. Together, these five pillars capture the full lifecycle of incentive compensation management.

Is my data shared with anyone?

Your email is collected solely to send you a detailed report with your results and recommendations. Qobra does not share your information with third parties. You can review Qobra's privacy policy for full details.

What if I score low on the evaluation?

A lower score is not a failure — it is a roadmap. The detailed recommendations you receive after the evaluation highlight exactly where to focus first to get the highest impact. Many organizations start at the Developing or Early Stage level and use these insights to build a business case for modernizing their compensation process.

Can I retake the evaluation later?

Yes. We recommend retaking the evaluation every 6 to 12 months, especially after implementing changes to your compensation plans or tools. It is a useful way to measure progress over time.

How It Works

Three steps to model your commission plan in real time. No signup, no spreadsheet.

Pick your role

Account Executive, SDR, or Customer Success Manager. Each persona ships with realistic defaults (OTE, quota period, tier shape) that you can tweak to match your plan.

Set your plan structure

Quota, period, attainment, cliff, tiers, accelerators, decelerators, and cap. Add up to five tiers and three accelerator brackets. Toggle ramp-up for new joiners.

Read your numbers

See your commission, % of OTE achieved, effective rate, and marginal rate, and what your next £1,000 closed earns at your current attainment. The commission curve shows your full plan; the breakdown shows which tier each euro came from.

What You Can Model

Every variable that matters in a real commission plan: tiers, cliffs, accelerators, decelerators, caps, and ramp-up.

Tiered or flat plans

Up to five tiers, each with its own rate, the classic 5% / 8% / 12% / 15%+ shape, or any custom split. Or a single flat rate above the cliff for SDR-style plans.

Cliff (threshold)

The minimum attainment below which commission is zero. Common: 50% for AEs, 70-80% for SDRs, 80-90% for CSMs. Set to 0% to disable.

Accelerators

Multiply the marginal rate above a threshold, ×1.5 at 100%, ×2 at 150%. The commission curve bends visibly at each accelerator level.

Decelerators

The mirror of accelerators, multiply the rate downward below a threshold. Less common but useful for protect-renewal CSM plans.

Cap & ramp-up

Hard ceilings on commission expressed as % of variable OTE. Optional ramp-up (50% / 75% / 100%) for new joiners' first three months.

Qobra — Commission Calculator

Commission Calculator

Model any sales commission plan in seconds. AE, SDR, or CSM.

Plan basics

Currency ?

Period ?

Day of period ? 60

OTE (yearly) ?

Variable % ? 50%

Quota (period) ? € revenue

Attainment ? 100%

Plan structure

Plan type ?

Cliff ? 0%

Tiers ?

From %To %Rate %

Accelerators ?

From att. %Multiplier ×

Decelerators ?

Below att. %Multiplier ×

No cap ?

Commission cap (% of variable OTE) 200%

Ramp (first 3 months) ?

Commission earned

—

This period

% of variable OTE

—

Effective rate

—

Commission / revenue

Next 1,000 closed earns

—

Marginal rate at current attainment

Commission curve

Tier breakdown

Tier	Revenue band	Effective rate	Earned

Tier progression

FROM CALCULATOR TO AUTOMATION

From Calculator to Commission Automation

You just modelled your commission plan. But the calculator can't actually pay your reps. It can't sync deals from Salesforce in real time, can't handle clawbacks when a deal churns, and can't give every rep on your team live visibility into what they've earned this quarter.

Sales commission software is what bridges that gap. Qobra plugs into your CRM and your payroll system, automates every commission calculation, gives every rep a real-time dashboard, and shaves dozens of hours per quarter off your Ops team's workload, with 98% accuracy versus the 92% industry baseline.

Book a demo with Qobra

92 → 98%

Commission accuracy moving from spreadsheets to a sales commission software (Gartner study).

40 hrs

Quarterly time saved on commission ops with automation (Forrester benchmark).

Disputes, reps who see live commissions trust the number, no more shadow accounting.

FAQ — Sales Commission Calculator

How is sales commission calculated?

Sales commission is typically calculated as a percentage of the revenue (or units) a rep generates, applied above a minimum performance threshold (the 'cliff') and often broken into tiers with different rates. The total commission is the sum of (revenue in tier × tier rate × any accelerator) for each tier the rep's performance reaches. Caps and clawbacks may also apply.

What is a tiered commission structure?

A tiered structure pays different commission rates at different levels of attainment. For example: 5% on the first 50% of quota, 8% from 50–100%, 12% above 100%. Tiers reward reps for crossing meaningful thresholds, usually 50%, 80%, 100% and 130% of quota.

What is a commission cliff?

A cliff (also called a threshold) is the minimum attainment a rep must hit before earning any commission. A 50% cliff means a rep at 49% attainment earns 0; at 51% they earn commission on the slice from 50% to 51% only (and so on into the tiers). Common cliffs: 50% for AEs, 70–80% for SDRs, 80–90% for CSMs.

What is a commission accelerator?

An accelerator multiplies the commission rate above a certain attainment level, typically at or above 100% of quota. A 1.5× accelerator on top tier means every euro above the threshold pays 1.5× the base rate. Accelerators reward overperformance and keep top reps engaged late in the quarter.

What is the marginal commission rate?

The marginal rate is what the next unit of revenue earns at your current attainment. If you're at 100% attainment with a ×1.5 accelerator above 100%, your marginal rate is your tier rate × 1.5, every additional £1,000 closed earns you more than the previous £1,000. This calculator highlights it because it's the single most actionable number for any sales rep mid-period.

How does the calculator handle ramp-up for new joiners?

Toggle 'Ramp' to apply a reduced multiplier for the first three months of a new rep's tenure (default 50% / 75% / 100%). This models the typical ramp curve where new reps aren't expected to hit full quota immediately and earn a guaranteed share of variable OTE while ramping.

Will my data be stored anywhere?

No. Your inputs stay in your browser's localStorage only; nothing is sent to a server. Use 'Copy shareable link' to encode your scenario into a URL that you can share or bookmark.

How accurate is this calculator versus my real commission?

Very accurate for the modelled scenario, but your real plan may include nuances this tool doesn't capture: per-deal-type rates, regional adjustments, contests, SPIFFs, mid-quarter quota changes, clawbacks on churned deals, or advance/draw structures. Use this as a baseline; for live, accurate, real-time commission tracking across complex plans, you want Qobra's automation platform.

Switch to Qobra?

Our customers can talk about it better than us.

Fabian Q.Veit

CEO at Make

Since we've had Qobra, we've seen between 15 and 20% progress towards our objectives.

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Jessica Ho

RevOps at ElevenLabs

I would say the tooling is very simple. You can see where the variables are coming from, so it was very easy and quick for our team.

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Chris Fine

RevOps Manager at DataSnipper

Qobra becomes like that one source of truth for everything. You know that kind of helps to give that sense of truth with finance, so that they could be like we trust this data.

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Julija Slapaka

RevOps at GoCardless

Before Qobra, it took 3-4 days to run all the processes to double check if the data is matching to Salesforce data. With Qobra it's like a maximum of 1 day and at the end of the day I'm ready to send the communication to the sales team.

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Philippine Vendeuvre

Sales Ops at Ogury

Before Qobra, compensation calculations took 5 weeks, relying on finance managers from multiple countries. Now, one person can handle everything efficiently, saving significant time and effort.

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Sales Commission Calculator