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.

FREE INTERACTIVE TOOL

Sales Commission Budget Calculator

Forecast the variable-comp budget your sales team will actually spend: by role, attainment distribution, accelerators, caps and new-hire ramp. Or flip it: start from a fixed budget and back into the on-target pay and commission rate you can afford. Built for RevOps and Finance.

Try the Calculator

Projected budget

£738,671

16 reps · 93% avg attainment

Commission cost ratio

4.66%

of attained revenue

Budget sensitivityPlan · 93%

How It Works

Three steps to a defensible commission budget. No signup, no spreadsheet.

01

Build your team

Add a row per role (AEs, SDRs, CSMs, AMs) with headcount, on-target variable comp and annual quota. Mix as many roles as your org runs.

02

Set attainment & structure

Tell the model how performance is distributed across the team, then set your accelerator, threshold/cliff, commission cap and new-hire ramp.

03

Read your budget

See total spend, cost as a percentage of revenue, spend by role, a sensitivity curve and conservative / expected / aggressive scenarios, all in real time.

What You Can Model

Every lever that moves a real commission budget. Most overruns come from accelerators and a top-heavy attainment curve, so we model them explicitly rather than as a flat average.

01

Forecast or reverse-solve

Forward mode projects spend from your plan. Reverse mode takes a fixed budget and solves the on-target variable and commission rate per role that exactly exhausts it.

02

Multiple roles & segments

AE, SDR, Customer Success, AM. Each role carries its own headcount, pay mix, quota and implied commission rate, and budgets blend across the whole team.

03

Attainment distribution

Set what share of reps land in each performance band. Over-performers cost more than a linear average implies, and that's exactly where accelerators bite.

04

Accelerators

Apply a marginal-rate multiplier above 100% of quota. Watch the sensitivity curve bend as more reps cross into accelerated territory.

05

Caps, floors & new-hire ramp

Set a threshold below which nothing is paid and a cap as a percentage of variable. Account for mid-year hires with a ramp length and guaranteed ramp commission.

Commission Budget Planner

Forecast the variable-comp budget your plan will spend.

Your budget

Total variable-comp budget

$

Currency

We solve the on-target variable comp (OTC) and commission rate per role that exhausts this budget at your expected attainment.

Sales team i

Currency

Role	Reps	On-target variable	Annual quota

Expected attainment distribution i

Team coverage: 100% · weighted avg attainment: — · shares don't total 100% (auto-normalized)

Plan structure

Threshold / cliff 0%

No commission below this attainment.

Accelerator above 100% 1.5×

Marginal rate multiplier over quota.

Commission cap 250% of variable

Maximum a single rep can earn, as % of their on-target variable. Slide to max to disable.

Account for new-hire ramp

New hires this year

Avg. ramp length 6 mo

Ramp guarantee 60% of variable

Guaranteed commission paid to ramping reps for the portion of the year they ramp.

Projected annual commission budget

—

Per rep (avg)

—

blended variable spend

Commission cost ratio

—

% of attained revenue

Avg attainment

—

weighted across team

Solved plan — on-target variable & rate by role

Role	OTC variable / rep	Commission rate

Budget sensitivity — spend vs. team attainment

Scenario analysis

Scenario	Avg att.	Total budget	vs. plan

Spend by role

Role	Reps	Budget	Share

Automate this with Qobra →

Estimates for planning only. Inputs stay in your browser — nothing is sent to a server.

FAQ — Sales Commission Budget

What is a sales commission budget?

A sales commission budget is the total variable compensation a company plans to pay its sales team over a period, usually a fiscal year. It's the sum of every rep's expected commission given their quota, pay mix, attainment and the plan's accelerators and caps, and it's distinct from base salary.

How do you forecast a commission budget?

Multiply each role's on-target variable comp by the fraction of that variable each rep earns at their expected attainment, then sum across the team. The key is to model attainment as a distribution across performance bands rather than a single average, because accelerators make over-performers cost more than a flat average suggests.

What percentage of revenue should commissions be?

Commission (variable comp) commonly runs about 4 to 10% of the revenue a team books, higher for new-logo sales and lower for renewals. Total sales compensation including base typically lands around 15 to 30% of revenue. Treat these as guardrails and validate against your own actuals.

What is the difference between forward and reverse planning?

Forward planning starts with the team and projects the spend it will generate. Reverse, or budget-first, planning starts from a fixed envelope and solves for the on-target variable comp and commission rate per role that exactly exhausts it at expected attainment. Use forward to size spend; use reverse to test whether a target pay package is affordable.

How do accelerators affect the budget?

An accelerator multiplies the commission rate above 100% of quota, so over-performers earn accelerated pounds that under-performers don't give back. This raises the expected budget whenever a meaningful share of the team finishes above quota, and modeling it against a realistic attainment distribution is the single biggest driver of forecast accuracy.

How does new-hire ramp change the forecast?

Reps hired mid-year rarely hit full quota immediately, but most plans pay them a guaranteed ramp commission while they get up to speed. The tool lets you add new hires, set the ramp length and the guarantee level, and folds the resulting guaranteed spend into the total budget.

Will my data be stored anywhere?

No. All inputs stay in your browser; nothing is sent to a server. Use 'Copy shareable link' to encode your scenario into a URL you can bookmark or share with Finance.

How accurate is this budget calculator?

It's accurate for the scenario you model, but a real plan may include per-deal-type rates, regional adjustments, SPIFFs, draws, clawbacks on churned deals and mid-year quota changes that a planning tool simplifies. Use it as a fast, defensible baseline; for live, exact commission calculation across complex plans, Qobra automates the full process.

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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