How Top RevOps Teams Are Taking Sales Compensation to the Next Level

Sales compensation sits at the heart of every B2B go-to-market engine. It’s usually the single biggest GTM investment. It shapes behaviour. And when it breaks, it breaks fast.

In a recent Qobra webinar, Jeff Ignacio (Head of GTM, Keystone AI), Chris Cook (RevOps Director, GoCardless), and Antoine Fort (CEO, Qobra) shared how top RevOps teams design compensation plans that scale, without creating chaos.

Here are the biggest lessons from that discussion.

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1. Start With an Audit (Not a Blank Page)

Great comp plans don’t start with creativity. They start with clarity.

What the experts look at first:

• Number of metrics: If you need a calculator and a whiteboard to explain your plan, it’s already broken. Three metrics max, each worth at least 20%.
• Influence: If a rep can’t control a metric, it shouldn’t be on their plan.
• Pay-for-performance alignment: Do top performers earn significantly more than average performers? They should.
• Attainment patterns: If 80% of your team isn’t hitting 80% of target, the plan—not the reps—may be the issue.
• Accelerators: Are there meaningful rewards for beating quota? Is the curve motivating the right behaviours?

Jeff also underlined the basics: compensation philosophy, salary ranges, leveling, CRM data quality, and whether quotas reflect real forecasting.

This first pass tells you if the system encourages performance, or quietly kills it.

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2. Watch Out for the Common Pitfalls

Chris and Jeff both shared examples of comp plan issues that still pop up far too often:

• Too many KPIs → reps ignore them
• Wrong KPIs → reps chase what doesn’t matter
• Comp misaligned with margins → finance loses trust
• Rewarding activities instead of outcomes → busywork replaces pipeline
• “Cobra effect” → well-intended incentives create the wrong behaviour

One big red flag: plans that look good in a spreadsheet but create side-effects in the field.

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3. Who Gets a Say? Follow the Right Order

Compensation sits at the intersection of several teams. But each has a different role:

• Finance sets guardrails: CAC payback, cost of sales, and whether the model is sustainable.
• Sales leadership validates the plan and ensures it motivates the field.
• RevOps builds it, operationalizes it, and ensures it’s fair, simple, and measurable.
• ICs and managers give feedback, but they don’t drive design.

Annual planning is the backbone here. This is where quotas, strategic priorities, headcount, and budgets should align long before compensation mechanics are drafted.

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4. Top-Down or Bottom-Up? Mostly Top-Down

Targets and compensation design are primarily top-down because they must tie back to company goals and revenue models.

But ignoring reps is a mistake.

The best teams collect input from the field, not to let reps design their own plans, but to catch friction early. As Antoine noted, even simple interviews can uncover blind spots, especially when testing new mechanics or accelerators.

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5. The Fundamentals of a Strong Compensation Plan

Before you do anything, define the basics:

• Clear role definitions: What outcome does the role deliver? Hunter? Farmer? Expansion?
• Variable vs fixed: How “at risk” should the role be?
• Expected behaviours: What exactly do you want reps to do more (or less) of?

Once the foundation is set, build the mechanics:

• Acceleration and uncapped commissions to reward over-performance
• SPIFFs for short-term focus, without contaminating the core plan
• Transparency so reps understand exactly how they earn
• Predictability so Finance isn't surprised at payout time
• Carrots > sticks: Positive motivation always wins

For a deeper dive on designing incentives that actually work, check out our guide on how to build a fair and transparent sales compensation framework.

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6. Simulations: The Underrated Secret Weapon

Chris keeps it simple for predictable ACV models. Jeff and Antoine go deeper.

Antoine’s method is particularly effective:

Instead of quota-based simulations, project payouts based on real revenue, quarter by quarter.

This avoids the classic problem where changing quotas makes year-over-year comparisons meaningless.

Simulations help answer the real questions:

• What happens if a rep repeats last year’s performance?
• What if they grow 10%, 20%, or 40%?
• Does the plan still make financial sense?

If the answers surprise you, the plan needs work.

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7. Small Tweaks, Big Impact

Sometimes a small change fixes a huge problem.

Chris shared an example: introducing a curve so reps earn the same commission rate in Q1 as in Q4. This removed seasonal bias and stopped reps from “waiting for accelerators” later in the year.

Jeff highlighted the power of differentiated product quotas to align reps with strategic priorities, especially when a business wants to drive adoption of a new product line.

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8. Rollout: Don’t Treat It Like an Afterthought

Even the best comp plan fails if rollout is sloppy.

The experts recommend:

• Start early: Align communication, enablement, and tooling ahead of the new fiscal year.
• Send commission letters clearly and on time.
• Use software to support the rollout live, so reps instantly understand how the new model affects them.

With Qobra, letters and plan details are shared in-app, and reps see their payout logic immediately, which means less back-and-forth and far fewer disputes.

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9. Build vs. Buy: Why Excel Eventually Fails

Every company starts on spreadsheets. The problem is they don’t scale past ~50 reps.

Excel leads to:

• Errors
• Disputes
• Manual workflows
• No audit trail
• No visibility for reps
• Zero real-time data

“With Qobra, I gained a partner, not just software.”

Chris Cook, RevOps Director at GoCardless

Here’s what changed for him and his team at GoCardless:

• Higher trust in RevOps
• Fewer disputes and less frustration
• Real-time visibility for reps
• Simpler attainment views for managers and leadership
• Creative plan design finally possible
• Time saved every month because workflows are automated
• Smooth onboarding even when team members change

In short: buying gives you transparency, predictability, and control that spreadsheets can’t deliver.

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10. The Takeaway: Simple, Fair, Transparent Plans Win

Sales compensation doesn’t need to be complex to be effective. In fact, complexity is usually the root of most problems.

The best RevOps teams follow a simple playbook:

• Keep plans clear and easy to understand
• Align incentives tightly with company goals
• Use data to test, adjust, and validate
• Roll out thoughtfully
• Automate early to build trust and avoid errors

Companies grow. Compensation must keep up.

That’s exactly why Qobra exists, and why more than 200 organizations now use it to run fair, scalable, and transparent compensation processes.