Go-to-Market series: Compensation and Incentives

Vivian Guo | June 16, 2021

An overview of typical SaaS compensation plans and benchmarks related to sales, marketing, and CS compensation

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In this chapter of our GTM series, we dive into various topics and benchmarks related to compensation and incentives:

Compensation Structure

  • The majority of sales organizations have different compensation structures for dedicated reps across inside, field, SMB, and enterprise segments

  • Most sales organizations offer different types of variable compensation structures, such as commissions, accelerators, and SPIFFs (sales performance incentive fund) to reward employees

  • Marketing and Customer Success teams tend to have the majority of compensation (80 85%) tied to a base salary, with some additional upside for business goals or customer retention

Pay Variation

  • GTM compensation varies primarily based on role seniority, geography, and company performance, with most organizations looking at multiple metrics to determine compensation

  • On average, companies with coastal headquarters should expect to see a ~25% premium on AE salaries

  • Best in class companies typically compensate GTM teams by 20% more than average companies

Variable Compensation

  • Sales, marketing, and customer success teams are often compensated on different metrics, which can lead to misaligned incentives

  • Sales reps are most frequently compensated against ACV and expansion dollars , whereas marketing is most often compensated on top of funnel metrics like # leads and pipeline $

  • Customer success teams are the only GTM teams primarily compensated against retention and customer health metrics