In complex organizations where teams operate with different KPIs and priorities, fostering a culture of collaboration with stellar sales and operations planning (S&OP) is essential, but endlessly challenging.  

Few leaders understand how to meet this challenge in the moment better than Akira Mamizuka, VP of Global Sales Operations, SaaS, at LinkedIn. Overseeing a portfolio that includes LinkedIn Talent Solutions—responsible for 60% of LinkedIn’s B2B revenue—Akira has spent years fine-tuning the art of aligning cross-functional teams.  

From scaling LinkedIn’s LATAM operations out of Brazil, to leading EMEA sales ops from Ireland, he’s mastered the complexities of driving teams' strategic initiatives across geographies. Before LinkedIn, he crafted revenue and sales strategy playbooks for global enterprises at McKinsey & Company, consulting.

In this episode of The Sales Compensation Show, he took us behind the scenes into how LinkedIn ensures cross-functional alignment despite its dual nature as both a consumer platform and a B2B enterprise.

Watch the full episode here and dive into the highlights below.

Episode resources

• Connect with Akira on LinkedIn

• Book recommendation: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Collaboration starts with clarity—own your function’s narrative (and eliminate ambiguity)

To start, when it comes to what effective cross functional collaboration looks like in a SaaS company, Mamizuka didn't mince words:  

"It starts within each function having a very clear, well-defined understanding of the reason the team exists.
What are they solving for? What is the unique value they bring to the table?"

At LinkedIn, he explains, every function operates under a 'Vision to Values' framework—a hard-hitting statement that defines a given function's purpose, key success metrics, and impact.  

The non-negotiable takeaway for RevOps leaders? Codify your function’s purpose and ensure each function has a very well understood, documented vision: Make it clear, compelling, and universally understood. Further, broadcast this internally so every adjacent team knows its value and how you measure success.

At the end of the day, the best revenue teams are surgically precise in how they drive collaboration (and their goals) forward. When the right teams are empowered with the right frameworks, the results pour in.

Which brings us to...

Kill the guesswork—Use battle-tested decision-making tools

Akira insists nothing derails collaboration faster than ambiguity. To combat this, SalesOps at LinkedIn leans into structured frameworks. Among tools like 'five day alignment' and Clean Escalation, Akira also recommends:

• RAPID: which clearly defines who Recommends, Agrees, Performs, Inputs, and Decides on key issues, and

• RACI: which explicitly assigns roles as Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, or Informed—eliminating confusion.

The result of embracing these structured frameworks? Fewer bottlenecks, faster decisions, and a unified approach to executing cross-functional strategies.

The game-changing impact of a unified GTM planning process

According to Akira, one of the most significant frameworks LinkedIn has implemented in recent years is One Go-To-Market Planning—a process designed to ensure all functional teams align their resources to the broader business strategy.

At LinkedIn, different business lines operate with their own P&L structures. However, functions like sales, marketing, support, and customer success don’t report into a singular business unit—they report to their respective global functions. This structure inadvertently led to misalignment at times: as each function followed its own priorities and budgets, rather than making resource allocation decisions in service of a unified strategy.

The impact of this misalignment was tangible. While the sales team might have been tasked with increasing sales in Asia, for example, simultaneously the marketing team may have been allocating more paid media budget to the U.S.. Ultimately there were signals of disconnect between strategy and execution.

To solve this, LinkedIn introduced the One Go-To-Market Planning process, which brought all functions together during the annual planning cycle to align on:

• Key business priorities for the upcoming fiscal year,

• how resources should be allocated cross-functionally to support those priorities, and

• trade-offs that may need to be made between functions.

By implementing this approach, LinkedIn reallocated resources dynamically. They could shift budget from support to marketing or from sales to customer success—based on what would have the greatest impact on business objectives.

Instead of operating in silos, each function is now empowered to make decisions during planning, all in service of the company’s broader goals rather than just their own department’s success.

Using the "Core 4" to create a culture of collab amid competing priorities

Another one of LinkedIn’s strategies for aligning teams is the establishment of its "Core 4"—four key metrics that define success across the organization and serve to unify the teams.  

With the nature of their split business:

• Two of these metrics focus on the consumer side, measuring weekly active users and session engagement,  

• while the other two focus on the business side, tracking revenue and margin.

Here's more on this from Akira:

By ensuring every function is contributing to at least one of these core metrics, LinkedIn creates clarity across teams. This shared understanding minimizes siloed thinking and provides common ground and a shorthand for collaboration, even when priorities between teams differ.

To operationalize this, LinkedIn encourages leaders to coach their teams on managing collaboration effectively. A core part of this coaching is helping teams understand not just their own KPIs, but also how their cross-functional partners measure success. By fostering mutual understanding, teams can work toward shared objectives rather than competing interests.

The role of psychological safety...

Beyond shared metrics, LinkedIn also places a strong emphasis on team dynamics. Mamizuka referenced a Google study on high-performing teams, which identified psychological safety as a critical factor in effective collaboration.  

In short, you want your team members to feel comfortable voicing their perspectives without fear of negative consequences.

Crucially, LinkedIn recognizes that cross-functional collaboration requires a balance of what Mamizuka calls "healthy tension." Too much friction between teams leads to toxicity and inefficiency, while too little results in complacency.  

Your job is to find the optimal level of tension—where teams challenge each other constructively for better outcomes and innovation.

Leveraging sales compensation as a GTM accelerator

As Akira shared with us, sales compensation isn’t just an operational afterthought at LinkedIn—it’s a strategic lever that drives seller behavior and business priorities. Comp design is deeply embedded in annual go-to-market planning, ensuring that incentives align with broader strategic objectives.

He went on to share a compelling example of how LinkedIn restructured its sales compensation to accelerate the adoption of a strategic enterprise offering.

Originally, LinkedIn’s compensation plan was unchanging and very simple: reps were given a single revenue target or quota and could hit it by selling any product mix. But as LinkedIn’s product offerings evolved, leadership realized that incentive structures needed to evolve, too.

Particularly with the introduction of enterprise programs—a large-scale, high-discount purchasing model—the existing compensation framework failed to keep up.

They also recognized that sellers needed time to train, adapt, and shift selling behaviors. The new offerings often involved longer sales cycles and required deeper customer education, so simply layering them into the existing comp model wasn’t going to cut it.  

Recognizing the disconnect, LinkedIn brought together key stakeholders—pricing, sales operations, and compensation design teams—to rethink how to better align incentives with strategic priorities. They discovered the previous multi-year kicker wasn’t driving enough meaningful behavior change. Reps weren’t necessarily prioritizing enterprise program deals because the incentives for them were delayed and not substantial enough to shift their focus.

To solve for this, LinkedIn eliminated the multi-year kicker and instead embedded the full value of enterprise program deals directly into the compensation plan. Now, when a rep closes an enterprise program deal, they immediately get credit for the full multi-year value in the current compensation period—rather than waiting for future payouts.

The impact of this shift was immediate. With the new incentive model in place, Akira referenced a “hockey stick” surge in enterprise program adoption. Sales reps were now more motivated to pitch and close these high-value deals, leading to a significant increase in both conversion rates and enterprise program sales.

Seller feedback: The key to effective compensation design

Sales comp changes can trigger strong reactions. Which is why LinkedIn’s sales planning process didn't just push changes top-down—it worked to actively incorporate seller feedback through structured focus groups and change-management initiatives.

Per the example of the shift away from multi-year kickers—to help ease the shift into a quota credit uplift model, LinkedIn invested three months in proactive change management, including:

• Running focus groups with sales reps and managers to explain the rationale and gather feedback.

• Simulating earnings projections, showing reps how they could earn more under the new model—especially if they were top performers.

• Communicating transparently that the shift was designed to reward the best reps and accelerate adoption of strategic deals.

The result? The company saw high engagement and rapid adoption. Once reps saw that high performers would actually earn more under the new model, concerns dissipated. In fact, the change was easier to roll out than expected, thanks to the psychological impact of framing compensation in terms of upside, rather than loss.

Tune in for more

Ultimately, LinkedIn and Akira's approach to Sales Ops illustrates that fostering true collaboration isn’t about eliminating differences in priorities—it’s about ensuring alignment on broader business goals (all while maintaining an environment of trust and constructive challenge).

This balance is what enables Akira and team to drive results across both its consumer and enterprise business segments. Tune in for the entire episode for all the takeaways!