Designing the best sales compensation plans isn’t purely about numbers. Anyone who's designed a plan before knows it involves navigating the (often) complex dynamics between functions and stakeholders at the highest levels.
 
In this episode of season three of The Sales Compensation Show, our CEO and founder Nabeil Alazzam sat down with Saxton Archer, Director of Sales Comp at SOCi Inc, to explore how to manage the internal politics that come with collaborating among VPs and the C-suite.  

With a rich background in the tech sector, Saxton's held pivotal compensation roles at leading companies, like Stripe, Twilio, Collibra, and more, and we think you'll get a ton of value from his deep expertise as a long-time practitioner in the space.

In this episode he shares how you can ensure timely plan releases all while advocating for designs that drive sustainable success—even when leadership has differing opinions or competing priorities.  

Tune in for the full chat, and check out some the key takeaways below.

Episode resources

• Connect with Saxton on LinkedIn

• Book recommendation: Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari

Sales compensation plans are not a catch-all (Not every problem's a comp problem)

As Saxton highlighted, one of the most persistent challenges he's faced in sales compensation design (at seven different organizations!) is communicating to leadership what the comp plan can—and can’t—solve.  

Every org seems to struggle with the tension between structuring incentives and managing sales rep performance.

As he shares, too often, leaders attempt to use compensation plans as a panacea for sales team issues, trying to bake every organizational priority into the structure of incentives. But some problems just don’t belong in the comp plan—they need to be handled through rep performance management.

Ultimately, it pays to remind stakeholders a well-designed comp plan is a precision tool, not a blunt instrument. It can effectively drive a handful of key behaviors, but overloading it dilutes its impact.

Saxton recommends keeping your plans focused on no more than three to four key performance metrics to maintain clarity, simplicity, and motivational strength.

On navigating multiple stakeholder interests in sales comp plan design...

Another major challenge in compensation planning is stakeholder alignment. Finance, sales leadership, and Revenue Operations each bring different priorities to the table to be balanced:

• Finance is laser-focused on discounting levels or cost control.

• Sales leaders prioritize achieving revenue targets.

• Other functions have their own sub-metrics and objectives that don’t always align perfectly with sales performance goals.  

The key to managing competing interests? Engagement and structured influence.

Saxton recommends meeting individually with stakeholders early in the planning cycle to listen first—without immediately shutting down ideas. You want to ensure stakeholders feel heard and build trust at this phase.

But here’s the crucial next step: don’t walk into the room to negotiate the plan design empty-handed. Compensation professionals need to be salespeople too—arriving prepared with a well-structured vision for the plan and guiding the conversation with the C-suite toward the best possible outcome.

“The goal of sales compensation is to come to the table with something you want—and sell it.”

Saxton Archer, Director of Sales Compensation

SOCi Inc

By actively steering the discussion with data to back your points, you avoid the chaos of an open-ended debate where every department fights for its own agenda. Instead, you sell a structured vision that aligns incentives with what truly drives business success.

The best sales comp plans are intentional, balanced, and actively get buy-in from the organization; they shouldn't be reactive patches handed down from above.

Rollout: The post-plan alignment challenge

Getting all stakeholders aligned on a sales compensation plan is a massive achievement—but it's only step one. As Saxton Archer shares, your work extends to making sure everyone—from sales reps to HR, finance, and legal—understands and implements the plan smoothly.

This is where your change management skills become crucial. The way compensation changes are communicated, when they’re announced, and how they’re operationalized make or break the success of your plan.

After all, different stakeholders have competing interests in how and when a finalized plan rolls out:

• HR & Legal prioritize ensuring compliance, fairness, and risk mitigation,

• Finance focuses on budget impact, quotas, and financial viability, and

• Sales leaders value speed—getting the plan in reps’ hands ASAP for focus and momentum.

Ultimately your timing's critical

As Saxton shares, announcing the plan too early can backfire—especially if next year’s incentives are more lucrative. If reps catch wind of a better deal ahead, they may start holding deals, delaying closes until the new plan kicks in. This creates artificial end-of-year slowdowns, negatively impacting revenue targets.

Here's a clip on the ideal timing and sequence of your rollout:

How to best navigate the new compensation plan rollout

Archer recommended a staggered communication approach to balance transparency with business continuity. Here are a few of the key milestones along the way:

1. Before year-end: set expectations (without derailing momentum)

• At very least, before the holidays provide high-level targets or quota guidance to give reps an idea of where they’re headed.
• Avoid releasing full details that may cause deal-slippage.

• Overall: Do not put reps into a new year without the high-level components! Watch to avoid the culprits leading to late plan launch.

2. Early in the new year: Release the official plan

• Ideal timing for your rollout is often at (or shortly following) Sales Kickoff (SKO). For whether or not to rollout during SKO, consider the nature of the changes and sensitivities. If you're making any changes you can point to as having implemented rep feedback, SKO could be a great time to launch the plan. Though there are scenarios where you may wish to hold smaller compensation release meetings, staggering the change management comms.

• Compensation plans should be finalized and distributed early enough to maintain trust but not so early that it disrupts Q4 sales performance.

3. Parallel track: coordinate with legal & finance

• Before finalizing the plan's financial components HR and legal will typically be working on terms and conditions.

• Finance collaboration happens throughout the sales planning process—ensuring fair, data-driven quota-setting and budget alignment.

4. Operational execution: Configure system implementation & first statements

• If a sales compensation management tool is in place, teams must ensure the new plan is configured and tested in time for the first commission statements.

• This is often the most labor-intensive piece, requiring close coordination between RevOps, finance, and IT.

The key to success? Sales comp teams must lead the narrative from the front

Beyond logistics, how the plan is communicated is just as important as when. Sales comp leaders need to control the message, ensuring that reps don’t just hear what’s changing but also why it benefits them and the business.

“The goal isn’t just to hand off a new comp plan. It’s to sell it—to finance, to sales leadership, and most importantly, to the reps who have to trust it.”

Saxton Archer

Director of Sales Compensation, SOCi Inc.

By managing post-plan alignment strategically, you can ensure a seamless rollout—one that avoids revenue disruptions, and drives rep confidence for the year ahead.

Catch another episode on best practices for communicating your sales compensation plan.

Quota setting and sales comp are inextricably linked

Quota setting and sales compensation are two sides of the same coin—yet in many organizations, they’re managed in silos.

As Saxton Archer pointed out, this separation creates friction, especially when quota setting can sit outside of the sales comp team’s control but has a direct, significant impact on comp outcomes.

For sales comp professionals, quota-related questions make up a huge portion of their workload—potentially as much as 30% of the inbound concerns they handle from reps. And ultimately, sales comp teams often need to build models and budgets around quotas they didn’t set, making financial forecasting difficult.

If quotas are set too aggressively (or too conservatively), it can distort how incentives function, leading to overpayment, underpayment, or misaligned rep behavior.

The case for bringing quota setting under sales compensation

Archer argues that sales compensation and quota setting should ideally be managed together. Doing so ensures:

✅ Stronger financial modelling – Where sales comp teams can proactively align quotas with budgeting and incentive structures.

✅ Better communication & trust – Sales reps get clearer answers from a unified team that understands both quotas and earnings.

✅ More predictable payouts – Reducing volatility in earnings by making sure quotas align with incentive mechanics.

“Quota setting is so closely aligned with sales compensation—you can’t separate them without creating issues.”

At the very least, sales comp teams need a seat at the table in quota-setting discussions. Without this, they’re left managing the fallout of decisions made elsewhere—reactively answering questions and putting out fires instead of proactively designing plans that drive revenue growth.

Hot takes on overrated sales compensation trends — plus, the C-suite dilemma

In our Hot Seat segment, we explored Saxton's candid take on the most overrated trends in sales comp today—as well as the double-edged sword of C-suite involvement in comp plan design:

His take on overrated trends? The consumption-based compensation model

One of the biggest shifts in recent years has been the push toward consumption-based compensation—a model where reps are paid based on actual product usage rather than contract value. While it has clear benefits for aligning sales incentives with long-term customer success, Archer's not convinced it’s the magic bullet.

His take?

• Companies adopting consumption-based pricing may underestimate the complexities of forecasting, payment timing, and rep motivation.

• It’s not a fit for every sales motion—especially those with long enterprise deal cycles where consumption ramp-up is unpredictable.

• It creates uncertainty for sales reps—who often prefer clear targets and payout structures rather than waiting to see how much a customer actually uses.

While Archer acknowledges its advantages, he warns against blindly following the trend without considering whether it truly aligns with the company’s revenue motion.

Is C-Suite involvement in sales comp plan design a help or hindrance?

It’s an ongoing debate: How involved should execs be in the sales compensation design process? Saxton's take?

• C-suite involvement is critical—but at the right time. Because they're the final decision-makers, their buy-in is non-negotiable.

• Too much, too early, can be disruptive. Executives operate at a high level, focusing on company-wide objectives, but may lack visibility into operational constraints.

• Selling the comp plan to executives is just as important as selling it to reps. If sales comp leaders fail to frame the discussion correctly, you risk getting derailed by ideas that aren’t feasible in the short term.  

Ultimately, balancing ambitious executive visions with operational reality becomes a common challenge. If the sales comp team doesn’t proactively set the narrative, they risk getting pulled into impractical initiatives that don’t align with system capabilities or current business constraints.

The right way to engage the C-suite in sales comp decisions

To make executive involvement a value-add versus a roadblock, Archer recommends:

✅ Bring the execs in at key decision points or set milestones—not every step of the process. They should be hearing your data-backed recommendations (get them to re-align on core objectives of the plan if things go off the rails).

✅ Frame the discussion's objective to get buy-in rather than just fielding feedback.

✅ Focus on enabling leaders to use their influence strategically—to push through necessary changes rather than introducing new, last-minute variables.