How do the best companies pay reps in a hybrid or product-led motion where the product sourced the deal?

Three concrete ways to handle the awkward case where the product sourced the deal, including a higher first contract rate with no expansion pay. It answers the specific question rather than talking about PLG in general.

How to build PLG sales comp plans

From QuotaPath 10 min read

• 58 percent of surveyed companies run a PLG model and 91 percent plan to push further into it.
• Most cap expansion commission eligibility at 12 months from the initial deal, some at the first 90 days.
• Paying 20 percent upfront is very high, and only makes sense when the account will clearly add users later.
• If 30 percent of free users convert without an AE, build in a cliff or decelerator so you are not paying for organic conversion.

A worked example for a 3M dollar ARR business with two or three reps: 200k OTE at 50:50, quarterly targets blending new, expansion and churn recovery, a 30 percent threshold and accelerators past 115 percent. Rare to see actual numbers.

Sales Compensation: How to Choose the Best Plan for Your Product-Led Team

From Pocus 11 min read

• B2B buyers spend only 17 percent of the purchase journey with sales reps (Gartner).
• Worked example: a 3M ARR business splitting 30 percent self-serve, 30 percent sales-assisted, 40 percent sales-led.
• Sample AE plan: 200K OTE as 100K base and 100K variable against a 25K MRR quarterly target.
• Claw back on a schedule (60 percent if the account churns in month one, 40 in month two, 20 in month three) and keep the plan to three focus areas.

Five design rules worth memorising, including show causality and keep the payout cycle under 60 days, plus a business case method for setting targets from total team cost rather than from wishful top down math.

Compensation for SaaS Sales Organizations

From Winning by Design 15 min read

• With no proven LTV, keep combined SDR, AE and CSM OTE under 40 percent of year one revenue, or 60 percent at 2+ year LTV.
• A 1 in 5 win rate is the SaaS norm, versus 1 in 3 in perpetual license sales.
• Working the SDR model backwards: 40K variable over 150 leads is about 250 dollars per SQL, or 1,250 per closed deal.
• With a sales cycle up to 90 days, 90 days is the common onboarding period; complex products take six to nine months.

From the Chennai-built comp platform that actually runs these plans for hundreds of companies. It gives the pay mix by role (50/50 for AEs, 70/30 for support roles) and the 4x to 6x OTE quota benchmark you can sanity check yourself against.

SaaS Sales Compensation Guide: How to Design Scalable and Fair Plans

From Everstage 18 min read

• Set quota at 4x to 6x OTE, lower multiple for SMB, higher for enterprise.
• Pay closing roles 50/50 base to variable; support roles run 70/30 or 80/20 toward base.
• Give new hires a 3 to 6 month ramp with prorated quota or a guaranteed draw.
• Only 21 percent of companies are happy with their comp plan and 53 percent of sellers miss quota.

QuotaPath's CEO designs comp plans for a living and here works through the hard case in this question, paying reps when the product did some of the selling, including how to handle usage based pricing where the revenue arrives after the deal.

Incentives and Compensation in Product-Led Sales with AJ Bruno

On Unlocking Revenue, Pocus by AJ Bruno 37 min