How should SDR, AE and customer success comp actually differ, and why?
Pay variable in proportion to how much of the outcome the person controls. An AE controls the close, so around 50:50 with a real accelerator. An SDR controls activity and qualification but not the win, so 70:30 or 80:20 base heavy, paid on qualified meetings that reach a defined stage, never on raw meetings booked or you get junk. Customer success is around 75:25 and should be paid on retention and expansion, not on a revenue number they cannot influence. Keep the payout cycle under 60 days for everyone, because an incentive a person collects six months later is not an incentive, it is a bonus.
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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.
Worked examples with real numbers for an SDR at 70:30, a CS role at 75:25 and a presales engineer at 80:20, each with quota, metric and payout. Copy the shape, change the currency.
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.
Actual rupee bands for junior, mid and senior SDRs in India, the cost comparison against a US hire, and a hiring process built on live mock calls. The most concrete India SDR numbers we could find in one place.
