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.
4 hand-picked resources, 2 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it 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.
From Winning by Design 15 min read
Open winningbydesign.com →Why we picked it 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.
From Everstage 18 min read
Open everstage.com →Why we picked it 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.
From Wisemonk 16 min read
Open wisemonk.io →Why we picked it 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 Everstage 15 min read
Open everstage.com →How comp, quotas and territory reads from a different seat.
The same ground, over in Co-founders, team & legal, our Starting Up track.
