I am a founder writing my first sales comp plan. What is the simplest thing that works?
One page, one number, one rate. Base plus variable at roughly 50:50 for a closer, a single quota on new ARR, a flat commission rate, and an accelerator above 100 percent. Do not bolt on four modifiers for margin, product mix and multi-year, because at three reps you cannot measure any of it and the rep cannot compute their own paycheck, which is the actual failure. Pay on booking with a clawback if the customer leaves in the first quarter, so cash flow and behaviour are both protected. Then leave it alone for a full year even when it is slightly wrong, because changing comp mid-year costs more trust than the imperfection costs money.
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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.
The clearest arithmetic anywhere on rep economics: the rule of 10 for quota against base, four months to productivity, draws during ramp, and why teams attain about 70 percent of quota capacity so you must plan over capacity.
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.
Written for Indian SaaS founders by the Everstage CEO, ex Freshworks. It gives the working numbers: quota period must be at least the sales cycle, quota to OTE around 5 to 6x, and two thirds of reps landing between 80 and 100 percent attainment.
