Ignore the OTE headline and find four things: the base, the quota, what percentage of a deal you get, and when you get paid. Multiply your realistic bookings by the commission rate and add the base, because OTE assumes you hit 100 percent and most teams do not. Then read the fine print that decides whether the plan is honest: does commission pay on booking or on cash collected, is there a clawback if the customer churns in 90 days, is there a cap, and what happens during ramp. If quota is more than about five times your OTE, or the ramp period pays nothing, negotiate now rather than discover it in month four.
4 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it The numbers you want when arguing about a plan: median commission around 11.5 percent of ACV, AE pay mix near 53:47, quota to OTE median 4.2x, and a median SaaS win rate of 19 percent. Use it to check whether your plan is normal.
From Everstage 12 min read
Open everstage.com →Why we picked it 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.
From Craft Ventures by David Sacks 12 min read
Open sacks.substack.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 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.
