thebatman

Strategic Partnerships/AE

Am I getting screwed on this commission plan?

So I am in a strategic partnership manager role and my CRO just told me we need to change how my commission structure works.

Currently I get 2K for every new partner I sign. That is just signing no other metric attached to it. I would then get another 2K when that partner would bring in 20 new customers.

Then I would get paid $90 for a new fully won customer and $19 for any new subscription that come from any partner. regardless if I sign them or not. Only down side is that these deals I create from partner channels go directly to AE's so they are out of my control.

My CRO told me that we need to do away with the 2K signing bonus and increase the amount I get from fully won customers and subscriptions.

So now no 2K on signing and now I get $250 for fully won customers and $100 for subscriptions. Alos getting a new customer is not super hard but with partnerships it's slow and customers from partnerships sometimes are missed by our AE's

All while still getting the 2K bonus when I partner brings in 20 customers but now there is a time limit of 24 months for me to get this. Plus i have the option to do this with partners who are deactive and if i get them active again i get the bonus.

Oh I also get 6.6% on all sponsorship sales for our events that I make.

I understand why he wants to take that 2K away since it's literally just signing paperwork and bears no real revenue for the company at that moment. Plus it seems like a fair trade off. I am also thankful that he took the time to talk it through with me and understand some things.

Sorry for the long post just needed to explain it all and I wanted to get your take on it. I have been here 4 years and worked my way up to this role but I still want some advice from people farther along than me. I don't want to miss something.

🎯 Career Development

🍾 Commission

13

14 comments

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medhardwaredr

Politicker

8

Director of Sales NA

Yea that sucks, however you had it in easy street from the get go they were bound to see it.
New structure isn’t the worst so that’s good. You can still do well

jefe

Arsonist

3

🍁

This is the answer, unfortunately. Be happy you had it good for so long.

It was bound to end.

thebatman

Contributor

2

Strategic Partnerships/AE

Yeah that is true! Thank you!

FinanceEngineer

Politicker

1

Sr Director, sales and partnerships

Looks like the answer is “it has been more pay for sales vs contracts” which is the shift we are seeing across the board even in payments.

Phillip_J_Fry

Opinionated

4

Director of Revenue

My question is, why would the company care at all about how many new partners you bring on board? You could onboard every VAR in the nation and it doesn't mean they're going to sell anything for you. Every channel manager role I've seen has had a revenue quota to hit based on deals that were brought to us by the partner.
What the CRO is pushing for seem to be more in line, although the dollar amount seems low, unless you small deal sizes in general.
I hope you cashed in on those 2k bonuses though. That would be the dream.

NoToBANT

Catalyst

4

Senior Account Executive

Yeah - you’re not getting screwed.

In fact, you were probably the one screwing the company (not a bad thing, kudus to you for collecting the bag)

Congrats on earning for not signing deals 😂😂

The $$ seems low for signed deals but I don’t know Jack about your current deal size so might make sense

Revenue_Rambo

Politicker

3

Bad MFer

Not ideal but this is a necessary change for the business to prevent stuffing the ballot box with dead end partners. In the short term you are likely to take a hit, but as you focus on quality over quantity the plan should pan out long term.

Keep track of all your metrics and if a year from now your pay has fallen off a cliff then you can request to speak CRO about revising.

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

3

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

+1 to keeping track. They should want to keep good reps even as they incentivize the behavior they want to see.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

1

🦊

+2

MRK47

Tycoon

2

VP of International Sales

Likely the plans represent the diff lifecycle stages of the business. The original plan was clearly front loaded in your favor…could be that business objectives at that time were more about extending the reach to a broader partner audience and creating the appropriate foundation/scalable playbook. Now objectives have shifted to be more trackable / performance based to incentivize diff behavior…..the only question would be how much influence do you have on partner performance (post appointment)? If you’re managing the entire sales cycle (appointment, onboarding and opportunity generation/support), then seems fair (and more realistic)….but if you do not have full control of the actual partner sales, then the majority of your earnings may be dependent on the performance of others.

Do you have data on the performance of an average current partner.....applying that to the new plan conditions will give you a sense of how realistic it is to match / exceed current earnings. I might also ask for a phased in approach vs a hard stop / immediate plan replacement. Before, plan was front loaded...now more back end loaded which means it may take time for new partners to start producing and reach specific KPIs...does this create a short-term gap in variable earnings?

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

^^ this. Really smart way to look at the scenario.

Armageddon

Opinionated

2

Enterprise Account Executive

damnn, you had it good! Reminds me of the time I was an AE at a company where SDRs were paid $350 for every meeting attended, regardless of title, company fit, etc... SDRs were putting meetings on my calendar with friends of friends, people looking for a job, interns -- you name it.

I ran the numbers half way through the year, every single SDR was on track to out-earn the top performing AE by 2x .. I got the hell outta there when my managers response was, "well... you should be able to convince all of these people to buy our product- its only a bad meeting if you make it a bad meeting..."

Kudos to you for riding the gravy train for 4 years

ADVICE: now that you care more about the amount of customers the partner brings on, I would prioritize my partners list and outbound into them. Ask your CRO if you can take some of the biggest earners out to lunch or dinner, build them into champions to bring you more business

noname123

Politicker

0

noname

You know where to tell him to shove it…

Justatitle

Tycoon

0

Account Executive

pyramid scheme logic here

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