Jaytea

N/A

Startup “team” commission

Hello, I was interviewing for a startup, and they said they have a “team quota” since they are in a series A, they don't know the sales team too well to know what a good quota would be for all reps. They decided to make it your quota based on how much your team makes instead of individually. Basically

1. because AE’s might be fighting leads based in different regions etc

2. not enough data for them to make a good standard for a quota

would you consider this a red flag in a sales team mainly because someone could slack off and the whole team will be affected? At the same time, they are starting to bring on a big sales team, so idk. they pay pretty nice tho and have benefits that are great for interns.

🧠 Advice

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

It’s a massive red flag. Having designed comp plans for many stages of companies I can confidently say that a series A company should have figured out their goals for all levels of their sales org. At least a baseline that can be adjusted based on reality of the data collected.

saaskicker

Celebrated Contributor

Enterprise AE

100% agree with this. Whatever the "team goal is" divided by the number of reps is the quota give or take.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

🚩🚩🚩

Gasty

Notable Contributor

War Room Community Manager

It's like taking a collective responsibility to fix global warming. I don't see it working.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

I like this example 😅

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

If the team is small, no one should be able to hide. You can hold each other accountable.
Honestly in small teams and in tech sales in general, sales is a team sport (especially when you're working with BDRs, SEs, CSMs, and your leadership).If you like team atmosphere and are willing to not be a slacker, this type of quota can work well!

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

What do you feel about the company and you being there? For me it’s a red flag because I don’t like disorganized atmosphere. Even if I join, I will be disturbed with the constant thoughts whether this is the right company. But hey if you feel that the risk is worth it, why not give it a try.

Jaytea

Catalyst

N/A

Honestly the company is REALLLLY CHILL, Not only that but once again the be its I get as an intern is a food stipend ($100 wk, phone bill paid for, book budget). I like the atmosphere since I came from another startup and like that kinda challenge. The problem is we are selling to pre seed to series A startups and if I do continue I don't think we will ever reach the enterprise lvl, so I don't know if the pay will be worth it. Unless the company piviots to larger companies either way I'm just a junior so I think it would be good experience. If they can't reach enterprise levels I'm probably out as the pay will be bad. I would probably stick with them for 2 yrs and get an AE Position and dip but idk

punishedlad

Tycoon

Business Development Team Lead

100%🚩
But are you saying you're an intern? Are you eyeballing a full time position?

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

Yeah, I would go for it if I were you, but just to avoid anyone to slack off on his target there has to be frequent meetings for the whole of you done by your senior or even to agree to do em together on a personal level, just to review and follow up with the team targets to make sure that no one of you would impact the ship to sink, so there has to be continuous follow-ups to cover any missing tasks just to see who didn't do this or that of his assigned tasks and why!!

detectivegibbles

Politicker

Sales Director

Push for individual comp structures. Or leave. This is the way.

ChumpChange

Politicker

Channel Manager

Massive red flag and incredibly short-sighted. This is going to make things contentious internally and would ignite a litany of new problems. How would you evaluate performance, track records, and who warrants a pay raise/title change? There are a ton of reasons why this is not a smart idea.

LMachine

Valued Contributor

Sr. BDR

Group commission can be another way to say no commissions. What size is the team? What are the quotas/commissions of other people in the same role at similar technology companies? I was once fooled by a group commission plan, which was stated to be my own individual commission plan (which was still a part of the group commission plan, a deliberate omission). Never again!

TennisandSales

Politicker

Head Of Sales

I have been apart of a team quota before and i found it to be really nice.

But for series A i would say that they should have individual quotas and have it be a conservative number. you want your reps hitting the number and building momentum in my mind.

buckeyenation

Acclaimed Answer

super cool startup experiment, let me know how it goes. Founders are trying to have a heart etc. But as others have said, a series A company should have at least somewhat of an idea on reasonable quota per rep.
I would be interested to see how the team does as a result.

Senior Manager of Partner Sales

Though I do think it is a red flag, I will chime in and say it should boil down to leadership and a timeline to get individual quotas.

I recently stood up a team doing something entirely different than I have ever seen done - selling for over 100 partners into their books of business through many methods. I found it dang near impossible to create comp plans even 6 months in and so we pushed a more collective agenda for our goals. Now I still had individual expectations and as @DungeonsNDemosmentioned, no one could hide and they held each other accountable.

Mind you, the plan was always to figure out how to crack the nut on individualized plans, but I was more worried about finding food for the team than how they were getting paid in the initial phase.

I would ask what their plans are longterm because I do not think a collective quota will work with a team over maybe 8-10.

Then again, people didn't believe in 4-day workweeks or fully remote work and those two novel concepts are changing things up so maybe it could work and we just haven't seen it yet...!

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Jaytea

Startup “team” commission

16 comments

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