The Comp Plan Mistakes That Push Good Reps Out

Speaker A: Sales leaders. Let me ask you something. When was the last time you looked at your comp plan and thought, yep, this is driving exactly the behaviors that we want? Because today's episode is for leaders who don't just pay sales teams. They're responsible for motivating, retaining, and, um, trusting them. I'm joined by Mike Pritchett, founder of Buzztrail and David Wilkins from SDR Leaders. And we get brutally honest about comp plans, why changing them kills credibility, how leaders accidentally incentivize the wrong behaviors, and why simple, often the most strategic leadership decision that you can make. This is a, uh, conversation about trust, clarity, and uh, the ripple effects comp plans have on culture, not just commissions. I'm your host, Tom Boston and welcome to the surviving sales leadership sessions from my sales coach. Let's get into it.

Speaker B: We have Mike Pritchett, founder of Buzztrail AI and then we also have David Wilkins, who is the founder of SDR leads the mayor and co founder, SDR Leaders of the usa. And I believe you have something pretty exciting, Mike. Trying to introduce yourself in, uh, a tad more detail.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. More detail than not saying anything. You mean I can do that. Excellent. So, Mike Pritchard, founder of Buzztrail. I live in London. Aussie. Uh, apologies for the accent. My background has been as an entrepreneur for the last 20 years. So I built and scaled and sold a couple. My last company was, uh, Shootster, which I sold after bootstrapping out of Australia. We ended up in seven countries. We had 72% of the world's Fortune 500 companies as clients and that got up to 150 employees. Sold that three years ago and started Buzztrail around 12 months ago.

Speaker B: As a loose agenda for today's session, we'll talk about two golden rules of comp plans. The foundations of a great comp plan, key elements that are involved. The first golden rule, David, will come to you. Make it extremely simple.

Speaker D: Yeah, the worst thing you can do with salespeople is not make it clear how they make money. If you're in sales, you are going to be coin. Use the term coin operated for everything that you do. All your activities and actions are going to. You want to see an impact to your bottom line in your bank, uh, account at the end of the month. So if you have a five step comp plan where you get different things for different stuff. If you make a comp plan where you are not directly, uh, they're going to have some impact and you make getting paid, that is the quickest fire way of having a sales team not be motivated, not be productive and leave your company.

Speaker C: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's no CFOs should be involved in formulating comp plans except just to check at the end that they're actually going to make money. They're not formulating the way they're structured, you know, and we've all been there. If you've closed a deal and sat in a boardroom or on a zoom call or whatever and closed a deal, you're already calculating the comp that you're going to make and what you're going to spend it on. And the last thing you want to do is find out at the end of the month that you were wrong and therefore you just ejected for the rest of the time that you sell it.

Speaker B: The second golden rule off the back of that, which fits quite nicely to what you just said, Mike, is whatever happens, do not change the comp plan.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, David, you had a couple of stories from previous chats we've had around this backfiring majorly, didn't you?

Speaker D: I've, um, seen in the past where comp plans were put in place at the start of years and then through no fault of the sales rep, they've overachieved. At one point it was 200% of their quota in the first six months of the year. And instead of that being seen as great, and we need to encourage that, people's comp plans were, uh, doubled halfway through the year and the compensation that was going to be owed to them was not given. And um, that had the knock on effect of people leaving the business a month later. And if we're trying to incentivize our teams to again, the right behaviors and the right behaviors are adhered to and then that happens. That really creates a descent in the ranks.

Speaker C: Yeah, I look at everything through the lens of a founder and the holistic business and how to incentivize everyone but the sales team specifically. You know, it's the first thing you set up when you set up a sales team and you get even the first SDR or the first aeon, you just focused on how am I going to comp them to get the right results. When I started my, uh, last business, it was just myself doing the sales and then I brought on one guy and we got started and it was such a simple comp plan because I'm a simple guy, right. And I'm not that bright. I just go, there you go. That made sense. I'll give them Half of the first month of revenue. That's it. Right when the client pays us. And that was it. So super simple. They got half of the first month in that first month and everyone was happy. I built the business to 10 million ARR, uh, and about 20 or so salespeople on that model, and everyone was happy. And it worked beautifully. We then got a CFO involved. We then changed a few things. We got more and more advanced and corporate and complex, and it totally screwed with everything. And all of a sudden everyone was wanting a piece of the pie because, well, hang on, this engineering, uh, actually, you know, adding to that and other people are adding to that. And there were so many different layers of complexity that we ended up probably spending more in comp than we're actually making on some of the deals. It was just absurd and no one knew what they were making. So back to our earlier simplification thing, the complexity change, even if it ended up being that they could get more, it just felt like a punishment.

Speaker B: What are you rewarding with a compliment? What behaviors do you want to drive?

Speaker D: You've got to look at what foundationally, what are the, what are the goals for the business and what's going to be the drivers that are needed at the business. So if it's that new logo acquisition, then, then that's got to be a big major component of the compliment. We've also then got to ensure that the people who are in your territory are going to be able to help you achieve that. Likewise. So there's no point in having a, a renewal part of it or an expansion if you're not doing expansions. The other pieces around, not wanting to create an atmosphere where AES are sandbagging deals, meaning they hide them up until the last point, or they hide it and bring it in a following quarter because it means that they're not going to make as much money themselves. You need to make sure that the compensation plan that's been put in place is giving that clarity and also the incentivizing for them to do those right behaviors that you do want.

Speaker C: There's a, there's a fun story about the cobra effect, which I love. If you indulge me a second to tell a story. It's, uh, it's quite funny. It's really about when the British, uh, took over India originally, there were cobras everywhere. And of course they went in and said, well, we don't want cobras everywhere. Somebody came up with a simple solution. Well, we'll pay the locals a dollar every time they Bring us a dead cobra. They said, okay, well this is fantastic. And they started lining up all these dead cobras. They were achieving their results. This is great. Then weeks later, months later, years later, they're going, what on earth? Like, how can this country have so many cobras? And of course the locals were just farming cobras and then killing them and bringing them in, making a dollar, off they went, which is the exact thing. It's incentivizing the wrong behavior, but they still get the result, which you gave them a very simple tick box of what they needed to achieve. And this level of sandbagging and twisting deals or moving deals to be two year deals instead of one year deals, lower amount per year, all these sorts of things I've seen so many times. And if there's one thing I know, if a salesperson can rig a system, they will rig a system and they'll rig it to make an extra dollar or to have an extra chance at something even if it's not good for the company. Now a lot of that can come down to company culture, but I think at the end of the day, if you make it possible or, you know, give that level of, you know, tweakability for them to make more money in their paycheck at the end of the quarter, uh, they're going to take it. So really be careful as well around what level of teamwork that incentivizes as well. So SDRs sometimes make a comp out of what an AE gets and other ways around. There's lots of ways that marketing may take some. I remember a friend of mine worked in a pancake store in Canada. I think it was when she was younger as a, as a waiter and had to pay a tip to the kitchen and to the busboy and to this, that and the other. It ended up being that if she didn't get a 12 and a half percent tip, she lost money for serving a table, which made her avoid some tables. If they weren't typical people to tip, she'd go to the American tables, try and get more because she would actually lose money. And that sort of level where she was competing against someone else and begrudged the kitchen afterwards is the exact same problem here with if AES are saying, well, I don't want this particular deal because it's come from an sdr, I'm going to lose a chunk. I'm going to focus on the deals that I can get myself. You've got to make sure that whole well oiled machine really works in sync.

Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. David, sort of looking at teams you've managed in the past, obviously well experienced in the SDR world, have there been any instances where really an SDR is or an AE has gained the system because really they've been either incentivized on the wrong things or been given a loophole that they could, they could jump through?

Speaker D: Yeah, 100%. On the, on the SDR piece. It's we um, experienced myself as a, as an SDR then also as, as leading a team where you have a comp plan, let's say it's meetings completed is the comm plan and then maybe uh, education enablement team want to do a spiff help you do a spiff to incentivize the team to book more training meetings for the, for the team. So the, the value, the overall contract value is going to be in the single digit percents of what they should be going after. But for the BDRs then themselves they're getting paid because it's classed as a meeting and it doesn't create the right environment that you're trying to do which is get either net new meetings with an account or expand uh, into uh, different use cases. So yeah, experienced it as a, both as a, uh, part of a management team and also as a, as a bdr.

Speaker B: I think that's the, the age old question of bdrs sdrs is should they be commissioned but targeted on meetings booked or meetings satisfaction. Right, eager to hear. Well either of your thoughts on that. What is the thing you want to drive when you're setting up a comp plan?

Speaker C: For me personally, you know, it's, it's all about the money, right? At the end of the day I don't care how many meetings someone books, how many conversations they have, anything else. I want money in the bank, full stop. And I think that's the same for any business if they're actually honest with themselves. So you know, if they book a meeting in an A's calendar and it's a bad meeting, as in it's just an, it's not qualified properly, et cetera, that should be uh, a negative. You know, it should be commissioned, taken off, not commission put, put on. So that approach of you know, is it sales qualified? It has to be sales qualified and the A has to tick it off and that then obviously can concur and cause you know, tension one way or another. But I think there are things you've just got to work out if you're

Speaker D: in a place where there is a, you know, that there is a lot of potential and it's a really overachieving territory. Then m. The plan has to, there has to be some sort of equality ish compared um to maybe a very territory that is maybe not as, not as productive. It's maybe brand new. We did it in the past with how we set up Middle east which was a really prime location for us in terms of our technology versus somewhere like France where it was a lot harder to do to uh, do the role. And that person in Middle east still absolutely like they were top PDR of the year. It's still really overachieved but we needed to create some sort of a little bit of parity in terms of. Of what what we would expect.

Speaker B: How much of a say do you think the rep, whether they're joining a company or renegotiating that compliment, how much they say do you have in it versus they have in it in that process?

Speaker D: Oh I can say say that ultimately is the business that has the final say. And there can be a conversation. Absolutely. But it gets to a point where this is the comp plan. You have a sign it or then you're not going to get paid on anything. And I think there has to be has to be some sort of conversation. Absolutely. But at the end it's a business that is trying to be run and the only person who's going to be affected ultimately is the, is the seller who's not going to sign their comp plan.

Speaker B: Anything to add with that one like

Speaker C: yeah, I completely agree with David. I'm maybe a little bit Steve Jobs on this one. I just think it's a bit my way or the highway. If I, if I own the business and I've set a comp plan, it's normally something I've set before even a sales team comes along. I've been, I've been in sales for the last 20 years. So I guess I feel confident to do that. If founders or sales leaders don't feel confident, get the advice first. Do it right, do it thoroughly the first time. But if every single person that comes into your sales team, you're, you know, changing the sales for them depending on their win direction, you're just going to go nowhere. And I think that's when you create that confusion and somebody going but hang on. Well they, they negotiated a better sales so every time they win a better deal like you want one team, one dream and everyone feeling like they're getting a fair go. I think that conversation as David says is important. Make them feel Heard understand I want reps to be able to live off their base and you know their kids aren't going to starve but I want them to be living the dream and hiring a super yacht in the south of France off their, their comp.

Speaker B: When you're looking at the, the base salary and then the OTA which includes either the meetings buckle or the revenue generated, where do those numbers come from? From from other an sdr you're trying

Speaker D: to look at what was the revenue goal for the year and looking or sometimes in the next, the next year after that depending on the set length of sales cycle and then you're trying to look at then okay what was the contribution of that revenue that came from the team, from uh, the BDR team and then looking at then the pipeline that was generated. So you're doing this kind of like backwards waterfall maths to try and determine okay what is it to get to a number of that we, what we need from our territory to help achieve that revenue goal. And then the way that a lot of sales cycles in the enterprise side it's nine months and so really the work that you're doing in 2025 is not going to show until 2026. So you're actually building on the BDR side a comp plan that is based on what the forecast is going to be for the revenue in, in in the following year. That's how it's how it's built in most companies.

Speaker B: It's interesting. It's similar sort of on the AE side Mike with this of that reverse engineering. Is there any more detail needed for the AE side bit more maths or what does that look like?

Speaker C: Yeah, like I said I'm not very smart so I just, I just start ah with really basic numbers. I want to make sure the company can make money. I want to make sure the AE is making what's in line with market and I just try and keep it super simple but and it's one of the challenges with a startup and I'll speak from that world because that's, that's what I'm in. When you start a company you have what you don't even have an idea that the product's going to sell right. You just hope it does. You sold a couple yourself and now you bring somebody on and going you can achieve all this, you want to make sure they can uh, and you want to make sure you've tried it yourself and you've done it to a degree but it's a little bit of this which If I'm honest. And so you've got to have a level of forecasting where you say, okay, we believe we can achieve this. And that's where I do bring a sales rep. And I say, okay, well, I sold three of these widgets last month. This is what we've laid out in a forecast. Do you think you can sell two of these widgets every month? And if they say, yes, I can crush two, you go, okay, great, well, two's the number. Are you happy with two? Yeah, two's the target. We've agreed on a target. And then for me it's about just saying, okay, is there, you know, and there was this survey that went around earlier this week, which is great. You know, AE's earning a base of sort of 96 to 100 and, um, upside to 185 thereabouts here in London. Okay, great, that's enough for me to go. There's a bottom ballpark. And if they've said, which most reps do, and I always ask people, what do you expect to earn in this role? Here it is. And you can start to just line it up and go, is their expectation in line with how many widgets they can sell? And if they sell that and my compliance up with that, do I make money? Right. And then, you know, a lot of businesses, it's really about, okay, you make some money on year one, maybe, or at the moment, the forecast seem to be SAS businesses aren't even making money until well into year two. But from there, can you continue to make money off those clients with their customer lifetime value? And that's another part of comp as well. Are you paying on year two, three, four, and is that a downwards percentage from there? It is quite complicated. But to start with, it's just get something in place that everyone agrees is going to get close to their numbers if they hit what they think is achievable.

Speaker B: Yeah, that lines up quite nicely to Richard's point, which sort of reading between the lines is, when revenue comes in for a company with AES, what percentage of that revenue should then go to the rep rather than the company? What does that split look like, Mike?

Speaker C: That's a new question as I get my calculator out here. Okay, so like I said, not very bright. My first comp plan was just half of the first month, right? And we paid that. I think that ended up to be something like four and a half percent of total revenue, whatever it might be. I should have done the calculation. Half the people on this call. Again, he can't do math. So that was an idea for me to just keep it super simple. Our average deal was about four grand a month. They got two grand for landing that deal. Simple. That then evolved and we ended up a lot higher in percentages and other things and there was more complexity there. I don't have a strict number, to be honest. It depends on your, on your product, what's your customer lifetime value, what's your average revenue per account and then taking the percentage of that. And uh, if they can land X amount of widgets, do they land within what is a reasonable range? Right. Like you don't I make jokes about I want my reps on super yachts in the south of France. I don't want reps making millions of dollars for just doing an average job obviously because that just means I'm throwing away cash that I don't need to throw away. I want good reps making above average revenue in their space for their role. Right. And I want bad reps not making enough to live so they move on and go elsewhere. Like that's the other thing when you talk about high performance teams. I'm not actually interested in sales training. I'm not a sales training organization. I will train salespeople, but I'm not a sales training organization. I'm a business there to make money. And as a business there to make money, my main priority is to move on politely. The reps that can't achieve what they say they're going to achieve and find new ones that can. So the comp plan's got to be able to do all of those things without you getting involved.

Speaker B: We'll go on to the next point which lines up with what Steve asked actually is. And this, this is a very, this splits opinions a lot. I've heard Benjamin Dennehy feel very strongly about this. Probably the other way that we're going to say what are the thoughts on commission only schemes in startup environments?

Speaker D: On my side, I understand the reason. However, how will you identify quickly enough what's, what is, is that person working out or not and have they got the incentive to, if there is an issue for them to improve on those behaviors? That's my high level thought on that.

Speaker B: Yeah, Mike.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, look, I tend to agree. Um, every startup founder wants to find the dream commission only salespeople.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Like I'd have 50 startups if I had a room of a thousand commission only salespeople. I'd just put them to work in a million different areas of course. But I think there's a reason it doesn't really work long term. And I think, you know, sales is fun, right? Sales is fun. And we didn't become accountants, we became salespeople because we love people, we love the energy, we love the pace. Right. And so for me, if you're building a sales team, we used to have so much fun. We sat around a table. I sound like such an idiot saying this was so much fun, but it was. We sat around a big table, put jugs of water in the middle and we all had to scull as much water as we can. And then we had to go, right, 20 phone calls go, no one's going to the toilet until it gets 20 phone calls. Right. And then you're starting to make like I'm talking about connects, not just phone calls. And so you're getting through to 20 people and by the 20th conversation you're like, yep, yep, yep. Yeah. Uh, just next Tuesday we're free and we could book this in and you're really sort of hurrying things along and the whole team energy there is hilarious and it's fun. And then you go and have a celebratory laugh at lunch and then you come back and do it again. You can't get people into a room playing those games, bleeding the company blood and really passionately knowing the product. In a way, they have to, to drive sales. If they're commission only sitting in their own bedroom and also working three other gigs. So my overall thinking is that it doesn't work and sales is about the team really bleeding the company colours.

Speaker B: That, uh, makes sense. We think we've really just settled on having especially like you said, with an AE base. You want them to be able to support your family and their drive motivation. The company is the commission they'll earn.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: When it comes to working out those, those salary bases, you, you talked about it a little bit before Mike, with just average for the area, what would they say? And you've got an idea, David. So on. On the SDR front, where does that come into play? Because obviously there's a wider range of experience of people in the SDR role than in the AE role. So that must be a bit more difficult.

Speaker D: Yeah, it is. And so we did a. We did a. And we're going to do it again this of EMEA sales development survey to really get some sort of an understanding of what are uh, the differing salaries for per city around Europe. And then also we asked about what should the. The OTE ratio be and overwhelmingly it was a 7030 split. In terms of salary and commission, because. And the reasoning is that you want that, as you said, you want them to be able to live off their base and you want them to not worry every month about, about can they feed themselves and pay their rent. Because then you started to get desperate people who cut corners, and that's a bigger, bigger problem. So that was the, the big reason why. And when I started out as an SDR, I was on a 50, 50 split, and I, it was, was tough sometimes. And so when I moved to a company, I was on a 60 40. I was like, oh, that's great. You know, I can now actually know I'm going to pay my rent every month. And I think, um, it just helps you settle down a lot more.

Speaker C: Yeah, you don't, you don't want people being nervous and distracted about can they buy dinner for their family. Right. You want people in a position where, okay, look, I'm fine, but boy, I really want this. And then, then you, you can, you can work out who the ones are with the gusto and the energy and the flame in them to go after it.

Speaker B: If an A was to come to you, Mike, and say that you've positioned here as 70, 30 splits. Well, actually, I feel more comfortable. I feel like I could earn more. If you reduce my salary but increased my commission percentage, what would your immediate thought and answer be to that of an AE asking you?

Speaker C: I'd probably be impressed, but at the same time, it would depend on the stage of the company. If they were the first rep to come along and I'm a nimble startup and I can do whatever I feel like, I'd probably give it to them. I'd probably say, that's great, you're backing yourself. Go for it. Love that. If I'm established, uh, and I've got 10 reps and everything, I'm just going to upset the apple cart. And I just honestly think it comes back then to keep it simple and don't change it. And, you know, no matter how much people aren't supposed to talk about their salary to each other, everyone does. And so you end up in this position where, you know, one rep's comparing to another and salespeople are competitive by nature, so they're gonna instantly come back and people won't see the fact that he's taken a lower or she's taken a lower, um, uh, base. They'll just see the fact that they're getting more comp, and they'll ask for more comp and you're going to end up in this awkward situation I know

Speaker D: of, I've been aware of over the last few weeks of an AE that is not paid any, um, salary and is on 100% commission and gets a higher percentage than the overall contract value they brings in at the same company where people have just a standard compliment and he's a, he's a contractor for that company.

Speaker C: So is that person coming from the outside as a contractor as opposed to. They're a full time staff member, I

Speaker D: guess they still full time, they've got a very large quota but then they have that earning potential that they make a lot of money. Uh, and that's in the same space as other people who are full time employees of the business.

Speaker C: How's that worked out? Has that, has there been any sort of conjecture from other salespeople or is it fairly new?

Speaker D: It's. I need to investigate a little bit more on that other. Got to find out because I like,

Speaker C: I love the idea and personally, you know, I'm an ADHD all over the place founder that loves to throw crazy things at the wall and see if they work. But I just, you know, my experience has been that over time things start to come undone when people feel like they're being hard done by and people will always find a way in the sales space to go. I want more because X has got Y and you end up with this kind of, yeah, I just, I need less problems in my life, not more.

Speaker B: It's really all, really all about the team and making the team feel valued as a whole as well. You don't want so much disparity between earnings.

Speaker C: Uh, just like as a salesperson you want to wake up, oh, I want salespeople to wake up in the morning knowing they've got one goal, one thing to do. No, they don't have to think like we're not that smart. Right. We don't want to be sitting there, you know, solving the world's problems. We, we have a product, we have to find a client need and we have to make the product fit the client need and help them out and that's it. Right. And then pass it off to people that can go do the doing. If they're sitting there trying to have a PhD on whether they made more than Tom or if sue made more than them, M it's going to be. They're just distracted. And so even down to all of the tech tools and half of the AI things out there and all these other things, they're great for sales leaders, for CROs, for marketing managers to dive into. But the salesperson almost needs to just be kept in a bubble and told, make your calls or make your outreach or do whatever it is you put in place for them. And so when it comes to any variation in my personal opinion on comp, unless it's like an outside partner, like we have outside partners that will make money and they'll make a higher commission or uh, an outside contractor, sales organizer that can do. But as far as a full time employee in my team, I just want them all singing from the same song sheet. I think a salesperson should always feel like they're in a race against someone else if they're in a new territory. Especially never hire a new person in a new territory. They can just say, oh, it's really hard over here. It's like, well, okay, well why is the other person that I hired next to you kicking ass? And you're not right? You want to have that tension. I love the idea of let's all hold hands, sing Kumbaya and make money together. But, but I think, uh, once again you're going to get to this fact that next week somebody's going to be in NHR or to their CRO saying, you got to get rid of Tom. He's just not performing and he's bringing the whole team down. Sue's great. Let's get another Sue. You know, I don't need people thinking about other things. I just need them running their own race and kicking goals. What are your thoughts, Dan?

Speaker D: The big thing is again, you're trying to create competition because you're trying to make everybody grow in the company grow. And if you have a team, I get, I get it. Sometimes having a team number, if you are working a major account and you've got a team of four AES, they're all working together on, on, on. And there being a component of the comp plan where, hey, if we've got to close 100 million in Volkswagen and you know there's, if we hit that, then we get something. I get that piece. But for it to be an overall number where there's no one has a quota per se, then I think that creates a real just I think Matthew King said is the quickest way to mediocrity.

Speaker B: You've seen that go wrong on the, on the SDR from where the SDR team has to book 50 meetings between them and it's gone wrong because people have mixed performance.

Speaker C: Yeah, I've never given a comp, uh, plan that's been communal. I would Run a million miles.

Speaker D: And I used to put up a live tracker of people's performances and I would put it in red, yellow, green, about if they're. If they're less than 50%, a quota if they're between 50 and 99, and then green if it was 100. So everybody saw what they were doing. That was the best motivation you could do because you didn't want the head of sales walking past the team and saying, oh, Noah, you're in the red. What's going on? You want them to go, oh, Mike, I see you're in the green. Congrats. That's the quickest way to. To really drive the right behaviours.

Speaker C: Yeah. Can I dive in with one thing? Uh, because I completely agree, David, and I'm just trying to think about the hippie community, love Kumbaya comment that I made. I don't want to sound like I'm not about teamwork. We did something that I think is a little bit of an interesting mix there. We might touch on it later on, but incentives don't always need to be just your base and commission either. So what we did back in ShootsTow, we had seven countries and we started a thing called sprint to 100 was very simply, we sent out these little sprinting men, um, sort of cutouts, and they were stickers, and we sent 100 to each office. Every single deal that was landed, you put a sticker on your wall in the office. And the goal was for each office to sprint to 100. Whoever got to 100 first, that whole sales team got flown to another office of their choice. So they could fly, the London team could fly to Sydney and celebrate. Right. That was the approach that got everyone together, uh, in each region as a team. So even though they're fighting each other for their own comp and they're keeping their money to themselves and their wives aren't complaining that somebody else at the office is dragging their heels and therefore they can't go on a holiday. Like, there's none of that nonsense. But there's a competition overall where they're working as a team in competition against another country. And so I think that's a really interesting way to play it. And any way that, regardless of whether you've got regions or not, any way that you can play it where, as a group, if we hit X, we're going to get Y, um, need to be monetary. I think that's a really cool way to do it. And literally, movie tickets as a surprise at the end of the month can be More motivational than money in the bank that gets taxed.

Speaker B: Going back slightly to what you said before about like non financial awards that can help rep still feel value that can be built into a comp plan,

Speaker D: I think, um, tax implications is a big thing. So in some countries and for some businesses that are regulated, you have to declare any sort of monetary spiff that you get and receive. So I know a previous company, if we did a spiff, it would get in one country it was taxed at 54. And so if you're then doing a 50, if given somebody €50, then they're not getting a lot of that. So sometimes as um, as Mike mentioned, things like cinema tickets or even just like giving people a day off or half a day off, that's so much more impactful for them and also there for their mental health and get them to feel like they've been, have done a good job. And so thinking of things like that where you just giving them something where it's not going to cost them any money but it's, you know, they are getting time to recover and be refreshed and actually get a free day of not working, something like that is really powerful.

Speaker C: Absolutely. In regards to tax implications, uh, I'm not a tax advisor and any advice I give should be checked off with an accountant. But I, I do find there are better ways to incentivize people than just straight up cash. And it's not also about just the amount. Like for example, if I said to anyone on this call, you're probably all seasoned career professionals and if I said to you, you know, wow, your comp this month's going to go up by £150, you kind of go, man, you know how hard I've worked and you give me £150 extra. Come on, like, seriously. And it's going to be taxed. Everything else, it's nothing. My wife won't even notice it happened, for example, or my husband won't notice it happened, my kids don't care, like, whatever. And it's a tiny bit of money and it just goes on the mortgage anyway, as opposed to, hey, I've booked a really nice table for you and your partner at this particular restaurant and you've got a dinner out this Friday night. What? That's amazing, right? And it's an experience and they're enjoying it. And so, you know, those sorts of things that actually affect their loved ones and themselves are going to have such a better effect on their mental health, on their performance, on their attitude, on Their partner's attitude to them working late hours or whatever it might be they know need to do. It's just worth so much more. And also the other thing is don't, don't be a tight ass. Have a pool aside in your company to surprise and delight. You know I think surprise and delight is, is so great. Somebody gets the end of the quarter. They kicked ass. They were the leader in sales. You know they get their comp, they get all the things they expected and then you buy them a bonus dinner out. You know that's, that's the kind of thing that makes people go wow.

Speaker B: Yeah. And with these non financial awards, is it that it is a surprise at random or is there any more ways in which the rep can work towards those incentives?

Speaker C: I think competitions are great. Like the competition we did with the sprint to 100. You know whatever those competitions are, try and make them last a longer period of time and be something that people are really enjoying. And once again that doesn't even need to be financial. Like we're all going away on a retreat. But the person that um, gets to the highest amount of sales gets X as well or whatever it is or gets to pick where we're going. And here are the three locations we could go.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: It doesn't need to be anything, anything big. It's just recognizing public recognition for people is huge. And it comes back to knowing people's love language as well. Right. Like what is their love language? What lights their fire? Is it, is it money? Maybe, maybe not. It'll definitely be a component of it. Just test that by not paying them and see what happens.

Speaker D: They'll leave.

Speaker C: But their love language may be recognition in front of other people. There may may be just kind words of affirmation. Like there's plenty of things that you need to know as a sales leader that lights the fire of your sales team and then shape it to that and it may be different per person. Person.

Speaker B: Yeah. Personally speaking as a sales rep they are the surprise elements of these non financial incentives are ah, the best just being given a even as a little thing like here's a 15 pound Starbucks voucher, your coffee's paid for. Means of work makes such a difference and you've got a little bit more of a spring in your step making it feel like a more valued past money.

Speaker C: Yeah. Silly things like it might be old school. We had a sales bill in the office and I'll have a sales bill again for Buzz Trail. I think it's fantastic. You know that feeling of ringing the bell and it wasn't even about winning a deal. Everyone didn't speak about I'm going to win a deal. They're like, I'm going to ring the bell. And then when they ring the bell, the whole company, we're in an open plan office. It was 450 square meter, sort of Google style warehouse and you know you got 100 people yelling and screaming and hooting, hollering because you, you, you rang the bell because you. And Even then when SDRs kicked ass and they'd get their, their, their SDR that got the deal to them and they bring them up and they ring it together and it's this, this team excitement around it. I think, I think those sort of dopamine releases are uh, hugely important and sales is hard and sometimes it's massive grind. So when you've got that win that you get to celebrate. I think it's key.

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