To ensure sales reps close high-quality deals, link their compensation to a leading indicator of retention (LIR). Pay a portion of the commission upon signing and the remainder when the customer hits a predefined usage milestone, aligning incentives with long-term value.

Shift your compensation model from hours worked to results achieved through structures like revenue-share, profit-share, or outcome-based bonuses. This aligns your pay with your skill and ability to create value, not your time commitment, allowing for unlimited earning potential.

To solve the persistent issue of sales and marketing misalignment, structure executive compensation around shared company revenue goals. When leaders' bonuses depend on overall revenue attainment rather than departmental metrics like pipeline or MQLs, it forces genuine collaboration and a unified focus on winning.

To powerfully reinforce desired behaviors, compensation plans must connect the reward as closely in time as possible to the sales activity. This "proximity principle" is more effective than distant, larger payouts because it creates a clear and immediate link between action and incentive, even if the initial payout is smaller.

To ensure sales reps focus on long-term value (LTV), structure compensation to reward customer success. Pay half the commission on contract signing and the other half only when the customer hits a predefined activation metric, known as the Leading Indicator of Retention (LIR). This forces reps to sell to right-fit customers.

Instead of paying commissions solely on bookings, align sales incentives with long-term company health. By calculating Lifetime Value (LTV) by customer segment and paying AEs more for acquiring high-LTV accounts, you motivate them to pursue profitable, sticky customers.

Google's Ads team structured its sales force into three specialized units. The acquisition team was paid on getting a customer to start, the onboarding team on setup success, and the account management team on growing spend beyond a predicted baseline. This aligns incentives with each stage of the customer's consumption journey.

Seamless's marketing team is compensated on NRR and profitability, not just net new revenue. This financial incentive shifts the team's focus from pure acquisition to the entire customer lifecycle, ensuring marketing remains invested in customer engagement, education, and retention post-sale.

To steer reps toward higher-value but more difficult sales, create a significant risk-reward upside with much larger commissions. Crucially, do not disincentivize the easier, 'bread-and-butter' transactional deals that maintain consistent revenue flow, as this will demotivate the team.