Sales compensation is complex. The right commission software is key to automating your plan, but sometimes you also want an outside firm to look under the hood and assess whether the plan itself is working.
That’s the job of sales compensation consulting firms. They assess your current sales compensation plan and work with your team to design one that fits your business, instead of handing you a template.
What a sales compensation plan has to do
Sales compensation is one of the main levers a company has for motivating salespeople and keeping the good ones. A well-built commission pay structure rewards top performers and keeps the sales team working toward the company’s goals. Getting there usually takes sales strategy, sales operations, and HR working on the plan together.
Compensation consulting firms help companies design and roll out those plans. Good consultants bring practices they’ve seen work in other industries and build the plan with your team, so the result reflects how you actually sell and helps you stay competitive for talent.
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What you get from a sales compensation consultant
An outside firm is most useful when you want to improve your sales commission process and don’t have the in-house experience to redesign it. Consultants guide the design and rollout of plans that improve sales performance and support the company’s objectives.
They also bring proven methods and outside-in benchmarks, meaning data on how other companies pay similar roles. That helps you avoid common design mistakes, pay reps fairly, and deal with pay equity concerns. A good engagement ties the comp plan to the sales strategy so each rep knows which goals they’re paid to hit. What you’re paying for, in the end, is better sales performance and more revenue.
Recommended reading: Is a Commission-Only Job Right for You?
SaaS sales compensation considerations
SaaS companies change quickly. They deal with high customer acquisition costs and heavy competition for sales talent, so their comp plans need to be flexible and closely tied to the business strategy.
The main design questions for SaaS sales compensation are territory assignments, incentive plans, and pay levels, plus the balance between short-term wins and long-term goals. Consulting firms with SaaS experience use data and analysis to build sales commission models that attract and keep good reps while supporting the company’s growth targets.
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Technology and tools in sales compensation
Technology is now a core part of running sales compensation. Software automates calculations, cuts admin work, and gives real-time visibility into sales performance. Sales compensation software helps companies design, implement, and manage their plans more efficiently and with fewer errors.
When you evaluate sales incentive compensation platforms, look for strong plan design tools, good analytics, and clean integration with your HR and business systems. The right platform helps you pay reps correctly and stay compliant with regulatory requirements. Many consultants also help clients choose and implement the technology, so the plan they design is one the system can actually run.
Recommended reading: The Definitive Guide to the Commission-Only Sales Position
Best sales compensation consulting firms in the US
1. The Alexander Group
Founded in 1985, Alexander Group has helped thousands of clients build sales compensation programs that help them hire and keep strong sales talent and grow profitably.
The firm takes a structured, analytical approach to its projects. Its leaders help companies assess, align, design, and implement sales compensation programs. Alexander Group also runs ongoing research and surveys on sales productivity and sales compensation, and publishes articles and books, including Sales Compensation Perspectives, the Sales Compensation Almanac, and Compensating the Sales Force.
2. Better Sales Comp Consultants (BSC)
Better Sales Comp Consultants was founded by Clinton Gott and Ted Briggs in 2009, after decades at boutique and larger consulting firms such as The Alexander Group and WTW. The team, based in Los Angeles and Chicago, provides specialized consulting on sales compensation programs and sales effectiveness.
BSC staffs its engagements only with industry veterans who have 22 to 35 years of experience, and it works in a high-touch, flexible, collaborative way. Its design approach takes practices that work across industries and applies them pragmatically to each client’s situation.
3. SalesGlobe
Based in Atlanta, SalesGlobe uses a five-step sales compensation design process:
- Understand C-level goals and align sales to meet them
- Focus the comp plan on pay, pay mix, and potential upside
- Connect incentive compensation with quotas, priorities, measures, timing, and more
- Focus your sales team and financials with goals and sales quotas
- Run the program and update it through continuous measurement
Founder and managing partner Mark Donnolo wrote a useful book on the subject, What Your CEO Needs to Know About Sales Compensation.
4. The Brevet Group
The Brevet Group is a mid-sized consulting firm focused on sales compensation plan design. It has worked with SaaS startups and Fortune 500 clients. Its method covers four areas:
- Structure: the revenue model, role design, on-target earnings, and pay mix.
- Plan design: KPIs, mechanics, accelerators, and multipliers.
- Operations: quota structure, quota retirement, crediting, and new hire ramp-up.
- Administration: communication, plan documents, governance, and the sales management process.
5. Korn Ferry
With a workforce of more than 10,000 people, Korn Ferry is a big name in business consulting. Its sales compensation work includes plan design aligned with your overall business strategy and benchmarking of rewards and benefits to show how your top performers differ from your average ones.
Korn Ferry has access to a wide range of industry data, which it uses to build data-driven recommendations for each client.
6. Bain & Company
As one of the big three management consulting firms, Bain & Company advises senior leaders at large enterprises on sales compensation strategy.
Bain uses proven methods and outside-in benchmarks to compare the options for your team, then builds plans designed to get reps to hit their quotas.
7. Deloitte
Deloitte Consulting’s Sales Compensation Strategy practice helps companies with global sales compensation needs. Its work spans many industries and covers global and regional compensation, plan design, and strategy through full implementation.
With 300+ practitioners in over 20 countries, Deloitte has the second largest dedicated global Sales Effectiveness practice. It serves B2B, consumer products, industrial, distribution, services, and high tech companies, and it has done extensive work on sales compensation plan assessments, design, benchmarking, and implementation.
Measuring the results of a consulting engagement
Working with one of the top sales compensation consulting firms should produce results you can measure. Before the engagement starts, agree on how you’ll judge it. Common measures for incentive compensation consulting are sales revenue growth, lower customer acquisition costs, and better retention and motivation on the sales team. Record where those numbers stand today, so you have a baseline to compare against.
A good consultant will help you estimate the return on your compensation program and show which parts of the plan are paying off. Once the new plan is designed, it still has to be calculated, paid, and reported on accurately every period, so line up the software to run it before rollout.
