Quota relief when the sales cycle is 14 months and the plan year is 12?

Careful with pipeline-based relief. We tried it and within a year outgoing reps were quietly closing down opportunities before a handover, or managers were inflating them, depending on who benefited. You end up auditing the pipeline instead of arguing about relief.

We stopped treating it as relief and changed the measure. For capital equipment reps, 30% of target incentive now pays on milestones that happen inside the year: tender shortlisting, a signed clinical evaluation, a technical award. The other 70% pays on orders. A new rep can earn the milestone part in year one and the order part catches up in year two.

Milestones are confirmed by the tender desk, not by the rep or the manager, which answers the gaming point above. Two years in, we have had three relief requests in total.

Thanks all. I took the milestone idea to our sales director and he liked it more than I expected, mainly because the tender desk already records those stages. We will pilot it with the 14 reps in the hospital capital team from January and keep the old plan for consumables.