Fiona Fischer· Benefits Analyst, Halcyon Financial Group
Asked in Sales Compensation ·
Enterprise software company in Munich with 40 sales engineers supporting about 120 account executives across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Sales engineers are on 80/20 and the 20% pays on the attainment of the whole regional sales team.
The better engineers say the plan does not distinguish them from colleagues who do the minimum. The account executives say the engineers have no stake in any particular deal. The head of presales wants to move to 70/30 with individual deal credit.
My worry is that individual credit will have engineers competing for the largest deals and avoiding the difficult technical evaluations. What are others doing?
2 helpful · 1 insightful · 1 agree · 4 replies · 112 views · 6 following
Accepted answer· by Vera Chen
We pair them. Each sales engineer is assigned to a pod of three or four account executives and their variable pays on that pod's combined bookings. It is individual enough that a strong engineer earns more, and it removes the choice of which deals to chase because they support everything their pod brings in. The mix is 75/25. Pods are rebalanced once a year so nobody is stuck with a weak group for long.
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Benefits Manager, Copperfield Mining
Accepted answer
We pair them. Each sales engineer is assigned to a pod of three or four account executives and their variable pays on that pod's combined bookings. It is individual enough that a strong engineer earns more, and it removes the choice of which deals to chase because they support everything their pod brings in.
The mix is 75/25. Pods are rebalanced once a year so nobody is stuck with a weak group for long.
Benefits Analyst, Silverline Media
We did go to individual deal credit and your worry is justified. Within two quarters we had engineers lobbying account executives to be put on the big opportunities, and proof-of-concept work on small deals was going unstaffed. We reversed it after a year.
Director, Total Rewards, Beacon Retail Group
Pods work until the ratio gets thin. At one engineer to three sellers it is fine. We are at one to six in some regions, and the pod number becomes so diluted that it is a regional plan under another name. If you are short of engineers, fix that first.
Compensation Consultant, Fairlead Shipping
Does the German works council have a view? Ours treated the move from a team measure to an individual one as a change needing their agreement, and it added about three months. Build that into the timetable whichever design you choose.
