Compensating the Sales Force: A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs, Second Edition
David J. Cichelli
A practical, end-to-end guide to designing, constructing, and managing sales compensation plans that align pay with sales job content and drive profitable revenue growth.
Compensating the Sales Force demystifies one of the most powerful yet confusing management levers available to any company that sells: how salespeople get paid. Drawing on decades of consulting and teaching experience, David Cichelli argues that great sales compensation always begins with sales job content—not industry practice, legacy habit, or motivational theory. The book walks readers through fundamentals (eligibility, target pay, pay mix, leverage, measures, quotas, performance ranges), a full taxonomy of 30-plus formula types, the mathematics of formula construction, and the critical support programs of territory design, quota management, and sales crediting. It then tackles the hard cases—difficult-to-compensate jobs, complex sales organizations, and global sales teams—before closing with administration, implementation, communication, program assessment, and a ten-step design process. Whether you want to validate an existing plan or build a new one, this is the most complete companion for anyone accountable for rewarding sales excellence.
The model it argues
A framework in which sales design levers (job content alignment, design elements, formula construction) and support conditions (territory, quota, crediting, administration, communication) shape salesperson psychological and behavioral states, which in turn drive sales outcomes and business results.
Key ideas
- Sales Job Content Alignment
- The clarity and strategic alignment of the sales job with products, customers, and the point of persuasion, free of design errors.
- Design Elements Configuration
- The set of choices for eligibility, target pay, mix, leverage, measures, quota distribution, performance range, and periods.
- Formula Construction Quality
- How well the incentive formula converts performance into appropriate pay for the job context.
- Support Program Alignment
- The quality and coordination of territory, quota, and crediting programs supporting the plan.
- Administration Effectiveness
- The accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of program administration and reporting.
- Implementation and Communication Quality
- The effectiveness of rollout, messaging, training, documentation, and ongoing communication.
- Salesperson Motivation and Focus
- The degree to which reps are motivated by and focused on the plan's measures.
- Perceived Equity and Trust
- Reps' perception that pay, quotas, and crediting are fair and administration reliable.