High-growth companies always share one edge: they pay their people - Sales Teams and Channel Partners alike - lucrative (yes, lucrative) commissions that drive speed, accountability, and market expansion.
Most companies (yours too I'm guessing) are not even close to embracing this incentives mindset, and even fewer are genuinely enabling it effectively. Incentives are constrained or simplified to the point where they stop driving meaningful behavior and outcomes. Leadership (especially YOU Finance) "goes after" commission expense knives out looking to be the hero that "saves money" while severely underestimating the opportunity costs.
This isn't a sales ops discussion. It's a strategic growth discussion and in my view now very much belongs in the CFO's office (the technology is just so tightly integrated in with the financials/forecasts). Unfortunately, that's the same office where 95% of teams' efforts default instinctively to managing down expenses, instead of increasing them. Yes. I said it. You should be increasing them. Casting a wider, more sophisticated net working for you to pull in more sales.
Where Technology Has Unlocked Commissions as a Growth Lever
Excel quickly becomes a liability when dealing with 20+ reps, SPIFs, accelerators, and territory overlays. Errors. Late payments. Clawback disputes. It's easy to destroy trust with the exact people generating your revenue. And the constant, inevitable sales org realignments? They wreak havoc on tracking and delay targets and commission programs until what... April? Come on, Finance. Be a better business partner than that. Lean in.
Modern incentive infrastructure has greatly reduced the complexity and upkeep. It's time FP&A aggressively leads the strategic architecture behind it.
Purpose-built ICM (Incentive Compensation Management) platforms now exist specifically for this - and you won't find them in your standard ERP setup. QuotaPath for earlier-stage companies, CaptivateIQ in mid-market, and Xactly Corp at enterprise scale are all strong starting points to check out if you're new to the space.
With these ICMs in place, you can model incentive plans before rollout, track earnings in real time, align commissions to strategic outcomes, forecast both sales and commission expense accurately, and automate partner attribution.
Maybe even more impressive is the emerging AI features inside them flagging incentive inefficiencies, as well as opportunities where you should be aggressively doubling down. You won't get those insights from Jan in payroll accounting.
The Two Revenue Engines ICMs Manage: Most companies tend to think in terms of a single sales motion, but true growth usually comes from two distinct engines and where companies often overlook (or not even have) the second. 1. Internal Sales Teams and 2. External Channel Partners. Both run on commission incentives.
Engine #1: In-house commissions: When incentives are designed correctly, they create intense focus. AEs/Reps prioritize driving the right deals, retention improves, margins improve and are better understood, and Finance gains a cleaner relationship between revenue and expense.
When they're poorly designed, behavior drifts. Sales teams optimize for payout mechanics instead of long-term value, disputes become common, and leadership ends up reacting to numbers that don't reflect underlying business quality or direction.
Engine #2: External Channel Partner Commissions (affiliates, referral partners, resellers): This is where most companies are still massively underbuilt in terms of enabling technology (assuming they have anything in place at all). 3rd party Partners are getting remarkably sophisticated at targeting lead generation that your internal Sales Reps/Marketing teams are not able to reach. Think 1,000+ different partners with different approaches and tactics actively working and promoting on your behalf across multiple fronts/niches to see what works - vs a more singular (usually more generic) company approach to the broad market.
These Partners want clarity, speed, visibility, and trust. Instead, they get friction in the exact place you're trying to accelerate growth when you're using outdated systems. They won't complain loudly if they're not getting what they need; they simply prioritize the other vendors/opportunities that are easier to work with and easier to earn from.
The Cost of Inaction
Commission strategy is becoming a real competitive divide. Many companies are very effectively turning incentives into a growth weapon that leverages these ICMs both with their internal and external partners.
CFOs/FP&A leaders — it's time to be honest. Where does commission strategy live in your org, and how specifically are you helping to unlock the value it can create?
-Matt Carrington-
JS-ILYA
