It’s November. Which means most GTM leaders are staring at a spreadsheet trying to figure out 2027 comp.

If that’s you, keep reading.

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Comp is one of the hottest topics in our conversations with GTM leaders. It’s also one of the first things candidates dig into before they’ll even take a call.

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So I want to point you to the smartest person I know on the subject: Greg Stanley, President of Accelerant Consultants. Greg sat down with Mike Weinberg on The Sales Management. Simplified. Podcast for a full episode on sales comp. Mike called him one of the very few true experts on comp plans. I’d agree.

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Here’s what stuck with me.

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Comp isn’t the easy button

When sales stalls, a lot of leaders reach for a quick fix. Sales training. A new CRM. A lead-gen agency. A new comp plan.

Greg’s take: comp is a big lever, but it doesn’t work alone. It’s one link in a chain that runs from the job description to onboarding to how you pay reps to how you manage them. If the other links are weak, the comp plan can’t make up for them.

He has a line about strategy I keep thinking about. When a client tells him their strategy is to grow 6% next year, he says: “That’s not a strategy. That’s a number.”

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Can you overpay a salesperson?

Greg’s answer: not if the plan is right.

His math: a rep brings in $5M in truly incremental recurring revenue at a 50% net margin. The company is valued at 10x trailing EBITDA. That rep just created $2.5M in margin and $25M in enterprise value. Paying them $1M for that is a pretty good trade.

The key word is incremental. Greg’s test is one sentence: “This deal would not have happened without ___.”

If you can honestly put your rep’s name in the blank, you’re paying for value. If the customer would’ve reordered anyway, you’re paying sales comp for something a support role could likely cover.

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The $80K job paying hundreds of thousands

On the episode, Mike shared a story anyone who’s inherited a sales team will recognize. A company was nervous about losing its top earner. He had the biggest accounts. He was also mostly processing reorders and taking people to lunch on accounts sold a decade earlier. In other words, an $80K job paying hundreds of thousands.

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Greg’s fix: a “minimum standard of care.” If you’re getting paid on an account, you have to actively work it to stay eligible. No surprise check for an order you never touched.

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He also flagged the bigger risk in that story. When one rep owns 9 of your top 10 accounts, those customers have a relationship with the rep, not with you.

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Pay the most for the hardest thing

Greg splits revenue into 3 buckets and pays differently for each:

→ Retention: keeping existing customers. Lowest rate.
→ Growth: expanding accounts beyond last year’s baseline. Higher.
→ Net new: profitable, well-fit new logos. Highest, because it’s the hardest thing to do.

Mike’s add: a maintainer, a key-account grower, and a hunter might be 3 different jobs, and each one probably deserves its own plan.

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One $300M client Greg worked with saw this play out in the numbers. Of the customers in reps’ territories, 88% spent under $100K a year. Together, they made up 12% of revenue but ate about 40% of rep time. Customers under $25K a year actually cost the company money.

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The fix wasn’t cutting pay. Smaller accounts moved to an inside team (which doubled as a training ground for future reps). Top reps kept the same earning potential, if not more. The cheese just moved: big money for net new, much less for repeat revenue.

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Simple, but not Fred Flintstone simple

A flat 2% of top-line revenue for everyone is Fred Flintstone simple, and it tends to miss. But if a rep walks out of a meeting and can’t roughly figure out what the deal pays them, the plan’s too complicated. As Mike put it, nobody should need an abacus.

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Greg’s 3 buckets sit in the middle, and most CRMs can already track them.

The rollout matters as much as the plan

Greg’s biggest fear: an owner sketches a new plan on paper and slides it across the desk.

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What he does instead:

→ Start and end with the financial model
→ Tell the team change is coming, and why
→ Bring a few trusted top sellers in once you’re about 75 to 80% done. Too early and rumors fill the gap. Too late and they feel blindsided. Pick reps who think like business owners, not the ones who’ll only ask what they’re losing.
→ Give people a real runway so nobody’s cash flow falls off a cliff

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And try not to rework the plan every few months to manage cash flow. Your A players notice.

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Band of Brothers has the best comp advice I’ve heard this year: never put yourself in a position where you’re taking from your men. If your team believes the new plan exists to take from them, it’s very hard to win them back.

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Where hiring comes in

Here’s what we see from our side of the table. Your comp plan doesn’t just shape how your team sells. It shapes who’s willing to join.

Strong hunters often look at the comp plan before the job description. If net new pays the same as reorders, you’ll tend to attract people who’d rather work reorders.

If you’re adding headcount in 2027, get the plan right first. It’s part of the pitch.

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Mike said it best: “It’s really hard to outmanage a dumb compensation plan.”

If you’re building next year’s plan, the full episode is worth 40 minutes of your commute.

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And if you’re a B2B company somewhere between $5M and $200M in revenue, Greg is who I’d call.

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Your comp plan is going to drive behavior either way. Might as well pick the behavior.

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