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By Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 8 min read
A message for sales leaders: the problem isn’t your people. It’s the match.
For the most part, there are no bad salespeople. There are, however, sellers operating in the wrong sales environment — a square sales peg in a round sales hole. Before you can hire the right salesperson, you need to understand your sales environment and what profile is needed to meet your specific sales demands.
Too many salespeople are hired based on gut feeling, personal connection, or intuition. “I needed a sales rep, and my nephew needed a job.” Or: “She was successful in industrial sales, so she should do fine in our B2B services environment.” These assumptions treat all sales roles as interchangeable. They’re not. Most sales environments require a specific profile to complete the team and sell in a way that resonates with the existing prospect and customer base.
At Talnted, we’ve identified 5 elements that define a salesperson’s profile. Understanding these elements — and matching them to your environment — is the difference between consistent performance and costly turnover.
The most foundational element. It starts with B2C versus B2B, but breaks down further into sub-categories — B2C Product, B2B Distribution, B2B Services, and more. A rep who thrives selling consumer electronics may flounder in enterprise software, even though both are “sales.”
Key evaluation questions:
• Historically, who have been your customers?
• Which customer type has yielded the most success?
• What have you most enjoyed selling — and where have you had the most success?
How a salesperson generates leads reveals whether they’re a hunter or a gatherer. Some reps thrive on cold outreach and opening new doors. Others excel at cultivating existing relationships and expanding accounts. Both are valuable — but they’re fundamentally different skill sets that suit different sales environments.
Key evaluation questions:
• Do you rely on existing customer relationships to generate revenue?
• Are you a cold caller?
• What has historically been your most effective way to generate leads and open opportunities?
There are 4 types of salespeople, and understanding each is the first step in evaluating a seller’s ability to sell complex solutions, craft bespoke offerings, or provoke pain points that your product or service can solve. Every salesperson gravitates toward one type, though they can be trained in others. The key is knowing which type your environment demands.
Key evaluation questions:
• How do you typically uncover customer needs?
• What is your typical sales cycle?
• Does your organization frequently flex its scope of service to solve customer pain points?
Inspired by the research behind The Challenger Sale, selling style is a critical — and often misunderstood — dimension. While that research promotes one style as universally superior, the reality is more nuanced. Different customer bases and markets demand different approaches. Someone selling to a textile manufacturer in LaGrange, GA will need a fundamentally different style than someone selling to a law firm in New York City. Two different customers, two different personalities, two different styles.
The “unicorn” salesperson can move fluidly between styles depending on the conversation — identifying triggers that determine how the discussion should be structured and what questions to ask. Typically a more seasoned professional, this adaptability is rare and valuable.
This is also where organizational culture intersects with industry trends and customer expectations. The best hires align on all three.
Key evaluation questions:
• Have you typically sold in a quota-driven organization?
• Does your organization use a CRM, and how entrenched is it in your sales process?
• Do you follow your organization’s standard sales processes, or do you prefer to chart your own course?
Perhaps the simplest element to identify — and arguably the most important. What motivates this person? Most salespeople like commission, but the preferred ratio of variable to guaranteed compensation varies dramatically. In some industries, the right profile wants a 10/90 split. In others, a 50/50 ratio is the norm.
Beyond compensation, some sellers thrive on recognition — incentive trips, President’s Club, being named top producer. Others are energized by expertise and the credibility that comes with being a trusted advisor in their industry. Understanding what drives a candidate tells you whether they’ll sustain performance in your specific environment.
Key evaluation questions:
• Historically, how much of your compensation was determined by performance?
• Have you conducted webinars or seminars on industry topics, and did they generate leads?
• Tell me about your lowest income year and what prevented you from achieving goals.
Once you define your sales environment — and more specifically, the profile needed for an open role — you can recruit to that definition by identifying candidates whose elements align. This approach builds teams with consistent performance while minimizing the risk of costly mis-hires.
Most importantly, you — the sales leader — can walk into the first day of the fiscal year confident that you will achieve annual revenue targets. Not because you hired “good” salespeople, but because you hired the right salespeople. The right players, in the right positions, on the right field.
Get in touch to learn how Talnted can help you identify the exact profile your sales environment demands.
Get in TouchBy Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 7 min read
Walk into your next sales meeting with a structure in mind, pivot if you must, and the prospect won’t know what hit them.
Years ago, I learned a sales meeting technique that I still use today. It has helped when I’ve been stuck during pre-meeting prep and when I’ve become stumped mid-conversation. It has also found its way into the non-sales parts of my life — which tells you just how versatile a good framework can be.
The technique is called Issue-Evidence-Impact, and it addresses three things: What is the pain point? How does that issue show up in your organization? And what is the impact if you fix it?
The assumption is to follow this questioning with a solution — preferably your solution — that yields impact in a beneficial way. And voilà, a sale is made.
When I first learned this methodology, I was a new seller and had no idea what I was really absorbing. Nor did the trainer suggest it was anything more than a “technique.” What I failed to recognize at the time was that Issue-Evidence-Impact was just one way to structure a sales conversation — and that mastering multiple structures would become a defining advantage throughout my career.
A quick Google search reveals countless articles on how salespeople should approach selling. Most offer elementary suggestions — the kind of Sales 101 questions prospects hear on repeat: “Tell me about your line of work” or “What keeps you up at night?”
Adding structure to your conversation changes the game. It makes professional selling clearer and more intentional. Learning and implementing structure can be daunting at first, but once you internalize it and can adapt in the moment, your meetings become dramatically more productive — and more profitable.
When building your approach, there are two things you need:
1. Learn multiple structures. Start with three that can be deployed across a variety of scenarios. Having options means you’re never locked into one approach when the conversation shifts.
2. Recognize the triggers. Learn to read the signals in a conversation that whisper: “Time for this structure. Let’s go dominate.” Many seasoned reps do this instinctively — doing it intentionally is what makes you a professional.
Issue: What is the pain point?
Evidence: How does that issue show up in the organization?
Impact: What happens when you fix it?
Best for: Prospects who don’t yet realize how an issue is hurting their business. Creates “light bulb moments.”
Problem: What is your pain point?
Solution: Here is how you fix it.
Benefit: This is what happens when you do.
Best for: Prospects who already know they have a problem and just need a solution. More direct and action-oriented.
These two structures look similar on the surface, but they serve different purposes. To illustrate, let’s use a third structure — Compare-Contrast-Conclude — to evaluate when each is most effective.
You’re helping your audience see how an issue is affecting their organization. You’re selling awareness first, then a solution. The impact of solving it becomes the “aha” moment.
You’re defining the problem, immediately showing the fix, and then articulating the benefit. It’s more direct: “This is your problem, here is the solution, here is the payoff.”
The conclusion: Use Issue-Evidence-Impact when your prospect can’t see that fixing an issue is imperative. Use Problem-Solution-Benefit when the prospect already knows they have a problem and just needs a path forward.
Perfect for spontaneous and social situations. State the fact, explain why it matters, then propose what to do about it. Simple, fast, effective.
Ideal for describing how you solved a problem and why it mattered. Great for case studies, testimonials, and building credibility through storytelling.
Consider integrating structure into your next sales conversation — even passively. Perhaps it’s a multi-touch dialogue where each meeting addresses a different piece of the framework: one meeting defines the problem, the next presents the solution, the third demonstrates the benefit. Or perhaps it all happens in one sitting where you walk through each step in a compressed timeframe.
Regardless of the format, using a structure enables you to be concise, clear, and impactful. It transforms selling from an art of improvisation into a disciplined craft — one where preparation meets adaptability.
The best sales teams don’t just have talent — they have the right talent in the right roles using the right approach. Let Talnted help you build that team.
Get in Touch✓ Structured conversations outperform improvisation — learn at least three frameworks.
✓ Issue-Evidence-Impact creates awareness; Problem-Solution-Benefit drives action.
✓ Recognizing situational triggers is what separates amateurs from professionals.
✓ What-So What-Now What and STAR round out a versatile toolkit for any selling situation.
✓ Structure doesn’t replace authenticity — it amplifies it.
Stop overthinking your pre-call planning
By Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 4 min read
Here’s a simple pre-call planning framework: list three questions you’ll ask, in order. You’ll most likely deviate from questions two and three once the conversation gets going — but at least you’ve walked into the meeting with a general structure in mind.
Honestly? Most of the time, the only pre-call planning I do is knowing what my opening question will be. That’s it.
Because I’m well-versed in my topic — the subject of the sales meeting — I know that if I ask just the right question, the tennis match begins. The first question is the first serve. If it’s a good one, you’re in a rally before either side realizes it.
This approach makes the meeting feel conversational rather than transactional. It impresses the audience if the question is sharp, and it immediately establishes that this isn’t going to be a one-sided pitch — it’s going to be a dialogue. The prospect is going to do a lot of the talking.
In my experience, prospects would rather talk than listen to someone talking at them. Your opening question gives them permission to do exactly that.
At one point in my career, I sold intellectual property management solutions. Companies with large patent portfolios need every patent maintained with paperwork and fees — called patent maintenance fees in the US and patent annuities in foreign jurisdictions.
My focus was law firms. Many held massive patent portfolios on behalf of clients who weren’t sophisticated enough to have their own IP department. But law firms hated managing these portfolios. The work was tedious, the deadlines were unforgiving, and the risk was enormous. Miss a single deadline and you don’t just lose a client — you might get sued for losing their million-dollar idea.
The opening question:
“Have you had any conversations about mitigating the risk of managing your clients’ patent portfolios?”
That one question accomplished everything. It signaled that I understood their world. It surfaced a pain point they lived with daily. And it opened the door for them to talk — about their fears, their frustrations, their near-misses. My job from that point forward was simply to convey that we could eliminate the firm’s risk, and then talk very little for the rest of the meeting.
It took time to get to this point. But looking back, much of my success in that role was tied directly to that opening question. Sales happened. Quota achievement happened. Financial rewards happened. Not because of a complex playbook or a 30-slide deck — but because one well-crafted question set the entire conversation in motion.
1
Great opening question
→
Prospect opens up
→
Sale follows naturally
You don’t need a 20-page pre-call plan. You need one killer opening question — one that demonstrates you understand the prospect’s world, surfaces a real pain point, and turns a pitch into a conversation. Nail that, and the rest tends to take care of itself.
The ability to open a conversation with the right question isn’t something you can teach in a week. It’s a profile trait. Talnted helps you find the sellers who already have it.
Get in Touch✓ Pre-call planning doesn’t need to be complicated — list three questions, but obsess over the first one.
✓ Your opening question is your first serve — it sets the tone and pace of the entire meeting.
✓ A great first question signals expertise, surfaces pain, and turns a pitch into a conversation.
✓ Prospects would rather talk than be talked at — give them the opening to do so.
✓ Mastery of your subject matter is what makes a single-question strategy work.
It’s here to make us better, not replace us.
By Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 5 min read
Artificial intelligence has taken over many job tasks, and there’s little doubt that today’s worker — especially those new to the workforce — should be asking: “How do humans fit into this AI equation?”
I’ve spent 27 years as a revenue generator. Some roles were a perfect fit for my sales profile; some weren’t. Some years I crushed targets. Others? Let’s just call them pipeline rebuilding years. But through it all, I evolved from a guy who took a random sales job out of college into a genuine sales professional.
My use of technology — and every organization’s use of it — expanded every year since my introduction to a modern sales environment at Eli Lilly. There, I was given my first laptop (ever) and asked to enter information into a system called Delphi, which I did sparingly. Since then, I’ve watched the sales profession evolve from using email to communicate to now integrating AI into daily sales activities.
Through it all, one thing has remained constant: human interaction is irreplaceable.
There’s no doubt that AI can make certain parts of the sales process smarter, easier, and more efficient. But when you unpack it, AI truly supports our selling efforts in two stages:
Lead scoring, target identification, competitive intelligence, trend spotting, and data analysis to find the right opportunities faster.
Forecasting, pipeline analytics, deal prioritization, and workflow automation to manage opportunities more effectively.
The main event — the actual selling — happens through human interaction. A personal connection, an accurately described value proposition, and even a timely “ask for the business” require a salesperson.
AI might help us get to the right message at the right time. But a human still has to deliver it.
A recent HubSpot survey reveals an inconsistent — and telling — picture of how today’s sellers view AI:
59%
are concerned about AI replacing their jobs
Evidence that many don’t yet understand how AI can genuinely assist the sales workflow — they may simply fear what they don’t know.
78%
say AI can help them spend more time on critical aspects of their job
Sellers recognize AI’s potential value, but — reflecting the first statistic — many don’t yet understand how to harness it.
64%
say AI automates 1–5 hours of weekly manual tasks
Some sales professionals are already using AI to automate routine tasks — but 36% aren’t taking advantage of it at all.
Source: HubSpot Sales Trends Survey
While many sellers remain resistant to artificial intelligence, it clearly has a place in the sales environment — it would be naïve to think otherwise. The stats tell us that AI is already saving time and creating capacity for the sellers who embrace it.
But here’s what hasn’t changed and won’t change: the sale itself happens between people. Trust is built in conversation. Relationships are forged through empathy, timing, and presence. No algorithm can replicate the moment a prospect leans forward and says, “Tell me more.”
AI is here to make us better, not replace us. It’s time we understand its place in the hierarchy.
Technology makes sales teams more efficient. But the foundation is still people. Talnted helps you find the humans who will actually move the needle.
Get in Touch✓ AI excels at prospecting and opportunity management — but the actual selling still requires a human.
✓ 59% of sellers fear AI replacement, yet 78% see its potential — a gap that training and adoption can close.
✓ AI already saves sellers 1–5 hours per week on manual tasks — time better spent building relationships.
✓ Trust, empathy, and human connection remain the irreplaceable core of professional selling.
✓ AI is here to make salespeople better, not obsolete. Understand its place in the hierarchy.
And what they’re leaving on the table because of it.
By Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 6 min read
As law firms grow and consolidate, they typically hire teams to oversee accounting, finance, IT, and marketing. But very few consider hiring individuals who are dedicated to — and compensated for — securing new clients and matters. Simply put, they don’t hire salespeople.
Don’t get me wrong — law firms do sell. I’ve just never met an attorney who wants to admit it. But that’s exactly what it is. Do you have rainmakers in your firm? Attorneys who focus on originations? They are salespeople. And let’s define what a law firm really is: a professional services vendor.
Consider other professional services companies: Deloitte, PwC, McKinsey, Gartner, Accenture, Paychex, ManpowerGroup. Search any of their names with “sales jobs” and you’ll find that every one of them has a dedicated and substantial sales force.
So why should law firms be any different?
There are real reasons the legal industry has resisted building a revenue generation strategy beyond a small marketing department and reliance on partners to originate business:
Solicitation has long been seen as unprofessional in the legal world. Most firms have relied on referrals and reputation — a model that worked when competition was thinner.
Complex matters require specialized expertise. The focus has always been on trust-based relationships, not revenue maximization — even though that’s the undertone of every client relationship.
Attorneys are compensated for billing hours — a concrete, immediate reward. Business development is speculative by comparison. Existing clients always win the priority battle over prospecting.
“Selling” feels incompatible with a profession rooted in expertise and trust. Many attorneys simply don’t view sales as a genuine profession that is both art and science.
Most firms rely on a combination of reactive marketing, networking, and client retention. Strong originators solicit referrals from existing clients. Essentially, law firms have relied on subtlety and reputation to draw prospective clients to them.
The problem? This approach leaves enormous revenue on the table.
From prospecting to lead generation to opening an opportunity to closing it — this is a time-consuming process that requires attention to detail, organization, and the ability to diagnose pain points, understand why they exist, and articulate what solving them would mean. That is exactly why professional salespeople exist.
Companies in every other industry understand that selling is a job in itself — especially once you start maintaining a healthy pipeline of opportunities. Leaving revenue generation to the same people who are executing the services you offer creates a fundamental gap.
Attorneys simply don’t have the bandwidth to perform both jobs. And when they try — which most partners and aspiring partners do — one side falls short. That’s usually the sales side.
Hunters
Find new clients. Open new relationships. Build new pipeline.
Gatherers
Manage existing clients. Deepen relationships. Expand share of wallet.
Law firms should embrace what every other professional services organization has already figured out: build a sales team. Or, at minimum, expand the role of business development. Find client-facing individuals who can manage existing accounts and open new ones.
In the sales world, these are called hunters and gatherers. A law firm can build a much stronger bridge to the market by including both sides of revenue generation. Even better is finding an individual or team that can do both.
The firms that figure this out first will have a decisive competitive advantage — not just in revenue, but in the ability to strategically grow into new practice areas, markets, and client segments while their attorneys focus on what they do best: practicing law.
Talnted helps law firms identify and hire the right sales and business development professionals — people with the profile to build relationships in the legal industry.
Get in Touch✓ Law firms are professional services vendors — every other professional services firm has a dedicated sales force.
✓ Rainmakers and originating partners are already selling — they just don’t call it that.
✓ The billable hour model directly conflicts with the time investment business development requires.
✓ Attorneys don’t have the bandwidth to practice law and generate new business at full capacity.
✓ Firms that build dedicated revenue teams — hunters and gatherers — will have a decisive competitive edge.
By Talnted Research | 6 min read
Every sales leader has been there. The candidate crushed the interview — confident, articulate, great resume. Six months later, they haven’t closed a deal, morale on the floor is slipping, and you’re back to square one. The cost? Far more than you think.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, replacing a salaried employee costs an average of six to nine months of that role’s salary. But for sales positions, the number is dramatically higher. When you account for base salary paid during ramp-up, lost pipeline revenue, management time spent coaching and correcting, recruiting costs for the replacement, and the ripple effect on team morale, a single failed sales hire can cost an organization between $500,000 and $1.5 million.
That’s not a typo. And it’s not a worst-case scenario — it’s the math most companies refuse to do.
“55% of people currently in sales roles should be doing something else entirely. Of the remaining 45%, half are selling the wrong product, to the wrong customer, with the wrong approach.”
— The Sales Management Association
The problem isn’t that companies don’t try to hire well. It’s that the entire system is built on unreliable signals. Resumes tell you where someone worked, not how they sold. Interviews reveal who can present well under pressure — which, ironically, is the one skill every salesperson already has. References are curated. And “culture fit” has become a euphemism for gut instinct.
The result? A coin flip dressed up as a hiring process. Industry data backs this up — only 40% of sales reps consistently hit their numbers. That means most companies are building their revenue engines with parts that don’t work.
Beyond the direct financial impact, bad sales hires create compounding damage that’s harder to quantify but just as real:
Customer relationship erosion. A poorly matched rep doesn’t just fail to close — they actively damage your brand’s reputation with prospects who won’t give you a second chance.
Top performer attrition. Your best reps don’t want to work alongside people who aren’t pulling their weight. Tolerating underperformance is the fastest way to lose your A-players.
Management bandwidth drain. Every hour a sales leader spends coaching a mis-hire is an hour not spent on strategy, enablement, or coaching reps who can actually improve.
Opportunity cost. The territory or accounts assigned to the wrong rep represent revenue that’s not just delayed — it’s often lost permanently to competitors.
The solution isn’t to interview harder or check more references. It’s to fundamentally rethink what you’re evaluating and how. Precision sales hiring starts with a simple premise: the traits that make someone successful in one sales role are often completely different from those needed in another.
A transactional SaaS closer needs different wiring than an enterprise relationship builder. A hunter who thrives opening new territory will wilt in a farming role. A rep who excels with technical buyers may struggle with C-suite conversations. These aren’t skills gaps — they’re fundamental profile mismatches that no amount of training will fix.
Precision hiring means profiling the role first, then matching candidates to that profile using behavioral assessment, performance pattern analysis, and validated methodology — not just a resume and a handshake.
Companies that adopt data-driven hiring practices see measurable results. Higher first-year attainment rates, lower turnover, faster ramp times, and stronger team cohesion. When every hire is the right hire, the compounding effect on revenue is transformational.
Consider the math in reverse: if a bad hire costs $1.5 million, then every good hire you make instead isn’t just saving that cost — it’s generating the revenue that hire was supposed to produce in the first place. That’s a swing of potentially millions per position, per year.
Let’s talk about how Talnted’s methodology can transform your sales hiring process and eliminate costly mis-hires.
Get in Touch✓ A single bad sales hire can cost $500K–$1.5M when all factors are considered.
✓ Traditional interviews and resumes are poor predictors of sales success.
✓ 55% of people in sales roles are fundamentally mismatched to the profession.
✓ Profile-first hiring — matching role DNA to candidate DNA — dramatically reduces mis-hires.
✓ The ROI of precision hiring compounds over time through retained talent and consistent revenue.
Precision Thinking
By Brad Hawley | Talnted | 12 min read
Few decisions in sales leadership carry as much weight as how you structure compensation. The compensation ratio — the split between fixed base salary and variable performance-based pay — is the single most powerful lever you have to shape seller behavior, attract the right talent, and align your team with business outcomes.
Get it right, and you create a compensation engine that rewards the behaviors you need, retains your best performers, and repels the wrong fits. Get it wrong, and you’ll either bleed overhead on underperformers or watch your top talent walk out the door for a more competitive structure.
This article breaks down the most common compensation ratios, when each structure fits, and how to match the right ratio to your sales role, cycle, and growth strategy.
The compensation ratio expresses the relationship between a seller’s fixed pay (base salary) and variable pay (commissions, bonuses, accelerators) as a simple ratio. A 60/40 compensation ratio means 60% of the seller’s on-target earnings (OTE) come from base salary, with 40% tied to variable performance. A 50/50 ratio splits it evenly.
When we talk about OTE, we mean the total expected compensation a seller earns when they hit 100% of quota. If a role has an OTE of $150,000 at a 60/40 ratio, the seller receives a $90,000 base salary with $60,000 in variable compensation at target. That variable component is what flexes — upward through accelerators when sellers exceed quota, or downward when they miss.
The ratio you choose sends a clear signal to the market about the kind of seller you’re looking for and the kind of performance culture you’re building.
An 80/20 structure is the most conservative end of the sales compensation spectrum. With 80% of OTE in base salary, sellers carry minimal personal financial risk. This ratio is common in enterprise and strategic account management roles where the sales cycle stretches six to eighteen months, where individual transactions are high-value but infrequent, and where the seller’s contribution is as much about relationship stewardship as it is about closing new logos.
It’s also appropriate for highly technical sales roles — solutions engineers or sales consultants — where the seller’s expertise is the primary differentiator, and where the company is effectively paying for consultative engagement rather than pure hunting activity.
The tradeoff is real: an 80/20 ratio attracts risk-averse sellers who value stability. It can reduce urgency and make it harder to differentiate top performers from average ones. If your best rep and your weakest rep earn within 15% of each other, your comp plan isn’t doing its job.
The 70/30 ratio strikes a balance that works well for mid-market sales teams and account executive roles with moderately complex sales cycles. There’s enough base to provide financial security and attract experienced talent, while the 30% variable component creates meaningful incentive to perform.
This ratio tends to work best in environments where the seller is responsible for a blend of new business acquisition and account growth, where deal cycles run 30 to 120 days, and where the company values a consultative, trusted-advisor approach over aggressive closing.
The 60/40 split is widely regarded as the benchmark compensation ratio for B2B sales roles, and for good reason. It creates genuine skin in the game — sellers feel the variable component in their day-to-day decisions — while still providing enough base salary to attract quality candidates who have options in the market.
At 60/40, the gap between a seller at 80% attainment and one at 120% attainment is significant enough to create a healthy performance culture. For a $200,000 OTE role, that’s the difference between earning $184,000 and $224,000 or more (with accelerators) — a meaningful spread that rewards effort and results.
If you’re building a standard field sales team or inside sales operation and don’t have a compelling reason to deviate, 60/40 is your starting point.
A 50/50 split sharpens the edge. Half of the seller’s compensation is earned through results, which creates a performance-driven culture where top sellers can significantly outearn their base. This structure is common in transactional and SMB sales environments, in SaaS roles with short sales cycles, and in organizations where the company provides strong inbound lead flow.
When leads are plentiful and cycles are short, the seller’s primary differentiator is execution speed, conversion skill, and volume. A 50/50 ratio appropriately rewards those capabilities. It also provides a natural sorting mechanism — sellers who aren’t producing results will self-select out more quickly than they would under a high-base model.
The risk: if quota is unrealistic or lead flow dries up, a 50/50 structure can feel punitive and accelerate unwanted turnover.
At the aggressive end of the spectrum, structures like 40/60 or even 30/70 are designed for pure-play hunting roles, commission-heavy environments, and industries like staffing, real estate, financial services, and certain technology verticals where individual deal-making drives the business.
These ratios attract a specific seller profile: high-confidence, competitive, self-motivated individuals who believe in their own ability to control their income. They want uncapped variable compensation and are willing to accept income volatility for the chance to earn outsized rewards.
Companies using aggressive ratios need to be honest with themselves: these structures demand strong pipeline infrastructure, clear territories, realistic quotas, and fast commission processing. A high-variable plan with slow payouts or unreachable targets doesn’t create motivation — it creates resentment.
The most common mistake in sales compensation design is applying a one-size-fits-all ratio across roles that have fundamentally different responsibilities, cycle lengths, and influence over outcomes.
The key principle: the more direct influence a seller has over the buying decision and the shorter the feedback loop between effort and result, the higher the variable component should be. Conversely, when the sales process is long, collaborative, and dependent on factors outside the seller’s control, a higher base provides appropriate stability.
Your compensation ratio doesn’t just structure pay — it filters your candidate pool. This is where many companies fail to connect the dots between compensation design and talent acquisition.
A 70/30 or 80/20 structure will attract experienced sellers who value predictability. These candidates often have families, mortgages, and financial commitments that make income stability non-negotiable. They’re typically strong at relationship management and consultative selling, but may lack the aggressive edge you need in a pure new-business role.
A 50/50 or more aggressive ratio will attract competitive, financially motivated sellers who are confident in their ability to produce. They’re often drawn to environments where top performers are visibly rewarded and where the earning ceiling is high. But this same confidence can manifest as entitlement, job-hopping, or a reluctance to invest in activities that don’t lead directly to commission.
At Talnted, we see this dynamic play out constantly: a misaligned compensation ratio doesn’t just create performance problems — it creates hiring problems. You end up interviewing the wrong candidates because the structure you’re advertising attracts the wrong profile.
The compensation ratio sets the foundation, but the real architecture of a sales comp plan lives in how variable pay behaves above and below quota. The most effective plans incorporate accelerators and, where appropriate, decelerators to create asymmetric reward structures.
Accelerators increase the commission rate once a seller exceeds quota. For example, a seller might earn a 10% commission rate up to 100% of quota, then a 15% rate on everything above it. This creates a multiplier effect that rewards over-performance and incentivizes sellers to keep pushing after hitting target rather than coasting. The best-performing organizations use accelerators that kick in at 100% attainment and increase again at 120% or 150%, creating multiple performance tiers.
Decelerators reduce the commission rate below a certain threshold — typically 70% or 80% of quota. While controversial, decelerators send a clear message that underperformance has consequences. A seller earning only 0.5x their commission rate below 80% of quota feels the financial impact and is forced to confront their performance gap. Used judiciously, decelerators can be an effective tool for managing accountability.
The interplay between the compensation ratio and the accelerator/decelerator structure determines the true range of outcomes in your comp plan. A 60/40 ratio with 2x accelerators above quota and 0.5x decelerators below 80% creates a dramatically different performance culture than a flat 60/40 plan with no modifiers.
1. Using the same ratio for every role. An SDR setting appointments, a mid-market AE closing deals, and a strategic account manager expanding enterprise relationships all require different structures. One ratio cannot serve all three.
2. Setting high variable without supporting infrastructure. A 50/50 or more aggressive ratio demands a steady lead pipeline, CRM discipline, and realistic quotas. Without these foundations, high-variable plans punish sellers for organizational failures.
3. Capping variable compensation. Commission caps are the single fastest way to lose your top performers. When a seller hits a ceiling on earnings, every dollar of additional production goes unrewarded. High performers notice immediately and start looking for companies that value their output.
4. Ignoring the ratio’s impact on hiring. As discussed above, the comp ratio filters your candidate pool before you ever post the job. If you’re struggling to attract the right sellers, examine whether your ratio aligns with the profile you need.
5. Changing the ratio mid-year. Few things erode sales team trust faster than mid-cycle comp changes. If your ratio needs adjustment, communicate the change early and implement it at the start of a new fiscal period. Retroactive changes — even well-intentioned ones — signal instability.
The compensation ratio is not an administrative detail — it’s a strategic decision that shapes culture, drives behavior, and determines who walks through your door in the hiring process. The right ratio aligns seller incentives with business outcomes, creates natural performance differentiation, and attracts the talent profile your go-to-market strategy demands.
At Talnted, we believe compensation design is inseparable from sales talent strategy. When we help our clients build precision-hired sales teams, the compensation structure is one of the first conversations we have — because the ratio you choose dictates the caliber and type of seller you’ll attract, retain, and ultimately lose.
Choose intentionally. Structure deliberately. And make sure your compensation ratio tells the right story to the market.
Ready to align your compensation structure with the right sales talent?
Get in TouchBy Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement
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