Commission Plan Stress Tester
Run your comp plan against low, core, and top reps to see who you overpay and which incentives backfire.
Example scenario—not a forecast or verified benchmark. Enable JavaScript to edit inputs, view charts, save locally and export your analysis.
Example inputs
- Base salary
- 60,000
- Annual quota (bookings)
- 1,000,000
- Commission rate up to quota
- 6
- Minimum attainment before any commission
- 50
- Accelerator rate above quota
- 10
- Commission cap (attainment %, 0 = uncapped)
- 0
- Gross margin on bookings
- 40
- Target sales comp as % of bookings
- 12
- Reps or scenarios to test
- [{"name":"Low performer","bookings":550000},{"name":"Core rep","bookings":1000000},{"name":"Top performer","bookings":1600000},{"name":"Outlier deal year","bookings":2800000}]
Example results
On-target earnings are $120,000 (12% of quota); 1 of 4 scenarios exceed your 12% cost-of-sales ceiling, worst being Low performer at 16.9%.
- On-target earnings (100% of quota)
- $120,000
- Comp as % of bookings at quota
- 12%
- Highest comp % of bookings (Low performer)
- 16.9%
- Blended comp % across scenarios
- 11.6%
- Base share of OTE
- 50%
- Scenarios over cost ceiling
- 1
What stands out
Low performer costs 16.9% of bookings vs your 12% ceiling
At 55% of quota they earn $93,000, which is 42% of the gross profit they bring in. Base salary is doing the heavy lifting.
$30K cliff at 50% of quota
One dollar of bookings at $500K unlocks $30K of commission. Reps just under the line will push deals across periods to hit it.
Outlier deal year contributes $820K after comp
At 280% of quota the plan still leaves 73% of gross profit with the company.
Next actions
- Shift pay mix toward variable (e.g. base $51,000) so low performers stop costing more than 12% of bookings.
- Replace the 50% cliff with a decelerated rate (e.g. half rate below threshold) to remove the incentive to time deals.
- Add a windfall review for any single deal above $250K so outliers do not trigger accelerators on luck.
Model assumptions & limitations
- Commission is paid on bookings at the base rate up to quota and at the accelerator rate above it, once the minimum attainment threshold is met.
- Cost-of-sales ceiling of 12% is your input; appropriate levels vary widely with margin and deal size.
- Employer payroll taxes, benefits, and SPIFs are excluded; add them to base salary for a fully loaded view.
- Bookings are assumed collected; clawbacks for cancellations are not modeled.