Your 2026 Sales Compensation Plan Exposed Five Risks. Don’t Carry Them Into 2027.

What have you learned from your 2026 sales comp plan that you want to fix for 2027? That is the question that should drive your plan design this year.

Quota changes. Updated commission structures. A couple of updated KPIs. These are all normal modifications that organizations make going into a new fiscal year. But these simple tweaks may not address bigger issues within the plan.

There were many issues with sales comp in 2026 when it comes to setting quotas and having good data to build the plan off of. One Analyst found that 65% of those surveyed feel quota setting is one of the biggest challenges they face. 60% stated that they used past performance as a big driver for their quota numbers.

So what should you take away from this for your 2027 plan? You need to look deeper at the plan and see if there are any flaws. Here are some things that Sales Ops and RevOps teams should think about before investing another year in sales incentives.

1. Don’t Base Quotas On Last Year. Use Market Opportunity. 

Setting a bad quota is something that can derail your entire sales comp plan. If there is one thing that sales comp professionals learned from 2026 it is that you need to set proper quotas.

Many companies start off with their previous years revenue and then add a % of growth. Then they spread those quota numbers across territories and sellers. Using previous year’s numbers may not reflect what the opportunity looks like in those territories. It could be a combination of factors. Territory opportunity, account opportunity, competitors and even seller ability.

If you have a seller that took over a mature territory they should not have the same quota expectations as someone who just took over an untapped market.

When developing your 2027 sales comp plan you should have a blend of corporate goals and territory potential. Once you have these numbers in place you can start to determine what your seller should be expected to hit.

Always question if your quotas are high enough but also if they are attainable for the seller.

Your commission structure is not what you should question first. Its what your seller is expected to hit.

2. Don’t Add More KPI’s. Focus On What You Want To Drive. 

Every time a company decides to change something within their business they will find a way to incorporate a new KPI into their sales comp plan.

We know that revenue is important. Margin is important, retention, selling new products, upselling, CX and selling into strategic accounts are all important as well.

But when everything has a weight within the sales comp plan your sellers may not know what to focus on.

Figure out what your top 3 drivers are for your business. Then ask yourself what KPIs you can incentivize that will affect those drivers. Take a look at your current sales comp plan and reevaluate what weight each KPI should have.

One Analyst found that 97% of those surveyed are making changes to their sales comp plan for 2026. Some of those reasons included wanting to align sales strategy (48%) and to fix broken plans (41%).

Just because you are changing your plan doesn’t mean it’s going to be a better plan.

You want to focus on changing the right things.

3. Drive For Profitable Revenue Not Just Revenue. 

Selling above your quota does not mean that you are generating profitable revenue.

There are many ways that a seller can sell above their quota and still generate negative revenue for the company. Discounting too much, selling less profitable products, acquiring low quality customers and closing deals that will cost the company money down the road.

The sales team is celebrating because they met their number. But the finance team may not be smiling.

Make sure that you are analyzing if your sales comp plan drove profitable revenue in 2026. Based on your business there are many ways to measure this. You can look at margin, retention, product mix, discounting, customer profitability and even cost to serve. For Insurance you may want to look at profitable persistency. Telecom could look at selling higher tier products and driving more value per customer. SaaS companies can drive towards profitable ARR and expandable customers.

These are just some examples of what you can measure but don’t put all of these in your sales comp plan. Use them to help guide your sales comp decisions.

Sell more revenue vs. selling profitable revenue. Know the difference. 

4. Incentivize Today And Tomorrow. 

Many sales comp plans only reward sellers on what they close within the current period. But what about your pipeline for tomorrow? 

Driving towards strategic accounts, creating qualified pipeline, selling new products, upselling, working with partners and mitigating renewals are all behaviors that can lead to more revenue in the future.

Did your sellers focus on these in 2026 or did they just try to get to quota for the current period.

For your 2027 sales comp plan you should find a balance between incentivizing outcomes and select behaviors that will drive revenue in the future. This may vary by position, length of sale, how much control your sellers have over these metrics and many other factors.

Don’t just pay for something because its easy to track. Make sure that these metrics will drive more revenue for your business and figure out how to measure that.

Pay your sellers to generate revenue today but also pay them to generate revenue for tomorrow.

5. Test Your Plan Before You Roll Out. 

Finding out that your new sales comp plan isn’t working is something that you want to discover before you send it out to your sellers.

Test your 2027 sales comp plan with last years actuals. Look at attainment, payout, accelerators, outliers and any new KPIs that you are looking to add. Find out who your plan is benefiting and where you may be over or under budget.

Make sure that your data and rules are correct as well. AI can be a great tool to test scenarios, provide information on your plan and find outliers but only if you have good data to work with. There are many reports coming out that show companies are using AI but are struggling with their data and utilizing technology properly.

Have checkpoints that you will check on throughout the year to see if your sales comp plan is changing seller behavior. Know when to update or remove KPIs from your plan.

Analyze 2026. Build your plan for 2027. Test it. Roll it out and monitor your results. 

Use what you learned in 2026 to build a better sales comp plan for 2027.

Ask yourself if you are building a sales comp plan for your business that you want to run in 2027 or are you just continuing to spend money on your 2026 assumptions.

Sometimes having the wrong sales comp plan can cost you more money than not calculating commissions correctly.