Incentive compensation can be a valuable driver of sales rep behaviour. Done right, it can shape the activities that directly contribute to business objectives, revenue growth, profitability, and other key performance indicators (KPIs). So what happens when Sales Ops has a well-designed sales incentive plan, but rep behaviour in the field is still not what it should be?

Sales reps may be pushing the wrong products. Or gaming the system. Or choosing easier, lower-value deals, rather than challenging for the big, high-revenue opportunities. This can lead to lost revenue, internal conflict, and poor incentive program ROI. So how do Sales Ops teams fix this misalignment?

In this article, we will share eight practical strategies for creating and operating sales incentive plans that deliver the results you expect, backed up with real-world examples and best practices.

Strategy #1: Identify the Root Cause of the Behaviour

Sales incentive plans that don’t drive the desired behaviour usually have one or more common issues in their design or operations, including:

* Misalignment with corporate or business unit goals
* Plan structure that is overly complex or not communicated clearly enough
* Loopholes or unintended consequences that incentivize the wrong behaviour
* Miscommunication or transparency issues
* Inflexibility to adapt to market changes

Example: A software company wants to increase sales of its subscription-based products in order to grow recurring revenue. But its current incentive plan offers the same payout rate for one-time license sales and subscription renewals. So sales reps naturally choose to focus on the “quick win” license sales, which are easier to close, even though it contradicts the business’s long-term revenue strategy.

The underlying cause is a misaligned incentive structure that doesn’t effectively direct behaviour toward the desired business outcomes.

Strategy #2: Define Clear Behavioral Objectives

One of the most important steps in the design or review of any incentive plan is to be very clear upfront about which behaviors you want to drive. This should be specific, and not just tied to top-line quotas.

Example: If the business wants to encourage reps to sell multiple products (i.e. to increase wallet share), the incentive plan should be structured in a way that rewards reps more for closed deals that include more than one product or solution. This could be done with accelerators or multipliers when a rep closes a deal that includes three or more products, for example.

Tip: Use historical sales data and performance analysis to uncover gaps in current rep behaviour, and define specific desired outcomes.

Strategy #3: Simplify the Plan to Make the Most Important Things Clear

The simplest and most effective incentive plans are the ones that salespeople can easily understand. So if reps can’t clearly see the connection between a specific action and reward, they won’t change their behaviour.

Best Practice: Keep incentive plans as simple as possible, focused on 2-3 core KPIs that are clearly linked to your growth strategy. Metrics should not be added simply to make the plan more “balanced”. Adding too many incentive metrics waters down the focus.

Example: One telecom provider simplified its sales incentive plan by eliminating seven different commission metrics, and instead focused reps on just two:

a. Net-new customers
b. Upselling of premium packages

The clarity of this simplified plan helped reps focus on the high-impact activities that really mattered to the business, and premium package subscriptions increased by 22% in one quarter.

Strategy #4: Add Negative Consequences for the Wrong Behaviour

Incentives are not only about rewarding the right behavior – they can also discourage and even punish unwanted actions.

Example: One medical device company had a problem with reps giving deep discounts in order to close deals more quickly. Rather than simply implementing a hard discount cap, the company decided to reduce the payout rates when a deal had a discount over a certain threshold.

The result was a cultural shift away from aggressive discounting and more focus on value-based selling.

Caution: It’s important to be upfront and transparent with reps when implementing disincentives such as discount caps and reduced payout rates. Reps should know the “why” behind any plan changes.

Strategy #5: Make Plan Design Agile, Not Annual

Sales environments are constantly changing: market conditions shift, competitors innovate, and customer needs evolve. Annual sales plan cycles are simply too long to adapt to the current state of business.

Solution: Build flexibility into your plan design so that it can adapt to changing business conditions.

Example: A SaaS company used a quarterly variable component to allow new products to be incentivized dynamically throughout the year. When the company launched a new AI-powered feature, they created a short-term spiff to accelerate adoption and cross-sell, rather than having to wait until the next fiscal year.

Strategy #6: Collaborate Closely with Sales Leaders

Sales Ops shouldn’t be operating in a vacuum. It’s vital to collaborate with sales leaders and understand what really happens in the field, why reps are acting the way they do, and how plans can be designed or adjusted to encourage the right behaviour.

a. Benefits of Sales Operations & Sales Leader Collaboration
b. Spot behavioral blind spots before plan rollout
c. Validate or challenge assumptions about what is realistically achievable
d. Drive better buy-in across the salesforce

Pro Tip: Conduct joint workshops with Sales, Product, and Finance stakeholders to ensure all perspectives are considered and reflected in the plan.

Strategy #7: Use Data and Analytics to Monitor and Respond to Behaviour

Designing the right sales plan is only the first step. Continuous monitoring and analysis of field behaviour versus expected plan results are essential.

Implement:

a. Dashboards and scorecards to track real-time KPI movement
b. Win/loss analysis by incentive type
c. Correlation analysis between incentive payouts and quota performance

Example: A consumer electronics company used performance analytics for incentive compensation to understand how reps were performing against plan rules. They discovered that reps were choosing to push accessories, which had a higher commission rate, rather than core products. The Sales Ops team rebalanced commission rates and created a retraining program for value-based selling.

Strategy #8: Communicate the Plan Effectively

The best incentive plan is useless if reps don’t understand it. Plan communication should be clear, continuous, and contextual.

Recommendations:

a. Create short explainer videos or one-pagers
b. Hold live Q&A sessions before plan rollout
c. Equip frontline sales managers with enablement materials

Example: A logistics and supply chain company created a “Sales TV” that used animated stories and testimonials from current reps to explain the plan changes and why they mattered. Engagement with the plan went up and the sales behaviours aligned in one quarter.

Strategy #9: Recognize and Celebrate the Right Behaviour

Recognition can also be non-monetary. Celebrating publicly and within the company the rep behaviour that best exemplifies what you are looking for sends a signal to the rest of the sales force.

Example: A B2B services company created a “Behaviour Champion of the Month” award. Winners were not selected by revenue alone, but by how closely they followed and emulated the strategic selling behaviours desired by leadership, such as engagement with multiple stakeholders or selling into new verticals.

This kind of recognition and peer recognition drove internal motivation and accountability.

Strategy #1 Recap: Turn Incentives into a Strategic Lever for Behaviour

A sales incentive plan should not only drive the desired outcomes. It should also drive the process of getting to those outcomes. When Sales Ops teams use a strategic, data-driven, and collaborative approach to sales incentive plan design and operation, it is possible to influence and steer behaviour more effectively, increase rep motivation, and deliver much better business results.

Incentive plans are only as effective as the behaviour they drive. By making smart and well-aligned plan design decisions, Sales Ops teams can make sure that incentive compensation is not just a tool for paying for performance, but also a catalyst for transforming performance.