It’s 2025. Almost every sales organization today has an established, logical, and clearly defined sales hierarchy and credit assignment process that ensures revenue gets booked up to the right team, region, territory, channel, and role.

But in a much larger percentage of cases there is a salesperson or a team of salespeople outside the traditional sales hierarchy that has actually “won” the deal, or has been highly instrumental in the closing of the transaction. It could be an account executive from the product or services team, a partner manager, someone in marketing, technical pre-sales, or others.

The problem is, if not properly governed, this can cause incentives to be double-paid, create arguments among sales people about credit, as well as disputes and even an erosion of trust in the whole process. In this article, we will share a compilation of best practices for crediting salespeople outside of sales hierarchy as well as examples and actionable tips.

Setting Expectations: Why is This Important?

The importance of consistent, fair, and well-defined sales crediting cannot be overstated. Sales teams will lose their motivation to work hard and win more deals if they are not properly credited. It will also lead to the following negative side effects:

a. Drop in inter-functional collaboration
b. Increase in overpayments and disputes
c. Evenue reporting gets distorted

As a simple example, consider a solutions consultant in the engineering or pre-sales team who works on building the product demo that is ultimately shown to the customer and won the deal. They are not part of the sales hierarchy, but they have played a key role in the closing of the transaction. Without a process in place and in advance, one of two things will happen – they will either not get credited (missing out on what they truly deserve) or the sales person on whose credit will have to share with them, thus creating an argument or a perception of unfairness on behalf of the sales rep.

Credit outside Hierarchy: 7 Best Practices With Examples

Best practice 1. Define Clear Credit Eligibility Criteria

Before you can credit anyone outside the sales hierarchy, it is important to first define who should be eligible and under which circumstances.

The following are the best practices:

a. Document all the roles that can be considered outside the sales hierarchy but can be credited (e.g., partner managers, technical pre-sales, architects, customer success managers)
b. Link the criteria to direct impact on the revenue (hard to argue here that such and such person from another team that was in a meeting but did not have an impact should get credit on that deal)
c. Define the rules for exceptions (e.g., for very strategic accounts, for deals that span multiple regions, etc.)

Example:

The conditions in the company’s sales crediting policy could look as follows:

“A direct sales force shall be defined by person(s) who are in the Sales Hierarchy and responsible for booking revenue.

Key exceptions to the above policy include business units with direct revenue-impacting roles outside of the traditional sales hierarchy and in parallel hierarchies. Examples of these exceptions include: partner managers, professional services, pre-sales, and solution architects who have direct responsibility and impact in customer acquisition and deal closure.”

Best practice 2. Establish a “Shared Credit” Model

A common mistake when considering how to credit salespeople outside of sales hierarchy is to give the full credit for a deal to two or more people, in essence double paying it and overstating revenue.

The concept of shared credit involves expressing each contributor’s credit entitlement as a percentage of the overall revenue (adding up to a total of 100%) rather than duplicating credit lines. Following are the best practices for this model:


a. Define a total maximum credit for the deal (100% typically)
b. Express all contribution credits as weighted percentages (depending on impact of role)
c. Apply the rules consistently to similar deal types

Example:

In the example of the sales rep and the partner manager each would get a percentage of the value, instead of full credit, as follows:

1. Sales Rep: 70% = $350K
2. Partner Manager: 30% = $150K
3. Best practice 3. Leverage Parallel Hierarchies for Tracking

As noted earlier, most sales compensation systems today offer the ability to set up a “parallel hierarchy” on top of the official sales hierarchy. In other words, most systems allow multiple hierarchies to be defined.

Best practices:

a. Configure the rules in the system to allow parallel assignment of credit in the parallel (non-sales) hierarchy without interfering with the official sales hierarchy.
b. Use separate roll-up reporting to ensure revenue attribution remains clear and there is no duplication of booking credit.

Example:

In addition to the actual “Sales Roll-up Hierarchy” defined in Hierarchy Manager, a parallel structure could be configured for tracking the influence of “Solution Engineers” contributions to won deals under the title “Technical Enablement Hierarchy.”

Best practice 3. Use Parallel Hierarchies for Attribution

The majority of modern sales compensation plans support “parallel hierarchies,” which means that you can create a separate, non-sales credit hierarchy for contributors, such as:

a. Product teams
b. Marketing influence
c. Channel partners
d. Regional overlay teams

Best Practices:

a. Set up rules to automatically assign credit in the non-sales hierarchy and rules to not allow for conflict with the primary sales hierarchy.
b. Use separate roll-up reporting for clean revenue attribution.

Example:

In SAP Commissions, you could create a “Technical Enablement Hierarchy” for Solution Engineers that wouldn’t interfere with the “Sales Roll-up Hierarchy.”

Best practice 4. Define Credit Types and Separate Payout Logic

It is also a common mistake to try and apply the same logic to deal credits as applies to payout calculations. The following are some common credit types:

a. Booking Credit: Revenue booked for revenue recognition purpose
b. Commissionable Credit: Revenue used to calculate incentives
c. Recognition Credit: Internal awards or performance dashboards

Best practices:

a. Credit non-sales contributors in a non-commissionable credit category if there compensation plan is not tied to sales revenue.
b. Only make it commissionable if the non-sales role is specifically outlined in their plan.

Example:

The marketing lead might be entitled to recognition credit as their role in winning the opportunity is significant. However their individual compensation plan may be based on conversion of marketing qualified leads to revenue, but not on the value of the deal. Therefore, their payout would be based on the number of MQLs that are closed as revenue and not their direct contribution as seen in credit tracking.

Best practice 5. Create a Governance and Approval Process

Allowing each sales manager to make ad-hoc decisions on outside credit attribution and payouts, creates a system of madness. A more structured process should be enforced, such as the following:

a. Non-sales credit request form
b. Manager verification of contribution
c. Finance/Sales Ops final approval pre-payout

Best practices:

a. Automate the request workflow using the sales compensation platform
b. Add SLAs around the approval process so it does not drag on for long periods

Example:

The customer success manager spots a deal where an important upsell was booked to his or her credit but after some initial effort to re-activate the dormant account was ultimately won by the sales rep. In the system a request is entered, approved by their director, verified by Sales Ops, and will then be reflected in the next commission run.

Best practice 6. Maintain Transparency Through Reporting

As in all sales compensation related tasks, transparency is key to building trust. All credited sales people whether inside or outside the hierarchy should have visibility to the following:

a. The deals they were credited on
b. The % or value of the credit
c, The notes on the reason for crediting

Best practices:

a. Use auto-generated system reports
b. Include a “Contribution Notes” field to include context

Example:

In the system the report for the product manager could clearly state that a 20% shared credit was attributed on Deal #456 “Due to customization they provided which allowed for deal to be won”

Best practice 7. Review and Adjust Regularly

Models are rarely set in stone and this is also true for outside credit policies. The way a company is structured and the influence of roles outside of sales will likely change. Annual or semi-annual reviews should take place.

Questions to ask:

a. Are there more contributors looking for credit outside the hierarchy?
b. Are the number of disputes on the rise?
c. Is the system resulting in some hidden, unexpected overpayments?

Best practices:

a. Get feedback from Sales, Finance and Operations stakeholders
b. Use analytics tools to spot anomalies

Example:

The annual policy review finds that channel marketing managers are also frequently involved in top deals and that their contribution is hard to miss. The best solution for the company is to update the policy document to add and outline the role of channel marketing managers in the shared credit matrix.

Conclusion

Fair and motivating crediting of sales people, including those outside of sales hierarchy, is a tight rope to walk between incentive recognition and compensation governance. Not having any processes and policies in place leads to disputes, double-paid incentives, angry employees, and other undesirable outcomes.

On the other hand, following the above best practices – including clear eligibility criteria, shared credit models, parallel hierarchies, clear credit types, approval processes, transparency, and periodic reviews – a company can build a fair and motivating incentive recognition process. A data-driven, motivating, and transparent process results in more contributions across the organization, and that means a more effective overall revenue machine.