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The Blueprint for a High-Performing Sales Team | Brian Le, Notion

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0:00 | 45:54

Are your sales compensation plans driving the right behaviors or causing your best reps to quit? In this episode of GTMnow, Brian Le (Global Sales Compensation Partner at Notion) breaks down how to build a scalable sales comp operating system.

Brian shares his firsthand experience scaling Notion's sales comp from 80 to over 400 employees and explains why trust is the ultimate currency in revenue operations. If you are a founder, revenue leader, or sales professional, this breakdown covers everything from structuring pay mix to identifying the earliest signs of comp plan degradation. You will even hear what it takes for top AEs to pull in upwards of $1 million in a single quarter.

In this episode, we cover:
00:00 Intro
01:15 Brian Le's journey through Salesforce, Carta, and Notion
04:33 Why sales comp is the operating system for go-to-market
07:07 Phase 1: Building a scalable comp foundation at Notion
13:50 Transitioning from seat-based to usage-based pricing models
18:15 The 3 core pillars of a successful sales commission plan
22:09 Early warning signs your quota and comp structures are breaking
31:41 The real cost of losing sales reps over bad commission payouts
39:35 How to structure compensation for your first early-stage sales hires
42:39 Will AI agents replace SDRs and sales compensation?

Connect with Brian Le, :
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhoangle/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/
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The GTMnow Podcast
The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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SPEAKER_00

SalesComp is actually the operating system for quota market.

SPEAKER_02

Brian Lee has built that operating system at some of the biggest names in tech salescomp, Carback, and now No Chip, where he has scaled comp from around 80 commissionable employees to over 400 and two and a half years.

SPEAKER_00

As a team of one, it's been quite a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_02

Brian Lee, global sales compensation partner at Notion, reading a confession from the compensator and ever stage competition. I quit because of the comp plan. I told HR it was an opportunity for growth, but everyone in their room.

SPEAKER_00

When you get sales comp wrong, it's going to bleed down. And what that means for any organization is that you have lost capacity. To me, trust is really the currency of sales comp.

SPEAKER_02

Brian breaks down how to build a plan from scratch, the earliest signs yours is breaking, how to scale one, the role of sales comp in go to market, along with much more.

SPEAKER_00

I've seen A's make upwards of a million dollars in a quarter easily.

SPEAKER_02

Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome. Brian, welcome to GTM Now.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02

It is so great to have you here. I'm really excited to dive in. We recently actually uh published an interview around sales compensation, but it was from a bit of a different lens.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It was kind of um an overarching lens. Um, it was Sivarajramani, the CEO of Everstage, and he's got this purview of many, many, many different companies and their comp structures. And we got so many questions about comp and demand for more on comp. So we're gonna go even deeper and from the expert practitioner view that you have, yeah, having built it at Notion, at Carta, Salesforce. So why don't we start there with give us just a tiny, tiny bit of background on you know your work in the sales compensation space?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'd say I really started my career in Salescom at Salesforce. And from there, you start to see uh the downsizing of the organizations that I start to join. And it's because it allowed me to get a broader breadth of impact to the organizations uh after building out sales compensation for a massive tech company like like Salesforce. So kind of understanding comp philosophy to its core so well that you are then able to wear the different hats within revenue operations and revenue strategy. And then how does that actually drive behavior, right? Because for me, I I think a lot of people tend to view sales comp as a derivative of HR. But in reality, sales comp is actually the operating system for go to market, right? And so it really is an impactful lever for us to double down on, right? And and really understand not just the plan mechanics, but actually what drives meaningful behavior for all of our reps and sellers.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. Makes me think of the classic Charlie Munger quote of show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome because it truly is that. If we're relying on sales to actually close revenue, then the incentive is what is going to dictate that outcome, which is revenue and what every company is striving to uh obtain, of course, retention also.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, of course. And, you know, I think about sales comp um where sales comp is often something that folks tend to forget about, or it's the the the the the last thing that they build or think about, but it's also the first thing that also gets blamed, right? When, oh, you know, why is my comp wrong? Or, you know, maybe it's it's a downstream um impact uh from a lot of the upstream decisions. And so for me, I've been really trying to change that narrative a bit of bringing sales comp to the forefront of the decision-making process, because once you understand what the overall strategic objective of a company is or what behavior we then want to drive, then I can be effective at my job.

SPEAKER_02

Definitely that overarching goal. So you sit at both the strategic and the operational side, uh, really kind of owning it end to end.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And because I kind of built it from beginning to end, right? Like being someone who is actually going through that close cycle every month, every quarter, um, being the one to actually set up and send comp plans on a regular cadence, uh, triaging a lot of the inquiries, building out the system. You then have an appreciation for this function, but then having a seat at the table to also drive and bring insights to leadership on what needs to change to then align better align with what the company is trying to achieve. Right. So it's been rewarding getting to not just do the tactical and operational pieces, but then having an imprint on the strategy and what we're kind of racing towards.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And I mean, you you started it from the ground up at Notion, you've you've scaled it tremendously across Notion, across Carta, across Salesforce. How many comp structures do you think you've built or how many sales reps do you think you've kind of created the comp structures for?

SPEAKER_00

It's kind of I actually don't know what that number is, but I will say that, you know, when I was at Salesforce, we probably uh grew this company from 40,000 employees to by the time that I left, I think it was around 80,000. So kind of doubled in in size. And so, you know, there are so many sellers uh on different frequency of plans. And so to even think about what the the number of of touch is quite uh it's it's quite jarring, but you know at Notion, we were able to uh to scale to roughly over 400 now. And when I started, we were around 80 to 90 total commissionable employees. So in the span of, let's say, like two and a half years, you know, growing that much has been rewarding. But also as a team of one, it's been uh quite a roller coaster.

SPEAKER_02

I bet. So take us through the roller coaster from the beginning at Notion, like creating the sales compensation structure from the ground up.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I'd say I think of it in three different kind of phases of really learning how to crawl, then learning how to walk. And then now we're kind of in this phase of like, okay, are we able to run? Right. And so the the first phase and kind of my P0 when I started at Notion was not necessarily to change the way that comp actually existed. It was building the foundation of SalesComp. And so what that means is actually trying to just stop the bleeding from from happening, right? It was trying to uh take a step back and build trust with the organization, right? So before I started, uh SalesComp was just done manually. It was done in spreadsheets, it was done with you know different data sources that you kind of compile together to build this model. But knowing the growth trajectory that we were on, it was just not feasible for us to just continue this, this, this way, right? And continue to maybe just focus on the comp design change right away. It was actually how do we take a step back and build the foundation? And what that meant was automating and scaling incentives, right? So we started to go through a full RFP process uh because I've kind of worked with a lot of the ICM solutions at both Carta and Salesforce. It was an opportunity for me to understand what solution was out there and what solution best fit the needs of Notion. And that's when we decided to go with Everstage and really built the uh the foundation of automating sales commissions, providing visibility to our sales reps, and then taking that data and providing uh data-driven insights to leadership to then allow us to know how and where to move and when to move. And so it's been really rewarding to kind of see that trajectory and that growth at the organization. And so we did that within year one. And year two was really about okay, how do we operationally scale? How do we actually get all of the moving pieces to kind of move in a way that kind of makes this flywheel work? And so it was focusing on reporting and analytics, right? Because your data is going to inform, you know, how you should then play this next chess move, uh, where the priorities should really lie, and building out the the muscle of creating a repeatable system, right, that you can rinse and repeat. Because as a team of one, it was hard to do the tactical things while also focusing on the strategic uh priorities at the same time. So I needed to make sure that the team was aware of like, okay, this is the cadence that we need to operate on. Um, this is the expectation that we expect from managers, from sellers, and from leadership. And once you have that buy-in, we were able to then focus on like phase three, which is okay, how do we then tweak and fine-tune our comp design that allows us to um better achieve what we're looking for and uh achieve a more cohesive go-to-market team. And so Notion, I'd say, has been around for quite some time, but our go-to-market um engine has really only been around for, I'd say, two to three years, right? So it's quite um, it's quite young in its its maturity curve. And it's also been a great like blank canvas for me to really steer us in the right direction.

SPEAKER_02

Well, fascinating to build with that blank canvas. And I think it's incredible the scale that Notion has had up to that point. Like you mentioned, you came in and there were 80 to 90 sellers already in place before you even had, you know, the sales compensation automated and these kind of technologies like you mentioned, like every stage in place before then. So that's just incredible scale that Notion's been able to get to. It's a testament to the product.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Totally. And you know, I I I knew that, you know, there's when everything feels like it's on fire and there's so many moving pieces where you know everything is this nice shiny thing that you can fix, it can often create a lot of like distraction, right? And and what I've done with leadership was actually telling them, hey, we know these things are are are are on fire, right? But in order for us to be successful, we need to acknowledge that these things aren't going to be perfect. We need to kind of have it on the back burner. But what is the key one to three things that we're going to prioritize and fix now that will allow us to uh be successful long term, right? It's like not just zooming in on this one thing that needs to be to be fixed, but it's understanding how do you actually sequence some of these fundamental changes so it actually makes sense and you can bring the entire go-to-market um team along that journey, right? And and a lot of it is making sure that we move in tandem and and we move in lockstep and uh knowing when to make that move versus doing trying to do everything all at once and not doing everything well.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, completely makes sense. That's the the strategy side to imagine. Totally. It almost makes me think of um ICHUDSBot because they talk about their their three-tiered version in his, you know, between 2007 and and 2013, I want to say, but they had essentially their their revenue goals or go-to-market goals baked in as the sales lever goals to your point of it is the go-to-market kind of lever that you can pull on. So the first one was uh land customers, obviously, get customers. The second one was fixed churn. And the third one was sustainable growth.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And it really ties into the those goals. So you mentioned right now you're pulling on certain levers based on your goals. Like, what are your goals, if you don't mind me asking a notion right now that you're optimizing for?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So currently our big focus is around shifting from our traditional SaaS seat-based, license-based um model to unlocking this new aha moment on how do we actually sell efficiency, right? How do we actually sell work? Right. And you see a lot of customers uh and and other players in that space moving to usage-based pricing, right? To this consumption model, because we're in the era of efficiencies and we're in the era of how do we unlock more with not just um not just prompts, but actual work, having someone who could actually, you know, synthesize all of your emails and actually respond to them, right? And and take action on on the user's behalf. And so we're starting to shift uh to selling seats to selling work or efficiency has been a big priority for for us at Notion uh this past couple of months.

SPEAKER_02

Totally, totally makes sense. Appreciate you sharing that.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

And you know, Notion scaled PLG for a very long time. Um, but you previously have sales-led organization experience also with Salesforce and Carta. So I'm curious, like, how does sales commission strategy change based on the motion, if at all?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I'd say, you know, at Salesforce, you didn't really have a PLG motion, nor nor did you really have that at CARTA. So for me, working at a company uh like Notion where it was PLG has, I'd say it's a double-edged sword in that, you know, you you start to um have to shift behavior in a different way. Um and and so I'd say what I've gained from Salesforce was understanding the critical moments or the critical inputs into sales compensation. Uh, at Salesforce, I worked on a lot of the MA activities. So working through the Mealsoft acquisition, working through the Tableau and uh Slack acquisition. Slack was the last acquisition that I worked on before kind of transitioned over to my time at Carta. And it was understanding not just Salesforce's comp design and comp philosophy really well. It was understanding it where we could then build out an MA playbook for bringing over all of these acquisitions into the Salesforce ecosystem, right? How do we phase out certain uh cohorts of roles? Um, how do we move them over to comparable roles and um what that pay mix could look like, what the components could look like at uh these acquisition companies and bringing them into that Salesforce ecosystem in a way that makes sense and that was spread over a you know duration of time, right? Because you can't just you can't fix everything all at once and and and just expect it to work, right? Like you need to be very thoughtful about uh what you do when you do it. And um I'd say building trust is really important to me and in in terms of uh how I think about um success of of my stakeholders, right? Because to me, trust is really the the the currency of SalesComp. Uh, once you're able to earn that trust, you then have a platform for you to then move more, um move more mountains and and build that credibility up front with your stakeholders.

SPEAKER_02

Love that. And for a lot of leaders that want to create that trust also in the organizations that they're building with their salespeople, you know, what are the the components, I guess if we were to deconstruct it of a sales comp plan that helps enable that trust too?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I I'd say uh sales comp is really if you kind of remove it to its core, right? Is I I I think of it in like three simple buckets. One is your OTE and and pay mix, right? Of okay, is the pay competitive enough um to market, right? And and then the next part is well, what is the pay mix, right? Oftentimes people think pay mix is just a easy split that adds up to 100, but it's actually a signal to the sellers of what they have influence over, right? And and so I I think having a well-defined and well-thought out pay mix by different roles and cohorts actually signals to the sellers that, you know, okay, this is what the business wants me to focus on, or this is what I have influence and control over in terms of like the go-to-market engine and and lifecycle. And the second part is around all of your quotas and pay curves, right? Like you can't have one without the other. And so you then start to look at, you know, what is the tops down and bottoms up? You can't necessarily just decide on what a quota is, right? And and and and and oftentimes people um try to reverse into this number when they uh have a certain planned target that they need to meet. So, you know, the easy way is to kind of just reverse engineer if I have this many sellers, right? Uh, how do I then kind of divvy up the pie to actually get to these these quotas? But sometimes you also need to do some backtesting, right, of of what actually um what is the conversion rates between uh some of our pipeline? Um, what does what is our pipeline, right? Like do, you know, at Notion we have a PLG motion, which is great because it allowed us to kind of bring some of the self-serve customers over into the sales assisted business. And it worked well for us, right? But then is that cohort going to dry up? And do we then need to think about pivoting strategies? You know, that's something that we've kind of been working through and something that is very particular on the the uh PLG to like sales let motion transition that uh is something that's kind of been top of mind for us and building more of a cohesive journey uh for our customers, right? Because it was initially just like two very separate business units that now we're trying to unify and to make sure that we put the customers first in that entire experience. So I'd say that is the second piece around comp. And then the third piece uh is really around the governance, right? The governance of your policies, your terms, uh, what you're actually crediting on, and uh making sure that all three pillars are um are working in tandem with each other, right? When one doesn't speak to the other, that's when you start to see the degradation of comp plans. That's when you start to see a lot of thrash and confusion from the sellers. Um, and it just doesn't uh something has to be fixed um within those three pillars to actually make it work. So I'd say when you distill comp down, it's really these three in fundamental like inputs to a comp design.

SPEAKER_02

You know, you've got these three components, the three inputs. And like you mentioned, if they're not working together, there's some degradation. So what would be the earliest signs of degradation that founders and leaders should be conscious of and aware of?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I'd say the first thing that I tend to look at is actually the quota attainment pacing. Right. So looking at, you know, if you're on a quarterly plan, right, are deals really being bunched at the end of the quarter, or how do we actually spread out uh the booking of you know attainment across the quarter, right? And and that usually signals, okay, maybe the sales cycle is a lot longer. And so you see um you see these deals kind of closing um later or taking longer to actually um to actually close. So understanding how your deal cycle typically uh lasts or what that deal cycle looks like is really important before it even gets to the sales comp payout, right? Like you should you should really be looking at how the team is actually pacing um throughout that period, whether it be monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual, looking at certain um metrics to actually see how the reps are performing before you actually run your commission cycle. That gives you just more wiggle room to then adjust as needed, right? Like is it is it purely just on some seasonality that you need to address? Uh do you need to potentially build a spiff to address some of the performance uh lag? And then I'd say on the actual commission payout and attainment is looking at overall attainment distribution, right? So are you having more of a right-skewed um attainment distribution that most people are just blowing out their quotas, right? And that signals, okay, I need to then either adjust what my quota is or understand what the root cause of, you know, what your attainment distribution is telling you. I'd say everyone in the industry is going to want to chase after, you know, what is a fairly evenly distributed bell curve. Um, and and so you start to then uh align that with, okay, I need to adjust quotas um a little bit here, or do you adjust it at the red uh the region level or if it's at the segment level? Sometimes there's different levers that you can pull to actually understand uh where you need to make these adjustments, right? And so for me, it's it's not just okay, let's just make a blanket uh shift towards uh increasing quotas, but it's actually understanding uh some of the inputs to to how we actually got here, right? So understanding with sales managers what some of the root cause is, and um then from there you can make the right changes accordingly. And then on the the last piece, even after you pay out, right, it's it's looking at um what your plan governance is and and looking at if you have the right policies and terms in place to actually protect the company from a lot of the the exposed risk when it comes to massive payout, right? And so we started to, you know, when I built out kind of sales comp at Notion, it was not just focusing on like the plann design, but focusing on a lot of the documentation around all of the different permutations that can happen when, you know, there is a uh quota adjustment that's needed, or you know, when someone goes out on a leave of absence, or how do we think about holdovers, right? All of these things kind of have to work um synchronously to um ensure that you understand the end-to-end mechanics of your comp plan. So I'd say those are kind of the three things that I I look out for um in terms of making sure that your plan is um working as intended, or if it requires you to um have, you know, a change mid-year or depending on what your planning cycles look like.

SPEAKER_02

Mm-hmm. And from planning cycle perspective, can you be a little bit more fluid or would you recommend, for example, you know, maximum quarterly or maximum every H1, H2 making those shifts?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I you won't like the answer, but I'd say it depends, right? It it really depends on the organization and where you are in terms of that maturity curve. For Notion, we we try to keep things as fluid as possible, giving us the flexibility to adjust on a quarterly cadence because um just how fast the industry moves and giving us that flexibility to adjust as needed. So I'd say most organizations will try to front load all of the planning at the beginning of the fiscal year with some buffer and and room to adjust as needed during the half. And that's I'd say that's kind of the the standard. But then you also have, you know, minor adjustments here and there, if needed, on a quarterly ba on a quarterly basis.

SPEAKER_02

Makes sense. And it's such an interesting time because, you know, we used to think, at least from the venture perspective, that if you go back a decade, even before that, pricing was something that you could, if you will, afford to get wrong when you're building. And now it it really isn't. It's like a pivotal part of your go-to-market. And then at the same time, products have never been moving so quickly. And so where product used to be, you know, the sticking point now, go to market is. And so I can imagine how tricky that would be as product launches are developing and everything is adjusting, distribution is changing to suddenly have to adjust on the comp side is just it's a lot. It's a lot right now.

SPEAKER_00

It is, and and that's why we kind of built the the planning cycle to allow for that flexibility because you don't know when you need to like pivot. Yeah. Right. And companies who don't pivot can theoretically just not be successful, right? And and so you see um a lot of folks trying to figure out this cadence of how much do I change, you know, how frequently do I change, and is it, you know, going to move the needle on what we're trying to achieve? But to your point, it's it's a bit of a roller coaster for a lot of organizations today.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, well, it's coming full circle. You did mention it was a roller coaster out the gate, so here we are on it. Yeah, it is. It's gonna be a good one, a fun one. A quick pause. Most teams are either paying for tools they've outgrown or making decisions with no real data behind them. HRUS is fixing that for free. HRES Free gives you permanent access to six of their core marketing tools. You can see which keywords your site ranks for, audit your site for over 170 technical SEO issues, track your web analytics, manage social media from one place, and much more. There is no trial countdown, no credit card required, just a free account that does not expire. This is the kind of toolkit that used to cost thousands a year and is now available to any founder, marketer, or go-to-market team that wants to understand what's actually working on their website. Head to hrefs.com forward slash free and sign up today. That's a h-re-f s dot com forward slash free. And you know, this just came out. It just came out, so I don't know if you've had a chance to see it.

SPEAKER_00

No, I haven't.

SPEAKER_02

But it's the compensator.

SPEAKER_00

Wow.

SPEAKER_02

And it's a journal. I'll give you a copy here. Yeah. It's a journal and it's hilariously satirical. And when you read through, you're like, oh my gosh, this is hilarious. But then you're like, oh no, this like is really relevant and really hits home on the issues that kind of are are being faced actually on the sales commission and and the rev ops side in entirety. And there's this one kind of um page in it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

It's called the confession wall. I particularly love this.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, which page is it on?

SPEAKER_02

It's in the insert page four. And there is one confession from an AE of Vertical SAS that says, I quit because of the comp plan. I told HR it was an opportunity for growth, but everyone in the room knew. And like we already talked about degradation and what that can cause. Like, what are the implications of AEs and sales leaders or reps leaving? Um, what does that do for sales compensation? What does that do for your forecasting overall? Obviously, they're usually backfilled, but what does that actually change about the way that you're planning?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I mean, it's important and it it just goes to show the importance of sales comp, right? Because, like I mentioned, most people tend to think that sales comp is just an easy calculation, right? And that you kind of just set it and forget it, but you don't, you're not successful, right? Because this rep literally said he left because of the comp plan, right? Because when you're a seller, you're trying to maximize your earnings. And so that's the that's the the upside, right? And so when you get that wrong, it trickles down to the entire go-to-market engine, right? And and how you need to um be more in tune with the behaviors that the comp plan is actually driving and if it actually aligns to the business. Uh, but you know, if you were to put yourself in a ref's shoes, uh, you know, a deal that was maybe promised to me, credited at X, Y, and Z, but uh when push comes to shove, you actually don't follow through or it was miscommunicated, right? That's going to be a sore topic. Uh, and and you don't have the luxury of just like fixing it, right? Like it it becomes this stain that um rubs people the wrong way, right? So for me, it's not just the the the the comp plan design, but also the commitment that you make to reps on minimizing the surprises, right? For me, that is really important because it builds the trust, right? And and and so when you get sales comp wrong, it's going to bleed down. And what that means uh for any organization is that you have lost capacity, right? So you're then having to rehire and have to go through that build again to actually get the right capacity in place. So it's a huge, you know, um, a huge loss when sales comp is uh is is missed.

SPEAKER_01

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, absolutely. That that ramp call out is a good point. You're not a full capacity, even if you are backfilling right away.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, right. Because you're it's not just like, okay, you you lose out on the capacity, but then you lose out on all of the investments that the company made in this one rep, right? When, you know, it could be easily solved if you enable them, you actually communicate transparently on how someone is going to get paid and follow through on that. Right. So for for me, uh building that trust with sellers and managers and the entire kind of go-to-market um uh team is really important to not just build your own credibility, but make sure that the implications to the business is not at risk.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. That's a great, great call-out. And you know, a lot of sales reps, whether they're in an organization or they're assessing their next role, they obviously want to be compensated for their work uh well. So a lot of reps and and folks are looking at companies, and this goes for any role, actually. People are assessing companies to understand, is this what I'm gonna bet my career on? Yeah. Is this company what I'm gonna bet my career on? So for any sales reps in particular, when they are assessing an organization, do you have any insight or advice being kind of on the inside of sales commission of how to identify an opportunity that they are going to be compensated quite a bit from if we think about like financially?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Because sales structure often changes year to year, quarter to quarter, half to half.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Like how do people tell from the outside in if it's gonna be the right move for them financially?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. I mean, it's really dwindling down to what that overall OTE is going to look like and how much risk are they betting on the potential upside, right? So that's why you see in the AE world, right, it's it's mostly 50-50 because the upside is giving you um a bit of that advantage. You know, if I'm going to potentially put my overall take home at risk, I want to be fairly compensated for the the risk that I'm I'm taking on. And so my advice to sellers is, you know, what is your actual bet on the company? Because at the end of the day, you're gonna have to sell that product or and and you need to be aligned to the overall company mission and values to then be able to uh speak with a lot of conviction, right? And so uh that's kind of my advice to to sellers. It's you know, how do you assess what the what the potential upside is with the risk that you're taking on? And do you actually believe in the product and the trajectory of where this product could go? I'd say those things are the two most important things.

SPEAKER_02

That's great advice. And we always say, you know, on the VC side, you do so much diligence before you make an investment. The same should be said for any operator assessing any position, you know, it is the same thing, an investment of your time and and your career also. So the same amount of diligence should absolutely go in, including how the product resonates with you personally.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

How much have you ever seen an AE make? What's the most you've seen an AE make or an SDR?

SPEAKER_00

Uh on the AE side, I I I've seen AEs make upwards of a million dollars in a quarter easily.

SPEAKER_02

In a quarter or in a year?

SPEAKER_00

In a quarter.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Which is kind of mind blown, right? It then starts to make me question did I go into the wrong, to the to the wrong role or the the wrong job? Uh and a lot of it is then having to assess what the I think at face value, you're like, okay, well, a million dollars is a lot of money, right? But what did they actually close? And are they fairly compensated for bringing in that revenue? Is also the other side of the equation, right? Because it's not you need both to actually justify whether or not the the rep um actually uh deserves that that payout or not. So for me, it's it's like, okay, it's a lot of money, yes. Uh, you know, what is the percentage of their overall OTE that they're taking home? Um, were there guardrails that company had to ensure that uh the payout is um indicative of the impact that the rep had. So I'm sure there's been crazy stories across other organizations that folks have seen. And sometimes it's quite jarring when you start to look at these numbers and then you start to question whether or not you should go into sales.

SPEAKER_02

There's definitely a lot more variable in the in the sales compensation world. Yeah. Year to year can vary considerably. Now, you talked a lot about the ratio on the OTE side. What about for far earlier stage? You know, a huge question mark from founders or early stage leaders is how much do I like how much do I compensate my first couple reps?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Do you have any perspective on that earlier stage?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I'd say it's an interesting question because sometimes it's a bit of a shot in the dark, right? In terms of um, you know, a founder just having uh having hired their first AE, you don't necessarily know uh what the right quota could look like, right? And so for what I've seen is actually different kind of um different combinations of of setting up this initial comp plan or this comp design for the first AE. Uh, one school of thought is to actually just put them on a hundred percent guarantee, right? Ensure that they have the that they're made whole uh while then using data points to then um shift your understanding of what can be close in in a quarter or close in a set period, and then adjusting as needed. The other is actually, you know, providing your best estimate for what quotas could look like um for this rep and then having some downside and upside protection for the company, right? So do you set a set threshold of what maximum payout could look like, as well as the flip side to that is, you know, are you going to ensure that this rep has some cash flow if we're kind of if we're gonna set these targets that, you know, seem very arbitrary or we don't have enough data to be able to um to have strong conviction over? And so you kind of see two kind of schools of thought in this. Uh, I've kind of done it in both kind of capacities before. And it really depends on, you know, the level of risk um the company is willing to take on, um, as well as, you know, is it signaling to the reps that it's going to minimize what their payout is, right? Because once you kind of set that threshold, it's hard to come back from. Yeah. And so I also think about what is the precedent that we're setting when we signal to the team or to the rep that this is kind of our stance on, you know, the initial comp plan.

SPEAKER_02

Makes sense. That's fantastic. Great advice. And last question for you, Brian. You know, one stat that stood out to me in this report, and this is actually taken from a survey of over 200 sales compensation leaders, um, but is that 80% of sales comp analysts believe AI will be the most significant change in their work over the next one to two years? I can imagine at least that rings true for you, but a big question mark around AI and sales comp that also comes to mind when I read this, a little bit separate, but came to mind, is how does the role of AI agents play into this? Are we going to need to compensate AI agents? How are you thinking about this future state with AI?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I I I think uh AI is is very top of mind uh for for us at at Notion. And I'd say it's meaningfully it's it's changing um quite rapidly. And and so I don't necessarily think that it will change overnight, but you start to see a lot of focus around um what is the role of AI and the efficiency of it in the entire go-to-market uh flywheel. And so, you know, there's AI companies who are solely built on having uh AI be the SDR and BDR for a company, right? And and so are you starting to see kind of the that that role kind of go away? I my perspective is that it's starting to slowly shift, but at the end of the day, there's still a human touch and element to it. And while maybe that feels a bit far-fetched, I still think people really want that human connection. And I personally don't want to buy from an AI like SDR, right? Like, how much credibility does that bring to the organization? And so, you know, we still um our focus and and doubling down on the SDR and BDR role as a critical function of building pipeline. But for me, AI is is not necessarily replacing specific roles per se, but it's changing how we spend a lot of that time. And so if you're spending a lot of time maybe trying to do the discovery or do the research on a specific customer, that's maybe an opportunity where AI could bring more uh efficiency for that rep, right? So I think it's unlocking the additional efficiencies across all go-to-market roles, including myself, right? Within within Salescomp. But it's not necessarily fully replacing um or removing these roles from the equation yet, right? Like that that that landscape could change, you know, six months from now or a year from now. Uh it's it's quite hard to tell. And and so I'm still very bullish on the fact that there is the human touch or the human connection that is quite important in building the relationship with customers and um who and how you decide to buy is is still um grounded in a lot of you know this interaction, right? Because it's it's really important.

SPEAKER_02

Absolutely. I echo the same sentiment. Well, Brian, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the time and for the insight.

SPEAKER_00

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02

Likewise.