Coming soon · Book Profile
Compensating the Sales Force_ A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs, Second Edition
A practical, end-to-end guide to designing, constructing, and managing sales compensation plans that align pay with sales job content and drive profitable revenue growth.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
Compensating the Sales Force demystifies one of the most powerful yet confusing management levers available to any company that sells: how salespeople get paid. Drawing on decades of consulting and teaching experience, David Cichelli argues that great sales compensation always begins with sales job content—not industry practice, legacy habit, or motivational theory. The book walks readers through fundamentals (eligibility, target pay, pay mix, leverage, measures, quotas, performance ranges), a full taxonomy of 30-plus formula types, the mathematics of formula construction, and the critical support programs of territory design, quota management, and sales crediting. It then tackles the hard cases—difficult-to-compensate jobs, complex sales organizations, and global sales teams—before closing with administration, implementation, communication, program assessment, and a ten-step design process. Whether you want to validate an existing plan or build a new one, this is the most complete companion for anyone accountable for rewarding sales excellence.
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- A sales, HR, finance, or operations leader responsible for designing or validating a sales compensation program that drives profitable revenue growth.
- The problem
- Their sales compensation plan may be misaligned, overly complex, over- or underpaying, or failing to motivate the right sales behaviors. They feel uncertain and anxious about a high-stakes, high-cost, deeply personal program that produces disproportionate conflict and noise.
- The plan
- Start with sales job content and locate the point of persuasion.
- Set the core design elements: eligibility, target pay, mix, leverage, measures, quotas, performance range, and periods.
- Choose the right formula type and construct it with simple math.
- Align territories, quotas, and sales crediting to support the plan.
- Administer, implement, communicate, and assess the program annually using the ten-step design process.
- The payoff
- A plan uniquely aligned to sales jobs and business strategy that rewards excellence. · Motivated sales personnel, competitive and equitable pay, and controlled costs. · Dramatically improved, profitable sales results with fewer conflicts.
See our guide
Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- The Sales Growth Imperative · David J. Cichelli
Written by the same author, this book likely provides a broader strategic context on revenue growth, within which sales compensation is a key lever.
- Sales Compensation Almanac · The Alexander Group (David J. Cichelli's firm)
This annual publication provides updated data, trends, and benchmarks in sales compensation, serving as a contemporary supplement to the book's foundational principles.
- Organization Design for Performance: A Step-By-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
This book is relevant because 'Design' is the second dimension of organizational effectiveness discussed in Step 1. It provides a deeper framework for structuring departments and companies, which directly impacts the sales function's effectiveness.
- Designing Salary Structures: A Step-By-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
Directly complements the main book by detailing how to create the base salary structures upon which the incentive portion of total cash compensation is built.
- Predictive HR Analytics: A Step-by-Step Guide · Cedric Ng Mong Shen
Relevant for more advanced practitioners who want to use data analysis (as mentioned in Step 9) to test hypotheses about plan effectiveness and predict which factors drive sales success.
- The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation · Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer
The book recommends this text as a comprehensive reference for readers who want more detail on specific approaches and analytics discussed in 'Sales Compensation Solutions'.
- The Future of Sales Compensation · Chad Albrecht and Steve Marley
The book points to this as a forward-looking resource to help readers think differently about how to design and implement sales compensation programs for the future.
- Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices · Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
Referenced in Chapter 5 as providing a foundational framework on the four innate human drives (acquire, bond, learn, defend) that can be used to understand and segment sales force motivation.
- Designing a Sales Commission · Jerome A. Colletti & Mary S. Fiss
This book references it for the detailed mechanics of designing commission formulas (e.g., flat and tiered rates) that are used as examples for new product and new account incentives.
- Designing a Sales Bonus · Jerome A. Colletti & Mary S. Fiss
This book references it for the detailed mechanics of designing bonus formulas (e.g., step rates) that are used as examples for special incentive schemes.