Why Comp Plans Break Revenue Operations
Why Comp Plans Break Revenue Operations
Compensation plans often create the exact misalignment that revenue operations is supposed to fix. Taylor Thomson spends significant time each year trying to prevent this.
“At the end of the day, the revenue org is there to make the company money,” Thomson explains. “If what we’re all doing isn’t aligned to drive revenue, then we’re all kind of wasting our time.”
The problem: marketing gets measured on lead volume, so they optimize for lead volume. Sales gets measured on close rates, so they sandbag risky opportunities. Client success gets measured on retention, so they avoid upselling if it might create churn risk. Everyone’s hitting their numbers while the business underperforms.
Thomson, who leads revenue operations at WITHIN, orchestrates annual compensation and commission planning designed to prevent these disconnects. The work involves understanding how incentives shape behavior across marketing, sales, business development, and client success—then designing compensation structures that align everyone toward actual business outcomes.
This is harder than it sounds. Marketing needs metrics they can influence directly, not just outcomes that depend on sales execution. Sales needs quotas that feel achievable, not aspirational targets they’ll ignore. Client success needs incentives that reward both retention and growth. His integrated approach to compensation planning reflects years of experience across multiple revenue functions.
One structural decision helps: making business development independent from both marketing and sales. Most organizations bury BD under one or the other, then wonder why they get skewed behavior. BD teams reporting to marketing optimize for lead volume regardless of quality. Those reporting to sales avoid anything that won’t close quickly.
Thomson argues neither serves the organization’s real interest—attracting genuinely good-fit prospects likely to become successful long-term clients. Independent BD teams need their own compensation structures focused on fit quality across the entire revenue lifecycle.
The challenge is measuring fit quality objectively. Are prospects reaching out because they genuinely understand what the company does? Or are they confused about offerings and unlikely to become good clients even if they sign? These questions don’t have obvious quantitative answers, yet compensation plans need clear metrics.
Thomson’s solution involves combining quantitative measures (pipeline quality scores, conversion rates by source) with qualitative assessments (client success feedback on new accounts, sales team input on opportunity fit). No single metric captures everything, so the comp plan needs to balance multiple inputs. Taylor Thomson’s professional recognition stems partly from his ability to design compensation structures that actually align commercial teams.
Another area requiring attention: client success compensation. Traditional models reward retention, creating incentives to avoid anything that might cause churn—including upselling that could create expectations the team can’t meet. But this leaves revenue on the table and undervalues client success’ contribution to growth.
Thomson advocates for comp plans that reward both retention and expansion, with careful attention to how much risk each metric should carry. You want client success focused on long-term relationship health, not just hitting quarterly upsell targets.
For HR leaders and compensation professionals wondering why revenue teams stay misaligned despite clear strategic direction, examine whether your comp plans actually support the behaviors you want. Most don’t. They reward individual function optimization while punishing cross-functional collaboration. His position at WITHIN’s operations requires solving these compensation challenges annually. Thomson’s documented perspective on revenue operations emphasizes how compensation design either enables or prevents organizational alignment.
