Marketing KPIs That Don’t Suck: What to Track and Why
2 Haziran 2025Written by Korhan Ercin
Welcome to Part 1 of our blog series on compensation and bonus models for sales teams. In this series, I’ll share practical strategies, real-world examples, and lessons I learned over 25+ years in sales leadership. Whether you’re designing your first sales compensation and bonus plan or optimizing an existing model, you will find actionable insights in each part of this series.
“How can we establish good compensation and bonus models for our sales teams?” Every manager asked this question to themselves at least one time, if not many more.
But before “how”, we must focus on “why” we are doing it. What is the main objective behind it?
- To motivate the teams?
- To reach our targets?
- To provide a system in which the management can monitor all parameters related to sales teams?
- Or a combination of all the above…
Throughout my career, I’ve always tried to do my best for my teammates, and compensation/bonus structures were only a tool, not the main focus of my management approach.
What I will be covering in this blog is entirely based on my experience and what has worked very well for the last 25 years.
First of all, there is no single correct model that fits all companies. From startups, scale-ups, and enterprise companies to PLG models, international sales teams, and SDR teams, and even to farmers, and hunters… The list goes on, and the models become more and more complex.
Salary vs Compensation and Bonus
“Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is.”
Jonah Cruyff
As Mr. Cruyff suggested, most management teams tend to push complex compensation and bonus models when managing their teams. What we often do is use these models to manage our teams instead of using them as motivational tools to help achieve our targets. We generally add some metrics like CRM data entries, meeting entries, how many calls they did, how many visits per week and call it a day.
Don’t forget that you are already paying your teams a salary to complete these tasks and meet these metrics. So, bonuses and compensation should be used as motivational tools to help achieve targets, not as payment for day-to-day duties.
As a manager, your job is to provide the best environment for your team to succeed in their daily work. That includes CRM infrastructure, easy-to-use tools, and back-office support. If you’re relying on compensation models to push your team to perform their daily tasks, then you’re essentially paying salaries for nothing, and you’re acting more like a metric tracker than a manager.
If we all agree that salary is paid for daily work to do and compensation is paid for reaching our targets, then we can begin to discuss how to create a model that helps both sides reach their goals.
P.S: There is a good question for the case above; if someone reaches their target every month but is not doing daily tasks, what must the manager do? 🙂 We will try to answer that question later.
Forecasting
Before creating any model, we must first understand the company, product, and competition. We need to assess how easy it is to sell the product and how dependent success is on the sales team.
If you were selling Microsoft Office in the early 2000s, you were lucky, competition was low, and it was just a matter of time before customers purchased the software. But if you were selling SQL Server licenses, you were (and still are) competing with Oracle, IBM, and other tough rivals.
So before creating a model we must check all parameters for our targets. Few of them are:
- Size of the market,
- previous year’s growth data,
- competition analysis,
- SWOT analysis,
- Marketing budget for lead generation,
- Partner network, and many more…
Based on these parameters, we should define our targets annually and quarterly, with 2–3 scenarios such as best case, worst case, moderate case.
Let Them Join the Game
I strongly recommend assigning your sales team the task of working on forecasts. Why? There are three main reasons:
- This allows them to present localized perspectives and input that might differ from yours.
- You can learn from them, validate your own numbers, and discuss the rationale behind different approaches.
- If one of your teammates presents a detailed analysis, they might be a strong candidate for future leadership roles (it’s rare to find analytically minded salespeople).
The main purpose of this exercise is to show your team respect and to send the message that targets are created collaboratively, not imposed.
Of course, complications will arise if there’s a big gap between your numbers and theirs — but it’s your job to navigate that gap and arrive at a final figure that everyone (including the CEO and stakeholders) respects. This way, the sales team will treat the target not as a mandate but as an agreement they contributed to.
Beside the sales team and top management you must also discuss the target with the marketing team so they must be aligned with the numbers or if possible partner network to cross check the market. Our job is not to push some figure but find a common ground for everyone to go for this target.
What’s Next?
Our target is set, our teams are ready. Next, we’ll discuss how to build a model that leaves everyone satisfied by year-end.
Part 2 is loading…
If you’re a Tech, IT, or Software company working in the #B2B space and want to build steady visibility, engagement, and demand, let’s connect.
