AEs Perform Better When You Use Accelerators
In our previous posts, we showed that software salespeople perform better when they’re paid more – especially when the comp plan is weighted more heavily to variable compensation.
How about the use of Accelerators? How well do they work and how aggressive should you be? BenchSights provides some insights. Here’s the chart:
Median % of Quota Capacity Achieved
*We define Modest Accelerators as a 10-20% bump in commission rates for performance over quota (e.g., from 10% to 11-12%); Large Accelerators bump commission rates by >20%.
Our data reveals that those who use Accelerators had much better median performance:
- AE Teams with No Accelerators achieved 72% of Quota Capacity*
- AE Teams with Modest to Large Accelerators achieved 85-89% of QC
Accelerators clearly work. But, an equally valuable insight: You don’t need to overdo it. A “modest” bump of 10-20% in commission rates may be all that’s required
Want more data like this? Join BenchSights. We’re building a “Data Co-op” for the software sales industry. Your data is always kept anonymous and confidential. Membership is free and all active members providing data gain access to our free BenchSights reporting. Go to https://benchsights.com to get started.
* Data measured across 43 sales teams, of which 37% used Large Accelerators, 35% Modest Accelerators, and 28% No Accelerators. QC is total ARR bookings achieved by the AE team divided by the product of (1) avg. Quota per AE and (2) avg. number of AEs