What changed when we started paying reps on activity, not just closed deals

Last year we changed our own sales compensation to include a small component tied to logged activity — qualified discovery calls held, not just deals closed. I asked our VP of Sales, who was initially skeptical of the change, what actually happened.

Why were you skeptical going in?

My instinct was that paying for activity teaches people to game activity. You end up with reps logging calls that were not really calls, just to hit a number. I had seen that happen at a previous company and I did not want to repeat it.

What made you willing to try it anyway?

Our new-rep ramp time was the actual problem we were trying to solve, not veteran performance. New reps were spending their first two months avoiding the phone because every call felt like it needed to be perfect, and pure commission on closed deals gives someone nothing to hold onto for the first eight weeks when they have no pipeline yet.

What actually happened after the change?

New rep time-to-first-qualified-opportunity dropped by about three weeks on average. The gaming concern I had going in mostly did not materialize, because we defined 'qualified' narrowly enough — a specific set of discovery questions had to be logged, not just 'a call happened' — that faking it took more effort than doing it for real.

Would you recommend this to another VP of Sales?

Only for the ramp period, honestly. We taper the activity component out by month four for each rep. Past that point, closed revenue should be the whole story, and activity pay for a tenured rep would incentivize exactly the busywork I was originally worried about.