Your sellers know exactly what earns them money, and it is the work you want done.
Gully Sales designs the pay behind each sales role: what that role is paid to achieve, how fixed and variable split, what triggers a payout, and the rules that keep the scheme affordable, fair and simple to explain.
- A pay mix per role, matched to how much of the outcome that role controls.
- Payout rules modelled against your own margin before anyone is told of them.
- One page per seller: what I earn, when I earn it, how it is calculated.
Gully Sales Private Limited designs sales pay plans for Indian SMBs, and stays through the first payout cycles that run on them.
In one paragraph
What is Sales Compensation and Incentive Design?
Sales compensation and incentive design decides how your sales roles are paid. Gully Sales sets the fixed and variable split for each role, chooses the measures that trigger payout, fixes thresholds, accelerators and crediting rules, models the cost against your margin, and writes plan documents your team can read. You get an incentive scheme that rewards the selling behaviour your business actually needs.
The problem
The scheme pays out every month, and nobody can say what it bought.
Most incentive plans in a growing business were not designed. They accumulated. A percentage was agreed with the first salesperson, a bonus was added to rescue a hard year, a spot payout was promised in a good quarter, and now every person in the team is on slightly different terms that only the founder can explain. The money goes out reliably. What it is buying — new customers, larger orders, collections, retention — has never been checked. And the moment anyone asks, the conversation turns personal.
You will recognise it as
- Two people doing the same job are on different terms, and each believes theirs is the unfair one.
- You cannot explain a salesperson's payout in one sentence without opening a spreadsheet.
- Incentive is paid on order value, so discounting your way to a close is quietly rewarded.
- The commission bill is growing faster than gross margin, and nobody noticed the month it crossed over.
- Payouts are disputed after the fact, and the argument is about who gets credit, not about arithmetic.
- A strong performer earns less than the scheme intended and a quiet one earns more, because of an account they inherited.
What it costs the business
- Sellers optimise for whatever the scheme pays, which is usually volume at a discount rather than profitable, collectible business.
- Recruiting gets harder, because you cannot state a clear earning potential to a candidate who asks what the role pays.
- Your strongest people leave for a competitor whose plan they can read and calculate for themselves.
- The variable cost of selling becomes unpredictable, so hiring decisions are postponed until the year is nearly gone.
- Managers spend review time defending payout arithmetic instead of coaching the deals in front of them.
Why it persists. Pay is the one part of a sales system that feels too sensitive to touch. Any change creates a winner and a loser, so the plan gets amended rather than redesigned, and each amendment is a promise made to one person that quietly becomes precedent for everybody. There is also no owner. Finance sees the cost, sales sees the motivation, and neither holds the design. So the scheme survives every review, because changing it looks riskier than living with it for one more year.
If it stays unresolved. The plan keeps drifting away from what the business now needs. You pay more for the same revenue, defend rules you did not set, and negotiate pay one person at a time. And the longer it waits, the harder the repair: the same change has to be made later to a bigger team, with more history behind it and more entitlement to unwind.
What changes
What changes when the plan is designed rather than inherited.
In the first weeks
- Every role has one written plan, and every seller can calculate their own payout from it.
- You know what the scheme costs at target, below target and above it.
- Credit disputes are settled by a written rule instead of by seniority.
In how the work runs
- Payout is produced from CRM and invoice data on a fixed date, not reconstructed at month end.
- Managers review performance against the same measures the plan pays on.
- New joiners start on a defined ramp instead of a side agreement nobody else knows about.
In sales and marketing
- Incentive money is attached to margin, collection and new business rather than to raw order value.
- The cost of selling moves with revenue, so a strong month largely funds its own payout.
- Adding a salesperson carries a variable cost you can plan around.
In what management can see
- Candidates can be told what the role pays and how, which shortens hiring conversations.
- Your team can explain the scheme to each other without you in the room.
Over the longer term
- Pay stops being renegotiated case by case and becomes a rule the business applies.
- The plan is retuned each year against fresh targets instead of rebuilt from nothing.
Gully Sales controls the design, the modelling and the documentation. What people actually earn depends on how they sell and what your market does, so we do not promise a revenue or attainment figure. What we do is make sure the money you already spend is attached to the behaviour you want.
Who it is for
This is for you if pay is already a live question in your team.
The businesses it suits
- Businesses with three or more sales people on some form of variable pay.
- Founders who negotiated each salesperson's terms separately and now cannot standardise them.
- Sales heads who inherited a scheme they did not design and cannot defend in a review.
- Companies adding a role — inside sales, key accounts, channel — with no view on how it should be paid.
- Businesses whose commission bill is rising faster than their gross margin.
- Teams moving from a founder-led sale to a structured one, where pay now has to carry the discipline.
What usually prompts the call
- A strong performer has asked for a revision and you have no framework to answer with.
- You are about to set next year's targets, and the current plan will not survive them.
- A payout dispute has reached the point where somebody is threatening to leave.
- You are introducing quotas, territories or a new product line that the scheme does not cover.
- Finance has asked what the incentive line will be next year, and nobody can answer.
What Gully Sales does
The work, component by component.
Role objectives
We write down what each sales role is actually paid to achieve — new customers, growth in existing accounts, gross margin, collections, channel activation — in one line per role. Where two roles touch the same deal, we settle which outcome belongs to which one before any money is attached to it.
- Why it matters:
- A plan that pays every role for the same number rewards presence on a deal rather than contribution to it.
- You receive:
- A one-line paid objective for each sales role, with the overlaps resolved in writing.
- Business value:
- Nobody has to guess which part of the result is theirs, so effort stops collecting around whichever deal is easiest to claim.
Pay mix and on-target earnings
We set the split between fixed salary and variable incentive for each role, and the total a person earns at target. The mix follows control: the more of the outcome a role can influence, the more of its pay is variable. We then check that the fixed portion alone is enough to hold a good person through a slow quarter.
- Why it matters:
- A mix borrowed from another company punishes roles that cannot move the number they are being paid on.
- You receive:
- A fixed-to-variable ratio and an on-target earnings figure for every sales role, with the reasoning recorded.
- Business value:
- You can state what a role pays when you hire, and defend it when your team compares notes with friends elsewhere.
Measures and weightings
We choose the two or three things each role is paid on, and how much each is worth. Few measures move behaviour; five or six dilute it into noise. Each measure gets one exact definition and one system it is read from, so the number in the payout and the number in the review are the same number.
- Why it matters:
- When a plan carries too many measures, sellers quietly pick the one they find easiest and ignore the rest.
- You receive:
- A measure sheet per role: the measures, their weightings, their definitions and the source each is read from.
- Business value:
- The scheme pays for the handful of outcomes your business needs this year, and stops paying for habit.
Thresholds, gates and caps
We set the point at which payout begins, the conditions that must be met before any incentive is released, and whether earnings are capped at the top. A margin or collection gate stops the scheme paying for business the company loses money on. Thresholds are placed against your own attainment history, not at a round number.
- Why it matters:
- With no floor, incentive becomes a second salary; with no gate, it pays for revenue that never turns into cash.
- You receive:
- A payout schedule showing what is earned at each level of attainment, with every gate and any cap stated.
- Business value:
- The first rupee of incentive is paid for performance you would have wanted from that role anyway.
Accelerators and controls on the downside
We design what happens above target and below it. Accelerators lift the rate once a seller passes an agreed level, so overperformance is worth chasing rather than held back for next quarter. Slower rates below threshold keep the cost of underperformance contained. Both are modelled before either is offered.
- Why it matters:
- A flat rate gives a seller no reason to push past target, and every reason to park a deal until January.
- You receive:
- Accelerator tiers and below-threshold rates, with the attainment points that trigger each one.
- Business value:
- Strong months get stronger, because the person closest to the customer has a reason to finish the quarter.
Crediting rules and clawbacks
The rules that decide who gets credit and when the money is safe: split deals, house and inherited accounts, transferred territories, cancellations, returns, bad debt, windfall orders, ramp for new joiners, and what a leaver is owed. Each is written before it is needed, because after the fact any decision looks like favouritism.
- Why it matters:
- Almost every payout dispute is about who gets the credit, not about how the number was calculated.
- You receive:
- A crediting and controls annexure covering splits, clawbacks, ramp, windfalls, leavers and dispute handling.
- Business value:
- Arguments end with a document instead of a negotiation, and the same rule visibly applies to everybody.
Cost modelling and rollout
We run the proposed plan over last year's actual sales, person by person, and show what each of them would have earned and what the total bill would have been. We test it at weak, expected and strong performance. Then we build the announcement: plan documents, a payout calculator, a sample statement and the answers your team will ask for.
- Why it matters:
- A plan announced before it is modelled is a plan you will be amending within a quarter, in public.
- You receive:
- A three-scenario cost model, plan documents, a payout calculator and a rollout pack for the announcement.
- Business value:
- You know the cost before you commit to it, and everyone in the team hears one consistent explanation.
What you will have at the end.
- A written compensation plan for each sales role, in language the person being paid can read without help.
- A pay mix table covering every sales role: fixed salary, variable incentive and on-target earnings.
- A measure sheet per role — what it is paid on, the weighting of each measure, and the exact definition behind it.
- A payout schedule showing earnings at each level of attainment, including thresholds, gates, accelerators and caps.
- A crediting and controls annexure: splits, house accounts, ramp, returns, cancellations, collections and leavers.
- A cost model showing the incentive bill at weak, expected and strong performance, tested on last year's sales.
- A per-person comparison of the new plan against current earnings, so no announcement contains a surprise.
- A payout calculator your manager can run each cycle from CRM and invoice data.
- A sample payout statement per role, showing how each part of the number was arrived at.
- A rollout pack: briefing sequence, manager question-and-answer sheet, and the wording of the announcement.
- A governance note stating who may change the plan, when it is reviewed, and how exceptions are handled.
How it runs
The engagement, step by step.
- 1
Discovery and current-state review
We read what you pay now and what it has produced. Every existing arrangement is collected — appointment letters, verbal promises, spreadsheets — and set beside last year's sales by person, product and customer. We speak to you, your sales head and two or three sellers separately, because the plan people describe and the plan people believe are rarely the same plan.
- You provide:
- Existing pay arrangements, twelve months of sales and payout data, and access to the sales team for short interviews.
- We produce:
- A current-state note: what each person is on, what it costs, and where the scheme is leaking or causing arguments.
- Done when:
- Every existing arrangement sits in one table, most likely for the first time.
- 2
Role and objective mapping
We agree what each sales role exists to do and what it should be paid to achieve, then test that against how deals actually move through your business. Overlaps between roles are settled here rather than in the payout rules, because no crediting rule can repair a role whose boundaries were never drawn.
- You provide:
- Decisions on role boundaries wherever two roles currently touch the same customer or the same order.
- We produce:
- A paid objective per role, with the overlaps written down and resolved.
- Done when:
- Every sales role has one sentence saying what it is paid to achieve.
- 3
Plan design
We set pay mix and on-target earnings, choose measures and weightings, place thresholds and gates, and design the accelerators. Each choice is made against your margin structure and your attainment history. We also show you the alternatives we rejected and why, so the design ends up yours rather than a template you inherited from us.
- You provide:
- Gross margin by product line, your view on affordability, and time in two or three working sessions.
- We produce:
- A draft plan for every role, with the payout schedule at each level of attainment.
- Done when:
- You have a draft you could explain to a salesperson without notes in front of you.
- 4
Cost modelling and stress testing
The draft is run over last year's real numbers, person by person. You see what each seller would have earned, what the total would have cost, and how the bill behaves at weak, expected and strong performance. We also model the plan adversarially: what would a determined seller do to maximise pay, and would that hurt the business?
- You provide:
- Confirmation of the scenarios to test and any affordability ceiling we have to design within.
- We produce:
- A three-scenario cost model, a per-person comparison against current earnings, and a list of the gaps we found and closed.
- Done when:
- The cost of the plan is known at every level of performance before a word is said to the team.
- 5
Documentation and approval
We write the document each seller will actually receive: what you are paid on, when, how it is calculated, and what the rules are at the edges. It is written for the person being paid, not for a file. Finance reviews the cost, you approve the design, and the crediting annexure is signed off alongside it.
- You provide:
- Review and sign-off from you, from finance and from the sales head, plus your adviser's view on employment terms.
- We produce:
- Final plan documents per role, the crediting and controls annexure, and the payout calculator.
- Done when:
- Every role has an approved plan document, ready to hand over.
- 6
Rollout and communication
How a plan is announced decides whether it is trusted. We plan the sequence — sales head first, then managers, then the team, then individual conversations for anyone whose earnings change shape — and prepare the answers to the questions people will ask. We sit in the team briefing if you want us in the room.
- You provide:
- The announcement date, the room, and a decision on how any grandfathering will be handled.
- We produce:
- A rollout pack: briefing material, a sample payout statement per role, and a question sheet for managers.
- Done when:
- Every seller holds their own plan and can calculate a payout from it.
- 7
First cycles and tuning
We stay through the first payout runs, because that is where a design meets reality. We compare actual payouts with the model, listen to the disputes that surface, and sharpen any definition or crediting rule that turned out to be ambiguous. Changes at this stage are small, and each is documented as an amendment so the plan keeps one version.
- You provide:
- Payout data from each cycle, and any dispute or question raised by a member of the team.
- We produce:
- A variance note per cycle, and documented amendments wherever a rule needed sharpening.
- Done when:
- Two payout cycles have run from the calculator without a manual reconstruction.
Ways to work with us
Review the plan you run, or design the next one from the roles up.
Plan review and repair
We audit the scheme you already run, model what it costs and what it rewards, and fix the parts that are leaking. Suited to a business with one workable plan that has drifted, rather than a structure to be built from the beginning.
Full compensation design
A complete design across every sales role: objectives, pay mix, measures, thresholds, accelerators, crediting rules, cost modelling, plan documents and the rollout pack. The usual choice once you have three or more sellers.
Design with rollout support
The full design, plus the announcement itself: briefing your managers, sitting in the team session, and preparing you for the individual conversations that follow it.
Annual plan refresh
Once a design exists, we retune it each year against the new targets and the last year of payout data, without rebuilding it from scratch. Usually run alongside your target-setting cycle.
Why Gully Sales
What you are actually choosing when you choose us.
We design against your margin, not against a template.
Every rate, threshold and accelerator is tested on your own sales history and your own product margins. A structure that works in another industry, or at another company's gross margin, will quietly overpay or underpay in yours.
We treat pay as part of the sales system.
Compensation only works when the roles, the targets, the CRM fields and the review rhythm agree with it. We design the plan with all of those in view, and we tell you plainly when the real fix sits upstream of the money.
We write it for the person being paid.
A plan that needs a manager to interpret it is not a plan, it is a promise. Ours is written so a salesperson can work out their own payout on a Sunday evening without calling anybody to check.
We model before you announce.
You see what every person would have earned on last year's numbers, and what the total would have cost, before anything is said to the team. Surprises in a pay announcement are expensive to take back.
We stay through the first payout cycles.
A design meets reality when money actually moves. We watch the first cycles with you, settle the disputes that surface, and sharpen the rules that turned out to read two ways.
Where it applies
The same service, in different businesses.
Industrial manufacturing
- The situation:
- A machinery maker paid a flat percentage on order value. Sellers closed at whatever discount it took, and the factory stayed busy on orders that earned very little.
- How it applies:
- Incentive moved behind a margin gate, with a rate that rises as realised price rises, and part of the payout released on collection rather than on despatch.
- Likely benefit:
- Discount depth becomes a cost to the seller as well as to the company, and the cash arrives with the order rather than long after it.
Building materials distribution
- The situation:
- A distributor paid its team on total billing, so the largest dealers, who reorder without being sold to, carried most of the payout every month.
- How it applies:
- The plan separated growth on existing dealers from new dealer activation, and put inherited accounts on a lower rate than accounts the seller opened.
- Likely benefit:
- Effort moves towards the dealers who need working, without penalising the person who services the big ones well.
Healthcare services
- The situation:
- A multi-centre clinic group added a corporate tie-up role but paid it on the same scheme as walk-in conversions, so nobody wanted the longer institutional cycle.
- How it applies:
- A separate plan for the institutional role, with payout staged across the longer cycle and a retention measure once the tie-up starts producing patients.
- Likely benefit:
- The long sale becomes worth taking, and the person who signs the account is still paid to keep it alive afterwards.
Professional and B2B services
- The situation:
- A founder closed most business personally and paid ad hoc bonuses when a deal landed. The two people they hired could not tell what they would earn in a normal month.
- How it applies:
- Fixed and variable defined per role, a ramp for new joiners, and credit rules covering the deals the founder still leads personally.
- Likely benefit:
- The firm can hire a third and fourth seller on stated terms instead of negotiating a fresh arrangement with each one.
Consumer brand with channel sales
- The situation:
- Field staff were paid on primary sales into distributors. Stock sat in the channel while the brand booked the revenue and celebrated the month.
- How it applies:
- Weighting shifted towards secondary sales and outlet coverage, with a clawback where primary stock is returned or stays unsold beyond an agreed period.
- Likely benefit:
- The team is paid for goods that reach a consumer, and channel stock stops hiding a demand problem for a quarter.
Real estate and project sales
- The situation:
- A developer's team was paid on bookings. Cancellations ran high, and the incentive money had already left the business by the time they came through.
- How it applies:
- Payout staged against booking, agreement and collection milestones, with a clawback rule for cancellations inside a defined window.
- Likely benefit:
- Incentive tracks the money the business keeps rather than the number announced on booking day.
Questions buyers ask
Before you enquire, the answers you will want.
How do you stop the plan from being gamed?
By paying on measures that cannot be moved without doing the real work, and by writing the rules for the edges before anyone finds them. Paying on collection rather than order value removes the incentive to sell to a poor payer. A margin gate removes the incentive to discount. Clawbacks on cancellation, credit only on invoiced business, and a written rule for split deals close the usual gaps. We also model what a determined seller could do with the plan, and fix whatever that exposes.
Will this reduce what my team currently earns?
That is not the aim, and we say so at the start. Most plans we redesign pay out a similar total in a different shape: less for volume that carries no margin, more for the business you actually want. Where one person is currently overpaid by an accident of the old rules, we show you the gap and let you decide how to close it, usually by grandfathering rather than cutting. Cuts announced without warning cost more in attrition than they ever save.
How long does the engagement take?
It depends on how many roles are in scope, the state of your sales data, and how quickly decisions get made on your side. A single-role repair is short work. A full structure covering field sales, inside sales and key accounts takes longer, most of it in modelling and approval rather than writing. We scope the sequence after the first conversation and put it in writing. We will not commit to a date before seeing your data.
What inputs do you need from us to start?
Twelve months of sales by person, product and customer; the invoice or collection data behind them; gross margin by product line where you have it; what each salesperson is paid today, fixed and variable; and any letter or message that promises somebody something. Then time with you and your sales head, and short conversations with two or three sellers. Where the data is incomplete we work with what exists and mark our estimates, rather than waiting for a clean set that may never arrive.
How much of the pay should be variable?
It follows how much of the outcome the role can control. A field salesperson who owns the customer relationship from first call to order can carry a substantial variable share. An inside sales or presales role that influences a deal without closing it should carry less, or the plan punishes them for something outside their hands. We set the ratio role by role, then check the fixed portion alone is enough to keep a good person in the job through a slow quarter.
Should commission be paid on order value, margin or collection?
Usually on a combination, and the choice tells your team what the business cares about. Order value on its own rewards discounting. Margin protects profitability, but it needs product costs your sellers are allowed to see, or the payout feels arbitrary to them. Collection protects cash, and where receivables are the real risk we tie part of the payout to money received rather than to the order booked. We pick the mix from your numbers, not from a general rule.
How do you handle a deal that two people worked on?
With a crediting rule agreed before the situation arises, rather than a decision taken afterwards. The options are a primary owner with a fixed support share, full credit to both against separate measures, or a split declared when the opportunity is created. Whichever you choose goes into the plan document and into the CRM fields, so the split is recorded at the start of the deal and not argued over on the day the money is due.
What about a salesperson who inherits a large existing account?
House account and inherited account rules exist for exactly this. Typically the repeat business from a large inherited account is paid at a lower rate than business the seller wins, or it is carried inside the quota rather than in the incentive. The person is still paid to retain and grow the account, but not paid twice for revenue that would have arrived without them. We agree the rule with you, in writing, and apply it to everyone in the same role.
3 more questions
Do you set the quota as well?
Quota and capacity planning is separate work, and a compensation plan is only as sound as the quota it pays against. If your targets are set by taking last year and adding a percentage, we will say so, because a scheme built on an unreachable number demotivates faster than having no scheme at all. We can run that work alongside this one, or design the plan to sit on the targets you have already committed to.
How will we know the new plan is working?
We fix the baseline before anything changes: what was paid, against what revenue and margin, at what attainment. After the change we watch the spread of quota attainment, revenue and margin per selling head, win rate, discount depth, sales cycle, forecast accuracy, and incentive cost as a share of gross margin. We also count payout disputes each cycle. A plan people understand produces fewer arguments, and that shows up within two cycles.
What is not included in this work?
We do not run your payroll, advise on employment contracts, or handle the statutory and tax treatment of incentive payments — those belong with your accountant and your legal adviser. We do not recruit the salespeople, set your product pricing, or design bonus schemes for non-sales functions. We also do not administer your monthly payout: we build the calculator, document the method and train the person who will run it each cycle.
Talk to us
Show us the scheme you run today, and what it is buying you.
It is a conversation, not a pitch. Bring the scheme you run today, or a description of it, and we will tell you what we would change and whether this work is worth doing at your size.
- No obligation and no sales script
- A reply from someone who does the work
- Your details are never sold or shared