Commission What You Want. You'll Get What You Pay For.

We had an account manager who sold websites. That sentence makes more sense once you know the rest. She was sharp. Personable. Clients loved her. Her numbers looked great every quarter and she was a top performer by every metric we tracked at the time. The person you want on the team. The person you want more of.

And every quarter the deals she closed were websites.

Not security stack upgrades. Not managed backup expansions. Not the standardization conversations we needed her having with the clients she'd been managing for three years.

Websites.

She'd found that selling a website was the easiest commission check she could earn. Clients said yes quickly because everyone wants a better website. Projects closed fast because there was nothing to evaluate. Her check was in the mail.

The problem was we weren't in the website business.

We had no production process. No project management workflow. No quality standard. No clear scope. No idea how to deliver a website on a predictable timeline because we had never built a system to do it. Clients who bought a website through us waited. They got frustrated. They called to complain. Our technical team, who had no business building websites, got pulled into projects they weren't equipped to run.

And the worst part is she wasn't doing anything wrong.

She was doing exactly what our commission structure told her to do. Close deals. Earn money. The plan said nothing about which deals. So she found the easiest ones to close and built a quarterly motion around them.

That wasn't a people problem. That was a system problem. And the system was the comp plan.

WHAT YOUR COMMISSION STRUCTURE IS ACTUALLY TELLING YOUR TEAM

Here's a question worth sitting with.

What is your commission structure telling your sales and account management team to spend their time on right now?

Not what you said in the last team meeting. Not what your strategic plan says you're focused on this year. What does the math of their compensation actually reward?

Because the math is the directive. If everything pays the same, the directive is "find what's easiest to close and close it." If certain deal types pay more than others, the directive is "sell more of those." If you have no priority quarterly focus, the directive is "do whatever you did last quarter that worked."

Your team is rational. They listen to the directive that pays them. If that directive doesn't point at what your business actually needs, they won't point themselves at it either. They have a mortgage and a family and a quota. The path to all three is whatever the comp plan rewards most.

You're already paying your team to do something. The only question is whether the thing they're being paid to do matches the thing your business actually needs them doing.

Here's what most owners want and rarely get.

Every client on the same security and technical stack. Same EDR. Same email security. Same backup solution. Same RMM. Same productivity suite. A standardized client base is a profitable client base, a serviceable one, and a scalable one. Fewer tools to support. Fewer exceptions to manage. Fewer "we don't normally do it this way but for this client we will" conversations that quietly destroy your margins.

Most owners say this is a priority. Then they look at their account manager's pipeline and see one-off projects, hardware sales, and the occasional service upgrade that happened because a client asked for it.

Why? Because the comp plan pays the same on a stack standardization conversation as it does on a one-off project. And the one-off project closes faster.

The stack conversation requires your account manager to understand the client's current environment, position the value of standardization, handle technical objections she might not be fully equipped to answer, and coordinate with your engineering team on a transition plan. That's hard work. Several conversations. Some friction. A real possibility of pushback.

The one-off project requires her to confirm the scope, send a quote, and process the deposit. That's easy.

She's going to do the easy one. Every time. Not out of laziness. Out of math.

Now flip the incentive. The stack standardization conversation pays 2x the one-off project for the next two quarters. Suddenly your account manager is having the conversation she's been avoiding for years. The math finally rewarded the hard path.

Commission the stack. Watch the stack get sold.

THE QUARTERLY FOCUS MODEL

Your business priorities shift. Your commission structure should too.

One quarter you need to push security stack upgrades because compliance is changing and you have a window of urgency to close. The next quarter you want to grow managed backup penetration because you have a new partner agreement that gave you better margins. The quarter after that you're launching a new service and you need your account management team selling it into the existing base.

A static comp plan that pays the same rate on every product produces a static sales motion. Your team finds the path of least resistance and stays on it because the incentive doesn't change.

A dynamic plan that shifts quarterly to match business priorities produces a sales motion that actually serves the business strategy.

It's straightforward. It's a quarterly conversation with your account management team. Here's what we need this quarter. Here's what we're going to pay the most for. Here's why. They already know the products. They already have the relationships. They are already motivated by the incentive. Give them all three and they will execute the strategy you actually have, not the strategy that happens to match what's easiest to sell.

Most MSPs do an annual comp plan and then wonder why their sales motion doesn't reflect the priorities that came up in March. Move to quarterly. The flexibility is the point.

WHY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT NEEDS THIS MOST

Here's where this matters even more than most owners think.

Your account managers are different from your new business salespeople. They have existing relationships. Trust built over years. Access to conversations your best outbound rep could never have. They are sitting on the most valuable real estate in your business and the highest leverage point you have for revenue growth.

And they are the most under-directed people in the building.

The assumption is that account managers will manage the accounts and sell what makes sense. They won't. They'll manage the accounts and sell what's easiest. Every time.

Here's why. Your account manager is in relationship protection mode with clients she has built over years. Her instinct is to preserve the relationship at any cost. The easy path preserves the relationship while still earning her commission. The hard path, the stack conversation that might create friction before it creates value, threatens the relationship she has worked to build.

If you don't make the hard path worth more than the easy path, she will pick the easy path every time. Her job is to maintain the relationship. The comp plan says nothing about which deals to push.

Make the hard path worth it. Commission the stack standardization, the managed security upsell, the backup expansion, whatever the business needs most right now. Your account manager will have the conversation she's been avoiding because the incentive finally makes it worth the friction.

The relationship can handle a hard conversation when the value is real. It can't survive a comp plan that quietly directs your account managers away from the conversations that would have grown both the relationship and the revenue.

WHAT GOES IN YOUR FIELD GUIDE

Your sales and account management system in the field guide needs two specific things.

The commission structure documented clearly. Every product. Every service. What it pays. Why it pays what it pays. When the rate changes. How a deal qualifies for which tier. New account managers should be able to read it on day one and know exactly what the business is paying them to do. Existing account managers should be able to reference it without ambiguity when they have a deal in front of them.

The quarterly priority process documented. How the priorities get set. Who decides. When they communicate. What the comp structure looks like for the quarter. How performance gets reviewed. When the next priority shift happens. The process is what makes the shift actually move from a Monday meeting to the daily sales motion. Without the process, the priorities get talked about and forgotten.

When both pieces are in the field guide, three things happen.

New account managers onboard with the right incentives pointing at the right priorities from their first sales call. The website situation doesn't happen anymore because the incentive structure makes the right path the most rewarding path. And when business priorities shift, the change moves through the team systematically instead of being announced in a meeting and absorbed by half the people who were paying attention.

Your team will do what you pay them to do. The field guide is what makes sure the thing you pay them to do is the thing you actually want.

The account manager selling websites wasn't the problem.

The problem was a comp plan that paid the same on every deal and a strategy that never told her which kind we needed more of.

You're already paying your team to do something every day. The math of their commission is making the choice for them about what to focus on. If that math points at the priorities that move your business forward, great. Your team will execute the strategy.

If it doesn't, you're paying for activity that doesn't serve the business and wondering why the business isn't moving where you want it to go.

Look at your comp plan this week. Not at the rates. At the directive. What is the math telling your team to do? Is it the same thing your strategic plan says you need them doing?

If the answer is yes, you've already built one of the highest-leverage systems in your business. Document it in your field guide so the next person you hire onboards into it cleanly.

If the answer is no, the fix isn't punitive. It's surgical. Adjust the rates. Set quarterly priorities. Make the hard conversations pay more than the easy ones. Document the change. Then watch your team do exactly what you asked them to do, because you finally asked clearly.

Start at builttorunmsp.com

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How do you design a commission structure that drives the right sales behavior?

Start with your business priorities. The commission structure should pay the most on the deals that move the business forward and less on the deals that are easy to close but create downstream problems. A static comp plan that pays the same on every deal type tells your team to find what's easiest. A weighted plan that pays more on strategic priorities, like security stack standardization or managed service upgrades, tells your team to invest the harder conversations where the value is highest. Review the plan quarterly so it shifts with the priorities your business is actually focused on.

Why do account managers tend to sell what's easiest rather than what's most valuable?

Account managers are in relationship protection mode with clients they have built over time. The easy path preserves the relationship and earns the commission. The hard path, which might involve a standardization conversation or a service expansion that creates short-term friction, threatens the relationship the account manager has spent years building. Unless the comp plan rewards the hard path more than the easy one, the account manager will choose the easy one every time. It's the rational response to an incentive structure that doesn't differentiate between deal types.

What is the danger of selling products outside your core service stack?

Selling products you aren't equipped to deliver well creates three problems. Your team gets pulled into work they weren't built for, which damages quality on the work they should be doing. Clients have a bad experience with a product you sold them but can't deliver properly, which damages the trust you built on your core services. And your margins drop because you spend more time and resources on the off-stack work than the deal was ever priced to cover. If your sales team is closing deals on products outside your core stack, the comp plan is rewarding the wrong activity and the cost is showing up somewhere in your delivery operation.

How often should you update your commission structure?

Quarterly. Annual comp plans are too static for businesses with shifting priorities. New service launches, partner agreement changes, compliance windows, and competitive pressure all change what the business needs the sales team to focus on. A quarterly review allows the comp structure to track those changes without becoming so volatile that the team stops trusting it. The cadence is short enough to stay aligned with strategy and long enough that account managers can build a focused pipeline within each quarter.

Where does sales compensation belong in a field guide?

In the sales and account management system section. The field guide should document the commission structure with full clarity on rates, qualifying criteria, and how rates change quarterly. It should document the quarterly priority process so the shift from one focus to the next happens systematically rather than depending on a meeting. And it should document the talk tracks for the strategic priorities so account managers have the language to have the harder conversations the comp plan is rewarding. Together these three components turn the comp plan from a payroll mechanism into a strategy execution system.