A cybersecurity founder recently reached out with a smart question: How do we structure our CRM and sales compensation to account for both e-commerce and sales-led deals—before it becomes a problem? She had seen this go wrong in her previous company and wanted to get ahead of the issue.
The challenge? 80% of their customers were buying through e-commerce, but those deals only made up 20% of the revenue. Meanwhile, their lone enterprise seller was handling both large strategic deals and fielding customer questions from smaller e-commerce buyers—holding him back from closing the high-value deals that actually moved the needle.
This situation creates friction. If you don’t comp sales on e-commerce deals, they’ll ignore them (or worse, actively discourage them). If you do comp them, you risk overpaying or incentivizing the wrong behavior. So, how do you structure this fairly?
Step 1: Keep your enterprise sellers focused on enterprise deals
Your enterprise rep shouldn’t be spending time on small e-commerce transactions. The best way to fix this is to:
- Introduce a mid-market team to handle smaller deals
- Make it a rule to hand smaller accounts to resellers
- Eliminate the sales function small companies and only offer tech support or customer success interactions
If you have a high volume of smaller e-commerce transactions, dedicating a mid-market seller (or even a dedicated e-commerce success rep) ensures enterprise sales aren’t getting bogged down in low-value interactions. And if e-commerce customers just have basic questions, invest in better automation, FAQs, or support resources to minimize sales involvement.
Step 2: Segment territories by company size, not deal size
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is dividing sales territories based on deal size. This is flawed because:
- You don’t always know how big a deal will be at the start.
- A small initial deal at a large company could grow significantly with the right enterprise seller.
- A midmarket seller could keep deals small so they don’t lose the commission
Instead, segment by number of employees—not revenue—because revenue can be hard to determine, especially for government agencies and private companies. A good starting point is:
- Mid-market: Companies below 1,000–5,000 employees (pick a cut-off at which deals become more complex and sales cycles longer)
- Enterprise: Anything above that threshold
When in doubt, use LinkedIn as your primary data source. If a company has multiple LinkedIn profiles (e.g., for different divisions or subsidiaries), go with the largest or headquarters entity. And always assign deals based on the global HQ to avoid confusion over which rep owns an account.
Step 3: Comp sales on everything in their territory—no exceptions
If an enterprise seller owns an account, they should be compensated on everything that comes from that account—whether it came through e-commerce or direct sales. Why?
- If you force sales to track which channel a deal came from, you create more bureaucracy than actual value.
- Sales reps will resent deals they don’t get comped on, leading to friction between teams.
- You avoid “land grabs” where reps try to take credit for self-serve deals.
If e-commerce is a small percentage of revenue (e.g., 10%), don’t over-engineer an attribution model. Just pay the rep based on total territory performance and move on. Simply increase the quota by the amount you expect to come in without sales involvement, and you’re making all sides happy.
The bottom line
When PLG and e-commerce are part of your revenue mix, structuring sales compensation the wrong way can create unnecessary conflict. The best approach?
- Let enterprise sellers focus on enterprise deals by offloading small transactions.
- Segment territories by company size, not deal size, to keep things clear.
- Comp sales on everything in their territory to avoid unnecessary tracking and disputes.
This way, you’re not just preventing problems—you’re making sure your sales team is focused on what actually grows the business.
Thinking about restructuring your sales org? Let’s talk.