He's Seen 300+ Sales Comp Plans. 90% Make the Same Mistake | Siva Rajamani (Everstage CEO)

Most sales comp plans are quietly broken, and the people running them have no idea. Siva Rajamani, CEO of Everstage, has visibility into 300+ enterprise comp plans, and he says 90% of companies make the same mistakes. In this episode he breaks down what's going wrong, how to spot it, and what a comp plan that actually drives revenue looks like.

Siva explains why sales compensation is not a back office cost center but the single biggest lever in your go-to-market strategy. It's the glue between what a company intends and what reps actually do. If your reps aren't doing what you want, the answer isn't in a 1-on-1. It's in your comp plan.

We get into the over-complication trap, the hidden math that makes reps refuse your best deals, the base-to-variable ratios that actually work, why your top reps should out-earn almost everyone, and how AI is about to blow open the gap between your best and average sellers.

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:30 Siva's RevOps background at Freshworks
04:00 Scaling RevOps from 1 to 25
04:50 Why he left to build Everstage
06:30 Why incentives drive revenue, not tools
08:00 Comp as the glue between intent and action
10:30 The 1 to 2 mistakes almost every team makes
12:00 "If your comp plan needs FAQs, it's a tax code"
14:00 The 60-second test for a broken plan
15:30 Designing comp to retain top talent
16:50 How AI widens the gap between top and average reps
18:00 The $1M sales rep is coming
19:30 Why optimizing for top earners is better on margins
21:30 Quota to OTE ratios that actually work
23:00 Base vs variable: the 50/50 rule and exceptions
24:00 What Everstage does and who it serves
25:30 How Everstage structures its own comp plan
28:00 The rise of the revenue architect
48:00 CPQ and connecting margin to commissions
50:30 When should reps earn commission in the deal cycle
52:30 Six month vs twelve month comp cycles
54:30 The most a sales rep has ever made
55:20 Where to find Siva

Connect with Siva Rajamani: 
Co-founder, CEO of Everstage
Twitter/X: https://x.com/siva_rajamani
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sivasrajamani/

Host: Sophie Buonassisi, SVP at GTMnow
Follow Sophie: https://x.com/sophiebuona
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sophiebuonassisi/

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The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.

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