A Step-by-Step to Customer Success Commission Plan

A well-designed customer success commission plan can help to motivate and retain top-performing customer success representatives while ensuring that customers receive the support and guidance they need to be successful. Learn more about how to build a winning customer success commission plan, keeping both customer and employee interests at heart.
A customer success commission plan rewards customer success representatives for:
It typically includes a base salary but also consists of performance-based bonuses, incentives, and other rewards that are tied to specific customer success metrics (think: customer satisfaction ratings, customer retention rates, customer lifetime value, and more).
In this article, I’ll cover what a customer success commission plan is and how you can create one in six easy steps.
Let’s get started!
A customer success commission plan is a compensation plan designed to reward customer success managers or representatives for achieving customer-related metrics such as customer satisfaction, retention, upsell, and cross-sell.
There are typically three types of customer success commission plans:
In this plan, the customer success manager receives a fixed salary or base pay without any additional incentives or commissions.
This plan includes a base salary plus a bonus payment, which is usually tied to achieving specific targets or objectives related to customer success metrics.
This plan combines a base salary with a variable commission or incentive payment that varies depending on the customer success manager's performance.
The variable commission is typically tied to specific customer success metrics, such as customer retention or upsell/cross-sell rates. It may be structured as a percentage of revenue generated or as a flat fee per customer success goal achieved.
Pro tip: The type of customer success commission plan you choose will depend on your company's goals and budget, as well as the customer success manager's responsibilities and performance expectations.
Let’s take a look at six steps for creating an effective customer success commission plan:
Building a customer success commission plan involves considering various factors and variables that impact the success of the customer success team, like:
Additionally, when designing the plan, make sure to align it with the company's goals and objectives and incentivize customer success representatives to achieve those goals at every step of the way.
Another integral part of a customer success commission plan is determining the compensation split:
Here are a few steps to do that
Note: The commission rate is the percentage of revenue that the team member will earn as a commission.
Once you have determined your compensation split, you can use this information to build out the rest of your customer success commission plan.
The next step in building your customer success commission plan requires a thorough understanding of the key performance indicators (KPIs) that measure the success of the customer success team. These include:
Focus on creating a commission plan that rewards team members for achieving these goals.
For example, you might offer a bonus to customer success team members who achieve a certain level of customer satisfaction or who increase the company's NPS score.
Building a customer success commission plan which rewards specific behavior requires you to:
This step involves setting finite goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
This means creating targets that are quantifiable and have a clear deadline. For example, a SMART goal might be to increase customer retention by 10% within the next six months.
Building a customer success commission plan that includes finite goals requires:
One of the key steps in developing a commission plan is determining the on-target earnings (OTE) split.
Here are some steps to help you determine the OTE split for your customer success commission plan:
Want to know more?
Read our eBook on how to compensate success teams to maximize revenue.
Clearly, a customer success commission plan can be a powerful tool for incentivizing and rewarding your team.
However, it's important to design a plan that aligns with the company's overall goals and values and to ensure that the commission structure is fair and transparent.
To do so, companies should consider factors such as the team's responsibilities, performance metrics, commission rates, and payout schedules. It's also important to communicate the plan clearly to your customer success team and provide ongoing training and support.
If you want to take charge of your sales performance or improve your commission plans, leverage ElevateHQ – a 'smart' tool for smarter commissions.
Book a demo today to automate your customer success commission plan the right way!