Bonus and Commission Integration

Another dinner conversation at Apartmentalize was about how owners are rethinking standard commission structures for leasing teams. For owners and operators tackling lease-ups, value-adds, distressed assets, or sudden drops in short-term occupancy, standard commission plans often fall short in driving leasing performance and motivating teams. Most management companies use a leasing commission of around $50-100 per unit. Say you lease 30 units so $1,500/month—that’s split between the team. Not bad. But not exactly motivating when ownership and management are facing real occupancy pressure. At our dinner, multiple large owners have started pivoting to new structures, which is similar to how Eastman operates on our lease-ups: 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝐬 + 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐩𝐨𝐧 𝗽𝗲𝗿-𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻. Give the team a reason to sprint. Let them realize a portion of the upside for vacancy loss saved if they blow it out of the water. If the team stabilizes just 5% ahead of schedule on a 300-unit deal with average rents of $1,500, that’s $22.5K in savings for a single month of earlier occupancy. Two to three months early? That’s $40K–$60K of additional cash flow. Right now, most site teams have little incentive to push for that - only a small portion of their annual comp is the leasing commission bonus. But the owner benefits massively. So build a plan where everyone wins. Example incentive structure (assuming an October 1st stabilization target): ▪️$10K bonus if the team hits 95% occupancy by September 1st ▪️$20K bonus if they hit it by August 1st ▪️$30K bonus if they reach it by July 1st Split it between office and maintenance teams - we do 75% / 25%. I also find it crazy how many owners don’t give maintenance any leasing bonuses.. They are a huge part of keeping the community beautiful which in turn allows the leasing team to sell. Office morale is notably higher when everyone realizes the winning — when everyone gets excited about the team leasing, not just an individual contributor, it's a win. Morale and happiness is so important. The goal is simple: turn the entire on-site team into one focused leasing machine. Not just leasing staff—but maintenance, support, everyone aligned around hitting occupancy targets. The takeaway isn’t just about leasing—it’s about aligning incentives across the board. Give your teams a reason to shoot for the stars, even when the goal is the moon. 🌠🌠🌠

How do you compensate partnership professionals in B2B SaaS? + bonus tip Sales teams live and breathe by commissions and targets. It's a cutthroat, results-oriented world. But how do we fairly compensate those driving indirect sales? In most cases it’s not the same ball game for affiliate managers, partner development reps etc. You still want to incentivize them and keep them on their toes, but here's why traditional sales compensation models might need tweaking: 👉 The long game: Partnerships are an investment. It's not a quick lead-to-close cycle. You're building a relationship, demonstrating value to the partner *before* they champion your product. This means revenue timelines can stretch out. 👉 It's a two-way street: A partner's success is your success. If they're not effectively converting leads, your team can do everything right and still fall short. This adds a layer of uncontrollable variables. 👉 Tracking: Attribution for partner-sourced deals isn't always crystal clear. Was the lead inbound, nurtured by your team, then closed via the partner? Who gets the glory (and the commission)? So, what do successful SaaS companies do? 🧠 Hybrid models: Companies like HubSpot and Salesforce are known to utilize hybrid compensation models for their partnership teams. Base salary provides stability, with commissions incentivizing top performance. Early on, commission might be tied to partner acquisition milestones, later shifting to revenue-based as the pipeline matures. 🧠 Tiered Rewards: PartnerStack, a dedicated PRM, advocates for a tiered commission model. Recognize varying partner sizes and impact. Larger partners might merit more complex performance-based structures. 🧠 Milestone Incentives: Somewhat an equivalent to SPIFs (or bonuses simply) tied to specific achievements throughout the partnership development process. This could be things like:    - First joint customer win    - Co-marketing campaign launch    - Completion of partner training/certification Don't neglect the motivational power of focused incentives. Consider partner recruitment bonuses or milestone-based rewards alongside your long-term commission structure. It can help attract early partners and create a sense of momentum for your team. ‼️ Bonus tip: If you’re just building out your channel / partner strategy, a great place to get inspiration is job postings. Look for how companies that you admire advertise the exact roles you’re trying to emulate, and how they approach compensation for partnership professionals. #partnerships #b2bsaas #compensation #revenuestrategy #channelsales

Spoke with an org last month that pays their reps more for multithreaded deals. Here's the structure: - Normal deal = normal payout. One champion, one department. 10% commission. - Add 3+ stakeholders = +25% bump. You've mapped and engaged economic buyer, technical buyer, champion, plus one influencer. Commission: 12.5%. - Executive sponsor + 2 departments = +40% bump. C-level documented, two departments involved, formal buying committee identified. Commission: 14%. Why did they start doing this? Well, probably pretty obvious. When you have one champion, in one department, you have one conversation thread. Procurement could show up. Finance could kill it out of nowhere. Or some VP you've never heard of tanks the whole thing in a hallway conversation. And your rep goes: "But my champion loved us!" Anyway, they're about 11 months into this experiment, and they have seen their reps get MUCH better at asking questions like: - "Who else weighs in on decisions like this?" - "Walk me through your approval process." - "Who's gonna hate this and why?" Although its too early to tell, I'd wager decent money that these deals will expand more down the road as well. Re how to track this stuff, it isn't that complicated with required fields in your CRM: - Stakeholder name/role. - Department. - Engagement date. - Their specific concerns. If there ain't no documentation, there ain't no bonus. Now, correlation doesn't equal causation, but they have seen their ENT close rates jump from around 26% to 33% YoY. Same reps...just different incentives. They paid them to get better at mapping buying committees...so they got better at mapping buying committees. :)

There were years at Botify where ~50% of our new bookings came from upsell revenue. Going into specific years, we saw that we had this potential but in order to maximize, we had to ensure we had the right comp plans.   Here’s the different methods we explored: 𝟭) 𝗡𝗥𝗥: Have a quarterly bonus be based on a NRR target. I usually set a table with different attainment levels based on the performance level. Pros: ◾ It blends upsell and renewal revenue into one target making it simple to follow. ◾ It also guides the team to a core business metric. And at the end of the day, if these targets are hit, you are seeing nice growth from your client base. Downside: ◾ Can vary a lot from one rep to the next depending their client base. ◾ You might have some reps lean heavily in one area which (some reps may crush renewals but not generate any upsell rev which could hurt new bookings but still hit OTE). This plan will probably give you the most balance. 𝟮) 𝗨𝗽𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝗤𝘂𝗼𝘁𝗮/𝗥𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗹 𝗚𝗼𝗮𝗹: You give the rep a quota/commission rate plan and then a renewal rate goal by quarter and a corresponding table based on attainment to that goal. Pros: ◾ Allows you to dial in on both a new bookings goal and renewal goals. ◾ You can shift the % of OTE on the variable comp side based on what is more important to the business (renewals vs upsells). Downside: ◾ TAM can be finite for upsell attainment. ◾ One person’s book may be easier to hit than another for each of these goals. This is the structure I have used the most. 𝟯) 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻: In this model, you pay a commission rate on both upsells and renewals (think .5 - 1%). Pro: ◾ Very easy to calculate for reps and finance. Downside: ◾ A rep could secure a big renewal, get paid a healthy amount but still be way off the renewal target ◾ At risk renewals could be ignored This plan is more advantageous for a rep but I have seen it make sense for the business. All in all, you may change comp models over time as the needs of the business change. The most important thing you want to do when you are fleshing these models out is to make sure they are attainable but also work with finance to make sure they make sense for the business.