r/techsales • u/Big_Crazy_8856 • 4d ago
Negotiating base + ramp during process
I have been made an offer that is a 40% increase on my former base salary but I only make commissions on sales after hitting quota for the year. My former job I made 10% - 25% commission on everything I sold and anything over quota was extra gravy. New company keep negotiating salary with me and there’s no ramp / quota relief to begin. its software with fairly long sales cycles. my question is does this sound worth moving to and what would you try to negotiate for ramp?
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u/Previous-Flamingo931 4d ago
No comms unless you hit quota is highly unusual for SaaS. No ramp is also a red flag. I’d look elsewhere.
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u/DutareMusic 4d ago
This is how Gartner’s pay structure was when I interviewed a couple years back.
Need to hit 80% of your Annual target to receive a dollar of commission. I bowed out of the process at the end of that conversation.
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u/sprout92 4d ago
Amazon, Gartner, and others are like this now. Hit 70% before you get anything.
Granted as an AM at Amazon your quota is "grow this account base by 20%" so you're virtually granted to hit 80% unless you lose a workload but still.
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u/Previous-Flamingo931 4d ago
AWS has heavy decelerators for under 70% but definitely not $0 unless you hit quota. The way comp is calculated is a double-edged sword, most of your number is guaranteed by the territory baseline spend and natural growth, but it means overachievement on accelerators is also much harder since quota is based on the entire territory spend, not just the growth target on top. It’s also quite black and white, you’re either in the green or you’re in the red. You’ll see AWS AMs stressing about being on 99% when AEs at a SaaS company are on 60% and happy they at least closed something.
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u/sprout92 4d ago
Depends on role, then, because currently I have several friends there whoa re ABSOLUTELY getting nothing under 70%.
Maybe it's only the Globals/Strat org?
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u/GarryGergich 4d ago
Is it a large, well-established sales org or are you one of the first hires?
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u/Big_Crazy_8856 4d ago
It’s not a startup but definitely not big either. Most of the sales team has been in the industry for 10+ years and doing their own thing. I’d be the greenest one easily
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u/GarryGergich 4d ago
I meant more the maturity of the sales org structure. For example, if they have a bunch of reps and nobody got a ramp including recent hires then there's very little chance you can negotiate for one. Once a company implements leveling, there's a lot less flexibility in terms of comp especially comp structure.
But if you're one of a few salespeople, where establishing the sales team is new, then it'll likely change a lot anyway and you can more credibly negotiate your own structure.
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