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What it argues
The Complete Guide to Sales Force Incentive Compensation by Andris Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally Lorimer is the most thorough practitioner reference on the subject. The book addresses every component of a sales compensation system: the structure of the pay plan, target-setting mechanics, territory design, performance metrics, and the processes for reviewing and revising the system over time.
Zoltners and his co-authors approach the topic as management scientists who have spent decades consulting on sales force design. The book's central argument is that most companies design compensation plans reactively — borrowing from competitors, layering new incentives onto old structures, and never building a coherent system from first principles. The result is plans that are too complex to communicate clearly, that reward activities that don't drive business results, and that demoralize high performers while letting average performers coast.
What it gets right
- 1.
Most compensation plans accumulate complexity over time without ever being designed from first principles. Periodic zero-based redesign, measured against business strategy, produces better results.
- 2.
The pay mix — the ratio of fixed base to variable pay — should reflect the degree to which individual sales effort actually drives outcomes. High-influence sales roles warrant higher variable ratios.
- 3.
Quota-setting accuracy matters as much as incentive structure: even a well-designed plan fails if territories are misaligned or quotas are systematically under- or over-set.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Andris Zoltners is a professor emeritus at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and a co-founder of ZS Associates, one of the world's largest sales and marketing consultancies. He has spent more than forty years advising companies on sales force design, compensation, and strategy. With Prabhakant Sinha and Sally Lorimer, he has authored multiple books on sales force effectiveness. His work is the most cited academic and practitioner research in the sales compensation field.
