Product-led growth and traditional sales comp don’t mix easily. One is driven by self-serve adoption. The other by closed-won quota. If you’re not careful, your sales team ends up chasing deals your product already converted or ignoring high-value accounts because there’s no commission in it.
The fix isn’t to ditch your reps. It’s to align their comp with your motion.
Reward expansion, not just acquisition.
If your product drives usage before the first sales call, then sales should focus on converting usage into revenue. That means comp plans tied to activation, seat growth, and contract upgrades, not just net-new logos.
Use triggers that reflect product health.
Pay reps for moving accounts from free to paid, or from team to enterprise. If an account grows 3x in usage but sales doesn’t get paid, you’ve misaligned incentives.
Build comp plans that blend land and expand.
Maybe 50% for new business, 50% for expansion within existing accounts. Or a multiplier for turning a product-qualified lead into a full contract.
Don’t let CS do all the expansion work for free.
If success handles onboarding but sales closes the renewal and upsell, split the credit—or tie it to milestones like expansion booked or usage thresholds crossed.
And finally, make sure sales knows how product growth works.
Train them on product telemetry. Let them see activation rates and feature adoption. The best reps in PLG orgs act more like advisors than hunters.
Sales in PLG isn’t dead. It’s just different. And if you comp like it’s still 2010, your best reps will either churn—or worse, start selling around your product.
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