Real Talk: with Ryan Farber and Bethany L. Rucker

Most comp plans look stable on launch day. The cracks show up in the six to eight weeks that follow. Accelerators kick in, deals close that nobody modeled, and a "silent stakeholder" surfaces a question no one asked in design review.

We sat down with Bethany Rucker (Director of Sales Incentive Compensation at Thomson Reuters) and Ryan Farber (Head of Sales Incentives and Governance at Tempus AI) to talk about what actually happens between plan go-live and plan lock, and what the comp leaders who never get pulled back in are doing differently.

The Stability Gap

When does a plan actually feel locked?

Bethany: The first quarterly payment is the true test. Some things pay monthly, some pay quarterly. But that first quarterly payment is when you find out if the plan works, if people understand it, if it makes sense, and if you're not getting too many cases. Anything before that is theory.

Ryan: You just don't know until somebody starts hitting accelerators. Did they close a deal that wasn't foreseen? Are they an average performer suddenly at the top of the range? You need a little runway for that to develop. And then there are the things you don't see coming at all. Territory shifts, role changes, layoffs. None of that shows up in your test runs.

Silent Stakeholders, Loud Stakeholders

Bethany manages 700+ plans across 2,500 sellers. Where does she focus pre-launch?

Bethany: The work before the work is everything. Making sure you've checked the box with HR, finance, sales leadership, all your best friends in the organization. I've personally run into issues where there was a silent stakeholder I missed checking in with, and after the plan goes live, you get this wave of "what about this, what about that." Those are people who weren't in the room.

Ryan flips the same problem from the other side.

Ryan: I almost take the opposite approach. There are people who are very influential, generally SVP level and up, who'll just slow the process down. So I prefer to do the work in the background with rev ops and finance, build something with data behind it, and bring the loud stakeholders in at the end with something to react to. If you walk in and say, "I know you wanted a 60/40 split, here's what the data says about 50/50," that conversation goes a lot smoother than letting them lead with their gut.

When you're rolling the plan out, does the order of the comm matter?

Ryan: I'd rather communicate the plan first. Tell people how they're going to get paid before you tell them the number. ACV, incremental ACV, whatever the metric is. If you give them a number first, they don't know how they're going to get paid against it. Pay mechanics give the number a frame.

Bethany: Quota, the plan, and the territory all need to be coordinated. Reps need the ability to chart their course in all three directions, not just one.

When to Actually Change a Plan Mid-Cycle

The default is don't touch the plan. What raises the bar high enough?

Bethany: Stability creates trust. Even if people don't like the plan, stability creates trust. Reps complaining isn't a reason on its own. That's a data point among many. Just because people don't like something doesn't mean it's wrong. Sometimes you absorb a lot of negative feedback and the plan is still the right call for the enterprise.

Ryan: When a sales leader comes to me saying "we're giving the wrong incentive," I ask them to quantify it. We're at 5% growth. If we made this change, do you think we'd be at 7%? It gets a lot harder for them to answer when you ask them to put a number on it. That's also how you hold them accountable to the change later.

What are some disruptions you can't model?

Ryan: Layoffs. They're more common now than people want to admit, and they're rarely communicated broadly in advance. You log in on a Tuesday and hear 10% of the sales team is gone. Open territories, open pipeline, plans connected to roles that no longer exist. Those are emotional, fast-moving moments where you have to reposition people quickly. Drastic territory changes are the one thing I'd seriously reconsider as an exception to "default to stability," because most of the time it's completely out of anyone's control.

SPIFs Are a Tell

SPIFs  feel like a quick fix. Both Ryan and Bethany see them as a diagnostic.

Bethany: Spiffs are indicators that something is missing from the comp plan. I've gotten myself into scenarios where I'm running 10, 12, even 14 spiffs at a time, which is not ideal. Sometimes there's a real strategic reason in the moment, hyper-competitive product situations where you need that uplift. But if it's persistent, the plan needs another look.

Ryan: I had a CEO years ago who cut the entire spiff budget. It was about three to five percent of total commission spend. The CRO threw a fit. The CEO said something that stuck with me: "If our plans aren't good enough, we've got bigger problems." We knew the market, we knew the customers, we knew what we were focusing on. There was no reason to keep paying out spiffs to peanut-butter over the gaps. When you cut that budget, you eliminate a lot of the noise of how things get paid out and what counts as an exception.

Walking Back an Exception

Have you ever had to walk back an exception that set a bad precedent?

Bethany: I caveat the heck out of exceptions. I'll literally use the phrase "one-time only, non-precedent-setting." Then if it does come up again, you explain the business rationale, especially if there's a cash flow implication. It's better to be right the first time, but you don't want to keep going further down a bad decision either.

Ryan: Honestly, I don't think I've ever walked one back. They're called exceptions for a reason. Once the decision is made, you don't have to repeat it. And if it does turn out to be repeatable, that's the signal. It should be part of the plan, not an exception.

The Plan Freeze

What does "locked" actually mean, and which team has the strictest definition?

Bethany: For me, lock is the pencils-down moment. Plan docs signed, components within each plan committed, stakeholders aligned. We'll learn from it, we'll grow from it, it's never going to be perfect. But this is what we're doing. That's lock.

Ryan: There are three teams in the conversation: comp, rev ops, and finance. Finance has the hardest definition. Your budget is your budget. It might come in a little late, but once it's set, it doesn't move. Comp plans can change, rev ops can re-cut territories, but finance? That number is the number. Honestly, comp and rev ops could learn from that discipline.

Have questions or want to swap notes on plan stability? Connect with Bethany Rucker and Ryan Farber on LinkedIn, or join us on Uncappd, where comp practitioners get real answers from people who've actually shipped these plans.