led them through their own discovery process. They “got it” and the complaints stopped. Even better, they could be much more effective in teaching other team members or new hires about the comp plan so these frustrations didn’t pop up again with the next generation of new team members. We ended up in the same place we began: the comp plan didn’t change. One could feel like we wasted time, but I felt it was a fantastic use of time as a coaching exercise and as a way to increase trust and transparency in the team. The reps felt more connected to the team and the systems because they now understood more intimately where everything came from and why—they owned it. My only disappointment was that I had hoped they would come up with something I had missed so we could improve the plan! Transparent Compensation And Reporting I had a convenient advantage that helped me transparently publish everyone’s compensation on the team: they all were on the same basic plan structure (same base salary, same bonus and commission rates). No one had special deals even though some people had much more experience than others. Those with more experience or expectations could earn the extra compensation through higher results. With transparency compensation, the whole team could see who earned the most and why—how their higher results translated directly into more money. Publishing compensation also eliminated compensation and payroll errors, and reduced by 80% the amount of time I had to spend on tracking and reporting compensation. If you haven’t tracked and reported on compensation, it’s a pain. For a long time, we used spreadsheets at Salesforce.com to report commissionable results. The secrecy model: Run the reports: What were each person’s results? Prepare the report and calculate commissions. Cut the report into private reports for each person. Email or sit with each person to share results and ensure correctness. Fix the report as necessary.