Our sales leader earns significantly more than our operations and finance heads due to commission structures, creating deep resentment and lack of cooperation in our leadership room. How do we restructure executive compensation so the leadership team operates as a unified unit rather than fighting over pay disparity?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When your sales leader operates on individual commission while operations and finance leaders operate on fixed salaries, you incentivize siloed behavior. The sales leader is financially motivated to close any contract, regardless of whether operations has the capacity to deliver it profitably or finance has the cash flow to support it. Meanwhile, the rest of the leadership team feels like underpaid clean-up crews for sales mistakes.

At the leadership team level, compensation must reward enterprise health, not transactional volume. An executive sitting at the leadership table is responsible for the entire business, not just their departmental silo.

Transition your sales executive off frontline commission structures. Shift them to a strong, market-rate executive base salary coupled with an executive incentive plan tied directly to overall company performance. That bonus pool should be funded by gross profit or EBITDA thresholds, not gross top-line revenue. When the bonus pool is tied to company profitability, the sales head suddenly cares deeply about project delivery costs, contract margins, and operational capacity.

Apply the same company-wide bonus plan across the entire leadership team. When sales, operations, and finance all participate in the exact same quarterly or annual profit pool, their financial incentives align completely. They win together or they lose together. This eliminates pay resentment, forces cross-departmental collaboration, and ensures that every leader focuses on sustainable, profitable execution.