Future Proofing Your 2026 Sales Compensation Plan

As you work on sales compensation planning for the new year, you need a sales compensation strategy that is:

• Clear enough to drive the right behaviors.
• Flexible enough to survive the unexpected.
• Compelling enough to keep your A-players engaged when recruiters come calling.

So how do you future-proof your sales compensation plan for 2026 and beyond? We recently hosted a webinar with internal revenue leaders at Xactly and special guest Silvia Alvarado, Director of Sales Compensation at Instacart, to discuss the operational best practices required to successfully design, model, adjust, and execute successful sales compensation plans. 

Read on for the takeaways. 

Driving Behavioral Adoption

Without buy-in from key stakeholders, including sales reps, finance teams, and HR ops, a sales compensation plan fails. Getting these team members aligned with a shared vision often requires breaking down silos and old habits.

One way Xactly aligns team members is through our annual sales kickoff, which brings together the entire field team for two to three days for structured planning and strategy. But the work doesn’t begin there. 

Stop the Whiplash Effect

To drive behavioral adoption, your field team should understand the company’s multiyear vision from a market, financial, and planning perspective before they walk into that meeting. 

Leaders must explain the planning process from the top-down and bottom-up, frequently sharing the planning calendar and milestones while allowing employees to weigh in on their part of the plan.

“This way, it doesn’t feel like it hasn't gone through a process — like someone is throwing something over the wall for you to be forced to catch it if you see it.

“You really have to start way in advance and incorporate all of the various teams from a project plan milestone perspective. It helps illuminate who's doing what, why, and when.”

Knowing the plan not only gives sales teams transparency and visibility into what they could be earning, but insight into the larger goals of the company.

“A huge piece for me is connecting the dots between sales plan design and our culture,” Alvarado says. “As much as we want to get to the numbers and we want to see our employees exceed, we also want to make sure they understand that there's career growth within those.”

Continuous Planning

Because planning is an ongoing process, companies must build a dynamic operational framework that allows for agile adjustments as market conditions shift.

To ensure your plan is working as intended, track performance against the plan as soon as the year starts and continue on an ongoing basis.

“Is the pipeline I'm generating matching up to the components I want to pay out on in my comp plan? Are the behavior drivers I set out to drive coming to fruition?” asks Bayley Fesler, Xactly Director of Revenue Operations. “If I'm not seeing those early signs, those are conversations I need to have sooner rather than later.”

Avoid the Jenga Game

If finance has one set of assumptions and sales has another, the plan breaks.

“The assumptions become kind of like playing a game of Jenga,” Fesler says. “If you layer too many of them, it all falls apart. I’ve found with my team, if we build it like a program, we can save versions.”

With versions available, you can go back and look at certain components from different runs to troubleshoot or rebuild when needed. 

Managing Complexity

Mid-year comp plan changes can cause unease throughout a sales organization. Planning with flexibility in mind helps manage complexity and calm the chaos. 

We attempt to anticipate what sort of things we would put in place if things are hot or cold.

 “That anticipation allows finance to get a sense of what we might decide to do at that point in time based on what we actually see in the business and what's happening in the market. Memorializing that within the plan at the start of the year and not in the spreadsheet or something that gets lost is really important.” 

Total System Automation

For Instacart, building a compensation plan that remains flexible while managing complexity requires automation through Xactly. 

“One of the biggest pushes on my end from a leadership perspective is just automation,” Alvarado says. “Not just from a perspective of getting people paid, but from sales plan docs, a pivot in crediting policies, a pivot in any of our governance policies. How do I focus on dedicating time, even with a lean team, to making sure we have full automation?”

Moving away from manual processes and implementing fully automated systems gives comp teams the data visibility needed to make smarter decisions about policy changes while staying responsive to sales teams. This automation-first approach builds trust through accuracy, flexibility, and the ability to anticipate issues before they become problems.