Compensation Is Strategy: Why Your CS Comp Plan Might Be Sending the Wrong Message

After 13+ years in Customer Success, there’s one lesson that has proven itself time and time again:

People do what you pay them to do.

If you want your CSMs to focus on activities, pay them for activities.

If you want outcomes, tie comp to outcomes.

If revenue is your north star, then revenue must be part of the comp plan.

Simple, right?

Yet I continue to see organizations tell their teams to act one way… and compensate them for something entirely different.

That’s not just a misalignment.

That’s a failure in leadership.

Compensation Drives Behavior (Like It or Not)

Maybe not for every individual but for the majority, how they’re paid influences what they prioritize, how they spend their time, and what gets their attention. Incentives matter.

I’ve had the opportunity to build and manage Customer Success teams at five different companies, and each one required a different approach to compensation. Same end goal motivate and reward but the structure? Never the same.

Over the years, I’ve designed comp models that included:

✅ Bonuses tied to team performance

✅ Variable comp based on a single metric

✅ Multi-component, sliding scale models

✅ SPIFFs in lieu of formal variable comp

The lesson? There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Your comp model should reflect your team's purpose, your business stage, your customer motion, and your definition of success.

Put Your Money Where Your Goals Are

Too many companies make the mistake of designing compensation plans in a vacuum without aligning them to their actual goals for Customer Success.

Here’s the truth:

Your comp plan is one of the clearest signals you send your team.

It tells them what matters.

It defines your priorities, whether you intend it to or not.

If you're asking your CSMs to drive expansion, but their comp is based on usage metrics... you're not going to get the results you want.

If you’re pushing for deeper customer engagement, but only paying for retention... you’ll miss critical growth opportunities.

If you're not intentional, you're leaving performance, and morale, up to chance.

Thinking About Reworking Your Comp Plan?

Now is the perfect time to start shaping your Q4 proposals or FY 2026 model.

Start by asking yourself these 5 questions:

1️⃣ What behavior do you want to incentivize?

Be clear, do you want to drive adoption, expansion, NPS? Pick the priority.

2️⃣ Are your goals individual, team-based, or hybrid?

This impacts how you design payout structures and how performance is tracked.

3️⃣ What metrics actually reflect CSM impact?

Choose KPIs that your team has real influence over, don’t tie comp to metrics they can’t control.

4️⃣ Can you measure those metrics fairly and consistently?

If not, you’ll lose trust fast.

5️⃣ Will your model reward the right outcomes, not just the easiest ones?

Be careful not to reward busy work or vanity metrics. Tie comp to meaningful impact.

TL;DR: Compensation Is Strategy

This isn’t just about paying people.

It’s about paying attention, to what you’re asking for, what you’re rewarding, and how your comp plan shapes behavior.

The best compensation plans are built with intention, aligned to outcomes, and revisited regularly.

Because when compensation and strategy are aligned, everything gets easier—performance, retention, and yes, revenue.

Let me leave you with this:

If your team isn’t doing what you expect, ask yourself, what are you paying them to do?