Sales KPIs and incentives: what to pay for in premium

A KPI system is the most honest instruction a company gives a manager: 'do this'. Pay for call counts and you get calls, not sales. Pay only for revenue and you get discounts and pushing that kill margin and repeat rates. Any distortion in the incentive scheme gets found and exploited by the team within a couple of months — not out of malice, out of rationality.

• ✓Margin, not turnover: a bonus tied to deal profit cures discounting — the discount becomes the manager's own expense.
• ✓Average ticket and deal composition: rewards offering the best option, not the easiest to sell.
• ✓Repeat purchases and retention: the premium segment's headline metric, where LTV beats the first deal.
• ✓Conversion on controllable stages: meeting-to-deal — what the manager personally influences.
• ✓Quality: call scoring against service standards — a small weight (10–20%) that keeps discipline.

• ✓Call/meeting counts as the core metric — you get activity for activity's sake.
• ✓An all-or-nothing quota 'at any cost' — month-end brings discounts, pressure and deals that fall apart next quarter.
• ✓Personal results only, no team goals — managers start dividing clients instead of serving them.
• ✓Fines as the system's backbone — in premium they burn out exactly the people who build relationships.

A working proportion for premium: base salary at 40–50% of income (enough that the manager isn't starving and pressuring clients), a margin- and ticket-based bonus at 35–45%, and 10–20% for quality and retention. A progressive scale instead of an all-or-nothing threshold: each next percent of quota is worth more than the previous one.

KPIs aren't a life sentence: review the weights every six months against the stage's goals. Launching a new line — weight new clients higher; pushing for profitability — weight margin and repeat sales. At every moment the system should answer the manager's 'what is worth my time?' exactly as the owner would.