paying your channel team without starting a war with direct sales

Your channel team does what its pay plan rewards. If channel managers earn on any revenue that touches a partner, they chase the three largest partners and ignore the rest. If direct sellers earn more on direct deals, they take deals away from partners, and the partners notice within a quarter. Pay channel managers on two or three measures they can see every week, credit partner deals only against a registration or a logged activity, and make your direct team channel-neutral.

what a pay plan can’t fix

A plan tells people what the company values. It does not fix a weak territory, an unclear role or a product partners can’t sell. Alexander Group’s 2025 research found that only 21% of companies rated their sales compensation plans as very effective, and that companies with effective plans had 19 points more core sellers at or above quota. The difference comes from boring choices: clear roles, few measures, realistic quotas.

Work through the questions in this order before touching numbers:

1. What is each role accountable for?
2. Which of those outcomes can the person influence within the plan period?
3. How much of total pay should be variable, given that influence?
4. What is the target, and how was it set?
5. How does payout change below, at and above target?
6. When is credit given, and when is it paid?
7. What happens when a deal unwinds or a partner switches?

the mix follows control

The more a role controls the outcome, the higher its variable share. A direct seller closes deals. A channel manager works through partners who close them. A partner-facing engineer supports.

SaaS account executive, median47%

field channel manager30 to 35%

partner recruitment manager30%

inside channel manager25%

partner-facing engineer15 to 20%

channel marketing10 to 15%

Set on-target earnings from the market rate for the role first, then derive the split. Setting base first and bolting a variable on top produces plans where the variable is either too small to matter or too large to fund. Then model the total cost at 60%, 100% and 150% attainment before you approve the plan. If 150% is unaffordable, change the curve now, not in October.

plan for most people to miss

A plan that only works when everyone hits quota will not work. The Bridge Group’s 2026 survey of 158 B2B companies found that 48% of account executives reached annual quota, and that ramp time to full productivity averaged 6.2 months, the longest in the study. RepVue’s Cloud Sales Index put cybersecurity quota attainment at 38.7% in Q1 2025, below the 43.3% overall figure. RepVue does not define whether that is a share of sellers or an average, so read it as a direction.

A channel manager ramps slower than a direct seller, because the job is building partner capacity before it produces revenue. Give new channel hires a ramped quota: around a quarter of full quota in months one to three, half in months four to six, three quarters in months seven to nine, full after that.

pick two or three measures

Measure	Fits	Watch out for
New annual recurring revenue through assigned partners	Field channel manager	Rewards the biggest partners only, unless capped by segment
Partner activation: partners reaching a first registered win	Partner recruitment manager	Needs a strict definition of a win
Renewal on time at partner customers	Channel manager, renewal desk	Partly outside the person’s control
Certified partner engineers against tier requirements	Partner-facing engineer	Easy certifications inflate it
Technical win rate on supported deals	Partner-facing engineer	Small samples
Partner-sourced qualified pipeline	Channel marketing	Inflates without qualification rules

Three rules keep it honest. No more than three measures, and the smallest carries at least 15% of the variable. At least 60% of a channel manager’s variable sits on the main revenue measure. And every measure must be visible to the person every week. A channel manager who learns the number only at quarter end can’t manage it.

Count renewals at reduced weight, for example half, so a channel manager with a mature portfolio does not earn on inertia while a new one can’t catch up. Count expansion on renewing customers at full weight.

credit only what has a record

Most fights about compensation are fights about credit. Write the rules down and tie each credit to evidence.

Credit type	Evidence	Who gets it
Partner-sourced	Approved deal registration	The partner’s channel manager, at 100%
Vendor-sourced, partner-fulfilled	Lead record with source and handover date	Channel manager at 100%, marketing for pipeline
Partner-influenced	Logged activity before close: POC, pricing, executive meeting	Overlay roles on a team measure, never a second channel manager credit
Named account, partner fulfils	Named-account list approved once a year	Direct seller at 100%, channel manager partly if the partner was active

Pay overlay roles, such as partner-facing engineers, on a team or regional result rather than per deal. Otherwise every deal has three people claiming it, and your cost of sales climbs without anyone selling more.

make direct sales channel-neutral

This is the rule that decides whether partners trust you.

direct deals pay more

the default in many plans

• Direct sellers keep partners out of deals they could share
• Partners stop registering, because registering exposes the deal
• Your channel numbers fall and nobody can say why

channel-neutral

same credit, direct or through a partner

• The seller picks the route that wins the deal
• Partners register, because the vendor has no reason to take over
• Optional: a small premium when a partner fulfils, where partners are strategic

short incentives, used rarely

A SPIF is a short incentive for one behaviour: the first sale of a new product, renewals before quarter end. Run no more than two at once, each for four to twelve weeks, paid within 30 days, and never for behaviour the core plan already pays for. That signals the core plan isn’t serious.

Incentives paid to a partner’s sales staff need care in the EU. Under the vertical agreements regulation, a supplier must not use incentives to fix a partner’s resale price. Tie them to volume or product mix, never to a minimum price.

when it is paid and when it comes back

Credit on booking, pay on invoice or cash, depending on your credit risk with partners. Credit multi-year deals on the first year in full and later years at a reduced rate. And write the clawback rules before the first one is needed: order cancelled, invoice unpaid past a set period, deal found to break registration rules. Employment law on deductions differs by country across Europe, so check the clawback clause with local counsel in each country where you employ people.

Announce plan changes early. Alexander Group recommends three months’ notice for pay mix changes.

the question for your sales leadership

When a deal could close direct or through a partner, which route pays your seller more today?