When Mark Roberge joined HubSpot as its fourth employee, he had no sales experience but still was charged with building the sales team. His background proved to be an advantage, however: With his engineering training, Roberge brought an analytic rigor to the task. And he quickly realized that the sales compensation plan could motivate salespeople not only to sell more but also to behave in ways that advanced the start-up’s evolving strategy.
In this article, he explains how each time the firm entered a new stage of growth, he would revised the comp plan to support its changing priorities – Customer acquisition, Customer success and retention, and Sustainable growth – to grow HubSpot to $100 million in sales in seven years.