Benchmarking Study: Long Sales Cycle Professional Services
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February 13, 2025
RevenueShift recently conducted a custom benchmarking study focused on Professional Services sales forces with revenue greater than $500M. We focused on those who sell to the federal government sector primarily. We collected data from eight organizations' business development (BD) executives, focusing on their sales incentive design, and compensation. Here are some key insights regarding plan eligibility, BD credit and pay-mix, and incentives from our findings:
All survey respondents had a BD role, but only one-third had their BDs on a sales bonus, while all had them on an annual incentive plan (AIP). The number of Capture Managers was evenly split between sales bonuses and AIPs, while Proposal Managers were rarely on a sales bonus (only 16%).
Most companies divvy up sales credit to equal 100%. It’s also more common to have a target incentive based on role (67%) than to have a pool based on deals (33%). In general, pay-mix was fairly consistent across the roles.
None of the peer set compensated for milestone achievements. Most organizations capped plans at 1.5x–3x. Revenue and margin are the most important KPIs. Most respondents said that business unit was their most common level of measurement for performance across all roles.
Most respondents don’t offer long-term incentives (LTI) to any of the roles. If offered, organizations usually allocate it for the business developer rather than the other roles.
We can run custom cuts of our data to suit whatever need you have, so please reach out if you’d like to discuss any of our findings. We’re happy to help with any sales effectiveness challenges you face. At RevenueShift, we partner with our clients to create pragmatic, analytics-led solutions that meet challenges at their foundation.
