121 Silicon Valley, Inc.

• INSIGHTS FROM SILICON VALLEY In a startup, getting your first 50 customers creates the foundation of the company and creates the traction the company needs to build a business The momentum generated by getting those first customers means everything to the company But what’s the fastest way to get those customers, and with the minimum use of capital? In past articles on this website, we’ve interviewed Sales VPs at startups, and asked them what they look for in a CEO We hope you’ve found that valuable, but this time we take a different tack Rather than asking one single Sales VP a lot of different questions, let’s ask several sales VPs the same question

We all know that bad hires are expensive In fact, that’s become a cliché, and clichés don’t motivate or impress So in this blog, let’s look at what a bad hire really costs, in actual dollars We look at a sales rep, the position we know best The costs of a bad hire – and the savings (yes, there are some) – include: Well-designed incentive compensation plans – especially sales commission plans – are a powerful way to motivate great performance But they’re also easy to screw up, and the results are plans that not only fail to motivate, but are incredibly expensive With that in mind, with this post we start a recurring series of blogs on the 121 Silicon Valley: The Deadly Sins of Incentive Compensation So let’s start with Deadly Sin #16 – Changing the plan significantly every year, or even more frequently