• Competitive Base Salary — But You Cover it (Including Benefits) Before Any Bonus. E.g., no commission at all each month/quarter until you clear a hurdle. Whatever your base is each month – $4k, $6k, $10k, whatever … you first have to bring in the revenue to cover it before you get any bonus. I.e., no commission at all until you pay off your base salary + benefits, or say 125% of that month’s base. It’s similar to a draw, but not a true draw — your base salary is a salary. (True draws are not competitive.)
  

• Pay 2x as Much in Commission.  You’ll have to figure your own exact model out, but basically for us, I figured if reps paid their base first, and the losers then didn’t suck up a lot of cash — I could push the full 20-22% of ACV straight to the rep as commission. And even more if 80%+ of them all hit their plan. It’s what you’d end up paying in the BigCo plan anyway. So instead of a 10-11% commission, I paid ~25%. But only once you paid back your base. (The exact % may vary for you based on your unit economics).
  

• One Accelerator: Cash Up Front.  Paying 25% instead of 10-12%, but only once you pay for your base salary, is itself an inherent accelerator. The sky is the limit once you’ve paid your base back. But there was one thing that mattered when I wanted to be cash-flow positive: cash. So I paid more for cash-up front deals. Less for the rest (this may not matter for you if you don’t do monthly or quarterly options). And I paid a partial-to-full commission on any Year 2 cash, upfront. That cash now was very valuable.
  

• Optional: Payment Upon Receipt of Cash, Not Contract E-Signing.  Later, once we were past $10m or so, this didn’t matter so much. But in the early days, it was my way of aligning interests. I’ll pay you a lot. If you perform. But only once you take care of business and take care of the company. And get the cash in the door. Reps hate this. But if they are going to stay 12+ months … it doesn’t matter. They’ll see that. Especially if the top reps are driving M8 convertibles. Do this if it makes a difference in cash flow. Don’t do it if it doesn’t make much of a difference.
  

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