The short answer
Most floors pay a modest base plus a share of commission on funded deals, which correctly ties pay to the only outcome that produces revenue. The failure is paying on funded deals and nothing else, which quietly makes speed to lead, follow-up on cold records and file quality somebody else’s problem — so the plan needs a small component attached to the behaviours that produce the funded deals.
Comp design is behaviour design. Every plan produces exactly the behaviour it pays for, and the gap between what you meant and what you wrote is where floors lose money.
| Model | Produces | Neglects |
|---|---|---|
| Commission only | Hunger, and high turnover | Follow-up, file quality, new reps surviving |
| Base plus commission | Stability and a longer horizon | Urgency, if the base is comfortable |
| Tiered on volume | Push through the tier boundary | Deal size — a small deal counts the same |
| Tiered on funded dollars | Bigger files | Small deals get abandoned mid-process |
| Draw against commission | A runway for new reps | Becomes debt, and then resignations |
Pay a little for the leading indicators
Funded deals are a lagging outcome that a rep only partly controls. A small component tied to what precedes them — time to first dial, cadence completion, statements collected on the call — costs little and stops those becoming the parts nobody is measured on.
Practical shape
- A base that covers a rep’s basics, so they can survive a bad fortnight without gaming the pipeline.
- The main share on funded deals, ideally on funded dollars rather than deal count.
- A small monthly component on process compliance — cadence completed, time to first dial inside target.
- Accelerators above target rather than penalties below it. Penalties produce hidden pipeline.
- Clear rules on renewals and who owns a merchant that funds months later.
The renewal rule is the one most often left undefined, and it is worth writing down before the first renewal rather than during the argument about it.