Pay Check
What does this plan actually pay?
Put in your base, your variable and how the plan pays above 100%. See what you make at 50% to 200% of quota.
Put in your base, your variable and how the plan pays above 100%. See what you make at 50% to 200% of quota.
OTE is what you make if you hit 100%. The rows above and below it are what you make in a real year.
Below 100%, most plans pay your variable in a straight line: 75% of quota pays 75% of your variable. Some plans pay nothing below a threshold, often 50%, so a bad year can take the whole variable.
Above 100%, an accelerator raises your rate. A 1.5× accelerator pays 150% of your normal rate on everything past the point where it starts. That's where good years make real money.
A cap stops it. If variable is capped at 150% of target, nothing past that pays, however big the year. A plan that sounds exciting can pay very little above quota once the cap and the starting point are in.
Plan your budget on the 75% and 100% rows. Bridge Group's 2026 study found 48% of AEs hit quota, so the accelerator rows are the good years, not the average one.
I spent six years leading federal partner sales teams at AWS, after plenty of years carrying a number myself. QuotaBird is mostly stuff I wish we'd had back then. Most of it's free. If the problem's messier than a little tool can handle, we can talk it through.