Comp and quotas

Snapshot / Other / 19 September 2026

Pavilion: the paid revenue-executive community archetype

Pavilion is a paid revenue-executive community with a UK chapter. The archetype: annual paid membership, screening on role and seniority, executive-tier members, structured peer groups, curated content, in-person and virtual events. Distinctive in the UK landscape for the screening and the structured peer-group format.

Pavilion fits revenue execs (CRO, VP Sales, VP Marketing, VP Customer Success) at scale-ups and mid-market who value structured peer benchmarking and are willing to pay for the curation. Less fit for early-career practitioners or for those who prefer open free discussion.

Explained / Other / 5 September 2026

Introducing the Quarterly UK Sales Job-Posting Analysis

A quarterly structural read of UK sales hiring drawn from public job-posting data, REC quarterly reports, IES research, ONS labour data, and our own platform's job-board signals. Covers role mix, regional patterns, comp ranges, remote/hybrid posture, and notable shifts. Methodology-led; structural rather than predictive.

Each quarterly entry establishes a structural read on the UK sales hiring market and notes shifts versus the previous quarter. We do not forecast; we describe what is visible in the data and flag what is changing.

Signal / Other / 8 August 2026

HMRC IR35 enforcement against UK sales contractor structures 2024-2026

HMRC compliance activity on off-payroll working (IR35) has intensified since the 2021 private-sector reform. UK sales organisations using contractor structures - particularly for senior IC and management roles - are increasingly subject to HMRC challenge. 2024-2026 enforcement focuses on the 'reality of the relationship' (Autoclenz test) rather than contract drafting alone.

Explained / Other / 6 August 2026

Garden leave enforceability in UK sales contracts in 2026

Garden leave is the practice of paying an employee through their notice period while requiring them not to work. UK case law on garden leave enforceability has evolved over the past 30 years; 2026 position is settled but specific. A practitioner walkthrough of when garden leave is enforceable, when it isn't, and how it interacts with post-employment restrictive covenants.

Garden leave is generally enforceable when the employer has a legitimate business interest, the duration is reasonable, and the employee continues to receive full contractual remuneration. Garden leave time should be set off against post-employment restrictive covenant duration; UK courts increasingly treat 'covenant + garden leave' stacking as unreasonable when the combined period exceeds what the legitimate interest requires.

Explained / Other / 5 August 2026

Whistleblowing in UK sales: PIDA 1998 protections for raising commission disputes

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (PIDA) protects UK workers who make 'protected disclosures' about wrongdoing. For UK sales hires, PIDA covers raising concerns about commission manipulation, comp-plan retroactive changes, fraud in pipeline reporting, and similar. Detriment or dismissal for making a protected disclosure is unlawful regardless of contract terms.

Sales hires raising commission disputes that touch on legal compliance, contractual breach by the employer, or financial misreporting are likely to be making protected disclosures under PIDA. Employer retaliation in those circumstances is unlawful. Employer contracts that try to gag protected disclosures (NDAs, confidentiality clauses) are unenforceable to that extent.

Explained / Other / 2 August 2026

Worker status in UK sales: Pimlico, Uber, and the IR35 environment

Two Supreme Court decisions (Pimlico Plumbers v Smith [2018] UKSC 29 and Uber BV v Aslam [2021] UKSC 5) reshaped UK worker-status law. Combined with HMRC's tightened IR35 / off-payroll-working enforcement since 2021, the picture for UK sales organisations using contractor structures has changed materially. A walkthrough.

Sales contractors who look operationally like employees (integrated into the team, working set hours, using employer tools, with no genuine right of substitution) are increasingly likely to be reclassified as workers (or employees) by tribunals or HMRC. Tax exposure under IR35 follows. UK sales organisations relying on contractor structures should run an Autoclenz-style 'reality of the relationship' audit annually.

Explained / Other / 1 August 2026

Tillman v Egon Zehnder [2019] UKSC 32: what it changed about UK sales restrictive covenants

The Supreme Court's 2019 decision in Tillman v Egon Zehnder restated UK law on the severance of unenforceable provisions in restrictive covenants. For UK sales hires, it changed how the 'blue-pencil' doctrine applies and what employers can recover from over-broad covenant drafting. A practitioner walkthrough.

Tillman confirms severance is available where the unenforceable wording is removable without re-writing the covenant and without changing its character. Sales-side practical effect: an over-broad non-compete may now have its excessive limb severed and the remainder enforced, where pre-Tillman it might have been wholly unenforceable. Employers gained back some lost ground; employees lost some defensive scope.

Signal / SaaS / 21 July 2026

VAT on sales commission: the UK trap most sales operations teams forget

Sales commission paid to a UK employee is taxed under PAYE - no VAT applies. Sales commission paid to a UK-registered self-employed sales contractor IS subject to VAT if the contractor is VAT-registered, and the commission becomes recoverable input VAT for the paying business. The treatment changes materially between employee and contractor structures, and sales operations teams routinely miss this when restructuring commission models.

Snapshot / SaaS / 20 July 2026

Customer Success as a sales discipline in UK SaaS in 2026

CS in UK SaaS in 2026 is shifting from a post-sale renewal function towards an active sales discipline. The shift reflects the maturity of the SaaS market: buyer-side procurement teams have hardened, churn risk has risen, and renewal isn't automatic. The CS function that survives 2026-2027 is the one that runs commercial discipline.

CS Managers in mature UK SaaS now carry retention quota and (increasingly) expansion quota. The pure 'relationship-only' CSM role is dating. Comp pattern is shifting towards 70/30 base/variable (from 80/20 historically), with variable tied to gross retention and net retention combined.

Explained / SaaS / 19 July 2026

Equity in UK sales offers: what RSUs, options, EMI, and growth shares actually mean

Equity in UK sales compensation packages takes several forms with materially different tax, vesting, and risk profiles. RSUs (mostly US-listed parents), unapproved share options (UK SMEs), EMI options (UK-incorporated startups under EMI scheme), and growth shares (sometimes used at growth stage). A practitioner walkthrough of what each is, what each costs, and what to negotiate.

EMI options are the most tax-efficient instrument for UK sales hires at qualifying companies (CGT on disposal rather than income tax on exercise, subject to conditions). Unapproved share options are taxed as income at exercise; RSUs are taxed as income at vesting. The instrument type matters more than the headline number.

Explained / SaaS / 18 July 2026

Account expansion as a sales discipline in UK SaaS in 2026

Net retention is the single most-watched SaaS metric for growth-stage and public companies, and yet account expansion sits in an organisational no-man's-land at most UK SaaS firms: too commercial for CS, too relationship-led for AE, structurally under-invested in. The case for treating expansion as its own sales discipline with dedicated headcount, comp design, and process.

Net retention above 110 percent typically requires an explicit Account Manager / Expansion AE function with quota tied to expansion ARR. Bolt-on responsibilities given to CS or land-AEs without comp realignment produce flat NRR. The dedicated function pays back within 12-18 months at most UK SaaS scales above 100 customers.

Insight / SaaS / 13 July 2026

The end of the SDR factory: how UK B2B outbound is reorganising

The 2018-2024 UK SaaS playbook scaled SDR factories: 30, 50, 80 SDRs running high-volume cadences against pre-built lists, paired loosely with AEs. By 2026 most UK SaaS teams over 100 staff have either dismantled the factory or are dismantling it. This Insight argues the SDR-factory model is structurally obsolete, walks through the four reasons, and describes the converging replacement organisational shape.

The SDR factory is being replaced by a tighter SDR-AE pair structure (1:1 or 1:2 ratios), with SDRs running lower-volume per-prospect-personalised outbound and shifting their metric from meetings-booked to qualified-pipeline-passed. AEs are absorbing 30-50 percent of their own outbound on key target accounts. Teams that haven't restructured are losing ground each quarter to teams that have.

Explained / SaaS / 18 May 2026

Compensation plan design principles for UK SaaS in 2026

A sales comp plan is the single most-read document in any sales organisation. A plan that pays for the outcomes the company actually cares about gets you a sales force that delivers those outcomes; a plan that doesn't gets you what the plan does pay for. Five principles plus the leaver-and-clawback wording that survives UK case-law scrutiny.

Pay for the outcome the company cares about (not what's easy to measure). Simplicity beats elaborate mechanisms. Accelerators above 100 percent are the cheapest motivation you can buy. Pay frequency matters; quarterly for AEs, monthly for SDRs. Leaver and clawback wording must be explicit and survives UK case-law scrutiny only when it is.

Explained / SaaS / 17 May 2026

Quota design: top-down vs bottom-up methodologies in UK SaaS

Quota design is the most political exercise in a UK SaaS sales operation. Done well it lines up rep incentive with company target. Done poorly it produces sandbagging, demotivation, and a 12-month argument every January. A practitioner walkthrough of top-down and bottom-up methodologies, the reconciliation, and two patterns that fail predictably.

Use both top-down and bottom-up; document the gap between them; the gap is the conversation. Productivity-adjusted quota math should assume 60-80 percent average attainment, not 100 percent. Quota-to-OTE ratio under 3x or over 8x deserves a closer look. Avoid the 'stretch' quota that nobody believes and the annual mid-year rebase.