Compensating the Sales Force, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Designing Winning Sales Reward Programs

This book is a must-have for anyone tasked with designing or refining a sales compensation plan. Clear, thorough, and packed with real-world examples and helpful figures, it walks you through every angle of the process—from strategy to execution. The author’s practical guidance and thoughtful insights make complex topics easy to understand and apply. You can’t lose with this book—it’s a trusted resource for fair, effective sales compensation.

I have been working with Sales (Incentive) Compensation for 15 years. I have experience in pharma/biotech as well as SaaS. All of that said - this book taught me a lot, including new perspectives and vernacular that will be instrumental in my career. In addition, I have just achieved the Certified Sales Compensation Professional designation from World At Work, and this book helped me achieve that milestone. Thank you Mr. Cichelli!

Everything I needed to know in sales comp, I learned from David Cichelli. The book is engaging, the book is informative, and if you ever get the chance to see him speak, do it.

This was one of the best business books I've read in the last 10-15 years. I found it very easy to read and liked the format. To me, it read like a textbook which is a compliment because I needed something to look at every aspect of our sales compensation program. Tons of good examples. HIGHLY recommend.

There aren’t many books out there on this topic. It is good in that it talks about the various types of payout curves/lines. I wish it was a little more in depth and had more of information on how to calculate payouts and/or apply slope/intercept to payout calculations. It is a bit rudimentary for practitioners.

Everything you need to develop a proper sales compensation plan. This is the sales comp book recommended in "Scaling Up Compensation" (also a great book).Geared towards larger sales forces, it covers sales comp fundamentals, program design, formulas, cost modeling, administration and implementation strategies. If you are looking to scale your sales team, this book is a must have written by the leading expert on the topic.

This author did an outstanding job with this topic and it helped us greatly in crafting our new compensation plan for 2020. I had a question and reached out to the author. He returned my call quickly and we had a productive discussion. This is a stand up guy. I recommend reading this book, learning and applying these principles. Thank you David and great job!

Very helpful book for those just learning sales comp or even the most experienced as it provides a lot of great examples. A true resource!