[ChemicalWarfare]

What about sales engineers though? I've never seen them get commissions even though in a vast majority of cases they are the ones doing the heavy lifting of convincing the client's tech team[s] to go with the product/solution the company is selling?

A little less obvious case, but still - what if we're talking professional services type situation and the architect/engineer assigned to the customer does such a killer job the customer decides to spend more money on their services. Sales person's job at this point is minimal but they still get the commission but the tech person doesn't.

[networkguy]

I work for a Major ISV and I get a commission.

How it works is there are various clip rates

0-80% 80-100% 100%+

On 0-80 I get a percentage of the deal, on 80-100% I get a percentage and there is a small multiplier and above 100% I get a larger percentage and a significantly improved multiplier.

My quota is divided quarterly and yearly; the incentive is set out that if you overachieve on a couple quarters, I might exceed my "On Target Earnings" even though I didn't hit the yearly number.

You are correct that the Sales Engineer does a lot of the heavy lifting; and in most cases we are the deal -- without us selling the technical, the deal usually doesn't get done. So should we get paid the same as the Account Executive? No Freakin Way.

The purpose of the Account Exec isn't to close a deal; that's table stakes. The purpose of the Account Exec is to open doors and exceed quota, 100% quota attainment isn't a high-five moment as the expectation is 110%+. Take a good hard look at the sales people you know and look where they are and where they have been -- these people are hired for their contacts and usually once they have exhausted their contact list they are done and they move on to the next organization unless they are exceptional at developing new pipeline and new relationships.

I've seen firms go through 2x Account Execs in a year because they weren't hitting the numbers fast enough; that wont happen with a Sales Engineer we get a lot of job stability and protection but we wont get a 30% commission.

[pheldagryph]

There's lots of ways to compensate a cat! Not all sales compensation plans are commission-based (a percentage of the sale). Commission-based plans are much less common for sales engineers vs. salespeople, unless they are working with only a single salesperson.

In general, sales engineer variable compensation plans are going to be based on some mix of sales numbers, with less variability and risk than the salesperson's plan. Ideally providing goal alignment with money, smoothing out the stresses, but also encouraging some level of independence for the sales engineers. A ward against salespeople who might be seduced by the Dark Side.

The less obvious case you raise, a single engineer directly responsible for causing a customer to spend more money: structurally or ad-hoc, that person should probably be getting paid. Maybe the customer-facing people aren't engaging efficiently, and it's a sign of something a bit out of alignment with customer operations.

Salespeople can provide big value in getting engineering attention to the right customers at the right time... but the best ones know it's a team sport. I know salespeople that give envelopes of cash to difference-makers, though that's exceptional.

[anonyxyz]

If you haven't seen sales engineers get commissions, then you're working for the wrong companies. Very common for sales engineers to have up to a third of their comp commission based.