Sales reps find commissions a source of motivation and frustration. Commission structures can be complicated and get more confusing as companies grow. Siva Rajamani is the co-founder of Everstage, a platform that automates sales commissions without coding. This is a lot of what finance teams calculate on spreadsheets, so salespeople don't have much visibility into their earnings.Everstage was designed to give more transparency on sales commissions. Sales reps and other employees who deal with customers can access real-time information about their performance. Everstage can be used to predict the potential commissions from their deals pipeline. This gives them an incentive to close more business. Everstage is a modular platform that allows companies to add automated commission calculations as they grow.The platform was founded in 2020 and its early customers included notable SaaS companies such as Postman, Chargebee and Lamdatest. 3One4 Capital led Everstage's seed round of $1.7 million. Prasanna Sankar, co-founder of Rippling; Rajaraman Santhanam and co-founders of Chargebee; Sidharth Malik, chief revenue officer at Freshworks; Koti Reddy chief technology officer at Conga; Vetri Vellore CEO at Ally.io; and Ganesh Shankar CEO RFPIO. The company has its headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware and an office in Chennai in India.Vivek Suriyamoorthy was Everstage's chief technology officer before he joined the startup. Rajamani worked closely with sales reps as the head for business SaaS provider Freshworks' global revenue operations team. Freshworks' annual recurring revenue increased from $30 million per year to $300 million during his tenure.Rajamani stated to TechCrunch, that many early-stage startups spend more than 10% on commissions.Although commissions are a great way to motivate these teams, it quickly became a source of distrust as no one had any visibility into their pay. These plans became complicated, and almost all salespeople at these companies will tell you that they have their own shadow accounting.Shadow accounting is where salespeople keep track of all the deals they have closed and calculate commissions themselves. The process can be time-consuming, especially if the calculations are not consistent with financial teams. The COVID-19 epidemic has made this problem worse. Salespeople are unable to walk up to finance departments and inquire about their commission status.This can lead to high turnover, as salespeople who are frustrated leave for companies offering more information about their earning potential.Rajamani stated that people want companies that are transparent about how they set their quotas and the commissions they receive. This is because it's the only way to be certain they will make money. Otherwise, promises made on paper may not be kept.Visibility is a motivator. Salespeople can use Everstages' gamification features to see their current quotas, deals pipeline, and project how much they could earn, broken down according to their commission plans. This includes deal attainment fees and multiplier bonus.Rajamani stated that incentives and specific criteria like multiplier bonuses can drive salespeople closer to multi-year contracts. It is an incentive to see how much commission they will make if they are able to close multi-year contracts.Everstage works predominantly with SaaS companies but is also open to interest from other industries such as insurance, real estate and pharmaceuticals. The platform can be tailored for different types or commission plans and is sector-neutral.Rajamani points out that software for managing sales commissions is not new. Players like Xactly and SAP CallidusCloud have been around for many years.Newer platforms for sales commissions have been introduced over the past year, such as CaptivateIQ or Spiff. Many high-growth companies have modified incentives to their sales teams as they work remotely during pandemics.While there are some similarities between Everstages and its competitors' features, its key differentiators include its modular approach to gamification and emphasis on gamification. He stated that we want to shift away from automating the busywork of revenue operations and finance and instead focus on the gamification element. There are other indicators: target setting, quota setting, and overall company targets broken down according to percentage, managers, and regions.3One4 Capital Anurag Ramdasan stated that Rev Ops teams are now mandatory in order to align incentives and drive revenues. The Everstage founding team has a lot of experience and is ready to assist Rev Ops teams. They can provide visibility and real-time commission planning.
