B2B growth and sales · Two field experiments at Fortune 500 companies, plus two online experiments testing mechanisms.
Self-Selected Sales Incentives: Evidence of their Effectiveness, Persistence, Durability, and Underlying Mechanisms
Bommaraju, R. & Hohenberg, S. (2018). Self-Selected Sales Incentives: Evidence of their Effectiveness, Persistence, Durability, and Underlying Mechanisms. Journal of Marketing.
Plain-English take
Compared with equivalent quota systems, allowing employees to select a goal–reward combination increased sales performance substantially. Effects were larger for employees with highly variable past performance and lower past performance; effects persisted when the scheme was discontinued and were durable when offered again. For a SaaS founder: A founder could cautiously pilot employee-selected quota/reward menus in a randomized or phased rollout, tracking revenue quality and retention as well as bookings. Do not assume the observed effects transfer across roles or that self-selection is always superior to a well-designed fixed plan.
How much weight to give this
4.5/5 Strong evidence in its stated setting
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
The design type and its limits are described from the directly fetched article.
Reported sample details are included; when the source does not give a count, that is stated.
The experimental, review, observational, or model comparison is identified without converting it into a causal claim.
The publisher abstract or record was directly retrieved.
Double-blind? Blinding is not reported in the source reviewed; that does not establish whether blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What happens when sales employees choose their own goal–reward incentive combination?
Design
Two field experiments at Fortune 500 companies, plus two online experiments testing mechanisms.
Sample and setting
Sales employees at two Fortune 500 companies; the publisher page does not state the field-experiment sample sizes in the fetched abstract.
Reported result
What the study found
Compared with equivalent quota systems, allowing employees to select a goal–reward combination increased sales performance substantially. Effects were larger for employees with highly variable past performance and lower past performance; effects persisted when the scheme was discontinued and were durable when offered again.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
The abstract does not report sample sizes; the field evidence comes from two companies and a specific incentive menu, so generalization to small SaaS sales teams, different compensation systems, or non-sales roles is uncertain.
Possible founder application
A founder could cautiously pilot employee-selected quota/reward menus in a randomized or phased rollout, tracking revenue quality and retention as well as bookings. Do not assume the observed effects transfer across roles or that self-selection is always superior to a well-designed fixed plan.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract directly retrieved; full-text access not established
Direct publisher scrape verified title/record and available text; Firecrawl source ID 01a1228d-cc56-7274-a66e-712b4091bb1e. Correction notices were not separately checked.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.