Your $10M goal has a leadership team you haven't budgeted for yet. Most founders scaling a sales team start with a revenue target, then jump straight to hiring reps. Get to $10M? Just hire more salespeople. But nobody's doing the math on what sits above those reps. If you need $9M in new revenue and your average rep produces $300K annually, you need roughly 30 reps. But 30 reps don't manage themselves. At a 5:1 ratio, that's 6 sales managers — plus directors or regionals over them, plus a VP or president of sales at the top. That's a 9-person leadership layer you didn't account for when you built your comp plan. This leadership team isn't optional. It's what keeps your managers paid well enough to stay, which keeps your reps managed well enough to stay. Skip this step and your comp budget gets eaten by structure you didn't plan for. Before you finalize compensation, reverse-engineer the leadership org chart your revenue goal actually requires, then estimate what percentage of gros...