(Excerpt from Sales Management Simplified by Mike Weinberg)
One of the most common and most dangerous problems with sales compensation plans is that they are too flat.
… Under a flat plan, where the annual compensation earned by members of the sales force is tightly clustered around the median, salespeople who are not carrying their weight end up overpaid at the expense of severely underpaying the top producers.
… It provides underperformers comfort to stick around while simultaneously discouraging the over-achievers, causing them to either back off or to shop their talents and achievements elsewhere.