CS vs. Sales 1 - Commission and credit

I've worked with customer success and sales teams in every organisation I've been in, and the same friction shows up every time. Sometimes it's overt. Sometimes it's a quieter resentment that never quite surfaces in a meeting. Either way, it's there, and it comes from work not being compensated in the way the person doing it thinks it should be.

Part of this is straightforward incentive design. Sales gets paid on closed revenue, CS on retention and satisfaction. Pay two people to optimise for different things and they will, unsurprisingly, optimise for different things.

But the sharper version of this, the one I hear most often from CS teams, is about credit rather than design. CS carries an account through its entire lifecycle. They pick up the problems. They take the hit when something goes wrong. They know the account better than anyone else in the building. Then a sales rep walks in for one renewal meeting, closes it, and takes the commission. I understand the frustration. If someone else does the work of keeping a relationship alive for two years and you show up for the last conversation, taking the credit for that close is a stretch.

I want to be clear I'm not taking sides here. If a salesperson closes a deal, they should be paid for closing it, whether that deal is new business or a renewal they genuinely worked. If a CS manager closes an upsell, the same applies. What I do have a problem with is a sales rep claiming commission on an account they had no real hand in growing, and I have just as much of a problem with a CS manager who says they want to be paid for upsell work they aren't actually doing.

Because that's usually where it lands. CS people tend to respond to this frustration not by asking for the commercial role, but by working harder inside the role they already have, hoping the effort gets noticed and rewarded on its own. It rarely does. The organisation pays for the behaviour it incentivises, and if nobody in CS is bringing upsell recommendations to the table, there's nothing there to pay commission on yet.

My pushback, when CS managers raise this with me, is simple. If you want to be paid like someone who grows accounts, you need to actually grow them, and that means stepping into commercial conversations you may currently avoid.

The harder truth sits with the organisation too. If you want CS bringing you growth, you have to build the incentive that rewards it, and specific commercial training to help them deliver what you need them to.

Whichever way it's set up, the moment sales and CS see each other as opposed rather than on the same team, the account loses either way.