---
title: "Misaligned Incentive Metrics: How to Fix Them | Bentega"
description: See how incentive metrics can reward the wrong behaviour across Sales, Marketing and Customer Success, and how to identify and correct misalignment.
image: https://www.bentega.io/hubfs/AI-Generated%20Media/Images/Misaligned%20Metrics%20illustration.jpeg
---

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 Oct 24, 2024

# Misaligned incentive metrics: when the KPI rewards the wrong behaviour

![Picture of Andreas S. Loktu](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/3f41a5dd11434c453a87cb1de7df2224) [Andreas S. Loktu](https://www.bentega.io/blog/author/andreas-s-loktu)

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A metric can be measured correctly and still create the wrong incentive.

A salesperson can hit the revenue target while relying heavily on discounting. Marketing can exceed its lead target while Sales rejects most of the leads. Customer Success can maximise expansion while retention deteriorates elsewhere in the portfolio.

In each case, the KPI may be doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The problem is that the behaviour it rewards does not fully support the business outcome the company actually wants.

This becomes particularly important when a metric affects compensation. Once money is attached to a KPI, employees have a clear reason to optimise for it.

The question is therefore not only whether a metric is measurable. It is also whether improving that metric encourages the behaviour and commercial outcome the company intended.

For the broader framework for selecting incentive metrics, see the [**KPI-based incentives guide**](https://www.bentega.io/kpis-and-metrics).![Misaligned Metrics](https://www.bentega.io/hs-fs/hubfs/AI-Generated%20Media/Images/Misaligned%20Metrics%20illustration.jpeg?width=960&height=549&name=Misaligned%20Metrics%20illustration.jpeg)

## What is a misaligned incentive metric?

A misaligned incentive metric rewards performance that can improve while the broader business outcome stays flat or gets worse.

That does not necessarily mean the metric itself is unimportant.

Revenue matters. Meetings matter. Pipeline matters. Expansion matters. Customer satisfaction matters.

The issue appears when the incentive gives one of those numbers more importance than the role, customer journey or company economics justify.

For example, a Sales plan may reward signed revenue.

That can make perfect sense.

But if the business also depends heavily on margin, payment quality or customer fit, the company should understand what behaviour the revenue-only incentive encourages when those objectives conflict.

People tend to focus on the outcomes the compensation plan makes economically important to them.

That is why incentive design has consequences beyond the formula.

## The metric can improve while the business gets a worse result

Consider two €100,000 deals.

Both produce €100,000 of eligible revenue under the Sales plan.

If the salesperson earns 5% commission, both produce:

**€100,000 × 5% = €5,000 commission**

From the compensation calculation, the deals are identical.

Commercially, they may not be.

One deal may have standard pricing, normal implementation requirements and a strong customer fit.

The other may require substantial discounting, unusual commercial terms or considerably more delivery effort.

A revenue-based commission plan does not automatically account for those differences.

That does not mean revenue is the wrong metric.

It means the company should understand what the metric does and does not reward.

If protecting margin or deal quality matters enough to affect compensation, those considerations need to appear somewhere in the plan design or surrounding governance.

## Sales: revenue versus margin

Revenue is one of the clearest examples because it is easy to understand and often directly influenced by the salesperson. But a revenue-only incentive can create tension when Sales also has discretion over price.

Imagine that two deals generate the same credited revenue, but one requires a much larger discount.

If commission is based solely on revenue, the salesperson may receive the same incentive result from both.

The company may still control discounting through an approval process. That can work. But it is worth recognising what is happening operationally: the pricing process is being asked to prevent behaviour that the incentive itself may not discourage.

Depending on the business, companies might address this through margin-based incentives, discount rules, eligibility conditions, approval thresholds or another mechanism.

Our [**incentive compensation metrics by role guide**](https://www.bentega.io/blog/performance-metrics-for-incentive-compensation-what-to-measure) goes deeper into choosing measures for Sales and other commercial roles.

## Sales activity versus sales outcomes

Activity metrics can create similar tension.

Calls, emails, meetings and demos are attractive because they are easy to measure and employees can influence them directly. They can also be useful leading indicators.

But when compensation is attached, people become economically motivated to produce the activity itself.

Suppose an SDR is paid for every booked meeting.

If the plan only defines a meeting as a scheduled calendar event, the shortest route to higher variable pay is to create more meetings.

That may be exactly what the company wants.

But if Sales needs meetings with a specific customer profile, buying role or level of qualification, meeting volume alone may not represent the intended outcome.

The company might instead define what qualifies for incentive credit or connect payout to an accepted downstream stage.

The objective is not to eliminate activity metrics. It is to define the quality standard that makes the activity valuable.

## Marketing volume versus pipeline quality

Marketing can face the same problem. Suppose a team is rewarded for lead volume.

Generating more leads becomes the rational priority.

If those leads rarely meet the criteria required by Sales, Marketing can exceed its target while the commercial handoff becomes worse. This can also happen with MQLs, demo requests, opportunities or pipeline.

The metric needs a sufficiently clear definition of what counts.

For example, a business may decide that accepted pipeline from the target segment better represents the outcome it wants to reward than raw lead volume. That choice depends on Marketing's actual responsibility and how reliably attribution and qualification can be measured.

The broader point is that **upstream volume and downstream value are not always the same thing**.

## Customer Success: expansion versus retention

Customer Success incentives can produce another kind of tension.

Suppose a CSM receives variable pay for expansion revenue. Expansion is commercially valuable, and the CSM may have meaningful influence over it.

But imagine that the incentive creates strong pressure to sell additional products while the underlying customer relationship is weak. Expansion can increase while customer health or future retention deteriorates.

Again, that does not automatically make expansion a bad incentive metric.

The question is whether the plan reflects the full responsibility of the role. If the CSM owns both growth and retention, the incentive may need to acknowledge both outcomes. If Sales owns expansion while CS owns retention, ownership should be clear before the opportunity arises.

Misalignment often appears when the company is unclear about **who owns which part of the customer journey**.

## Individual incentives can create cross-functional problems

A metric can be perfectly logical for one department and still create problems for the next one.

Imagine this customer journey:

**Marketing** is rewarded for generating qualified opportunities.

**Sales** is rewarded for signed ARR.

**Customer Success** is rewarded for retention and expansion.

Each measure sounds reasonable. But now consider the handoffs.

- If Marketing's qualification criteria are weak, Sales inherits poor-fit opportunities.
- If Sales can close low-quality customers without any consequence in its incentive model, Customer Success inherits the retention problem.
- If Customer Success is heavily rewarded for expansion without clear commercial ownership, it may create friction with Sales or Account Management.

Each team can hit its own KPI while the total customer journey performs poorly.

This is why cross-functional incentive alignment does not necessarily mean giving everyone the same KPI, but checking whether the incentives work together.

Our guide to [**aligning incentive compensation across GTM teams**](https://www.bentega.io/blog/how-to-align-compensation-plans-with-goals-and-strategy) covers that cross-functional design question in more detail.

## A KPI can also be misaligned because the employee cannot influence it

Misalignment is not limited to rewarding the wrong behaviour. A metric can also be poorly matched to the participant's actual control.

Suppose an employee's bonus depends heavily on company revenue even though their individual work has very little direct impact on revenue.

- The metric may be strategically important. But the employee may struggle to connect their own actions to the result. Company metrics can still have a role in incentive plans, particularly for leadership or as shared components or gates.

The important question is how much of someone's compensation depends on outcomes they can meaningfully influence.

The further the metric moves from the participant's actual responsibility, the more important it becomes to understand why it belongs in the plan.

## Too many balancing metrics can create a different problem

One response to misalignment is to keep adding KPIs.

- Revenue creates discounting concerns, so margin is added.
- Margin might discourage strategic low-margin deals, so strategic product sales are added.
- Customer quality matters, so retention is added.
- Activity has dropped, so meetings are added.

Eventually the plan contains several measures, each introduced to correct another part of the model. That can produce a mathematically balanced plan that employees struggle to understand.

Sometimes an additional KPI is the right answer. In other situations, a rule, threshold, gate, crediting condition or approval mechanism solves the problem more cleanly.

Our guide to [how many KPIs an incentive plan should use](https://www.bentega.io/blog/how-many-metrics-should-you-track) covers this trade-off in more detail.

## Weighted KPIs do not automatically solve misalignment

Weighting can help reflect multiple responsibilities.

For example:

**New ARR: 70%**  
**Gross margin: 30%**

That structure clearly makes margin more relevant than a revenue-only plan.

But the weighting still needs to reflect the intended economics. If the employee can earn significantly more by maximising ARR even when margin is weak, the practical incentive may still favour revenue.

The same applies to:

**Retention: 60%**  
**Expansion: 40%**

The weighting communicates priorities, but the thresholds, payout curves and interaction between the measures determine how the plan behaves. That is why incentive plans should be tested using actual scenarios rather than reviewed only as percentages in a plan document.

## Gates can protect an important condition without adding another continuous KPI

Sometimes a business needs one condition to remain protected even though it does not want that condition to become another full weighted component.

A gate can help.

Imagine that a Sales leadership bonus is primarily based on revenue. The company may also require a minimum profitability result before above-target payout becomes available. Profitability then affects the result without necessarily becoming another continuously weighted KPI.

The same approach can be used in other situations where one condition needs to constrain the outcome.

Gates should still be clearly defined and communicated.

Our guide to [**KPI targets, thresholds and payout curves**](https://www.bentega.io/blog/setting-effective-kpi-benchmarks-and-targets) explains how gates differ from thresholds and weighted components.

## Watch for cliffs and unintended payout jumps

Misalignment can also appear inside the payout curve.

Suppose the plan pays:

**94.9% achievement → 50% payout**

**95.0% achievement → 100% payout**

That may be intentional.

But it also creates a very strong economic focus around one tenth of a percentage point if the [calulation methodology follows a simple logic](https://www.bentega.io/blog/tiered-commission-structure-example-how-to-scale-incentives).

Source-data questions, timing issues and exceptions around that boundary suddenly become much more important. A smoother curve could produce a different behavioural effect.

Neither structure is automatically correct.

The company should know that the cliff exists and understand what behaviour and disputes it may create.

## Incentives can change the meaning of a metric

A metric used for management is not always the same once compensation is attached.

Take forecast accuracy. As a management measure, forecast accuracy can help Sales leadership improve planning.

If employees are paid directly for producing an accurate forecast, the incentive may also influence how cautiously they forecast.

Or consider customer health. A customer-health score may be an excellent management tool.

But if the people who receive the bonus can also directly change subjective parts of the health score, the metric requires stronger definition before it becomes compensation data.

Adding money changes how people interact with the number. That is why incentive metrics need stronger rules than many ordinary reporting metrics.

## How to identify a potentially misaligned incentive metric

Start with the actual behaviour the plan makes attractive.

For each incentive metric, work through questions such as:

- What does the participant earn more money by doing?
- Can the metric improve while the commercial outcome gets worse?
- Does volume increase at the expense of quality?
- Can the participant influence the result?
- Can another team be harmed while this team hits its target?
- Does the employee control any of the data used to assess their own performance?
- Can the metric be improved through behaviour the company would rather discourage?
- What happens at threshold and maximum payout?
- Which outcome is not represented in the plan?
- Is there a simpler rule or gate that could address the concern?

This exercise is most valuable before the plan goes live.

Once employees have started performing under the incentive, changes become more difficult because people have already made decisions based on the existing rules.

## Model behaviour, not only payout cost

Scenario modelling often focuses on Finance:

What does the plan cost at 80%, 100% and 120% achievement?

That is important.

But companies should also model the employee's decisions.

Consider a salesperson choosing between:

**Deal A:** €100,000 revenue with standard commercial terms

and

**Deal B:** €110,000 revenue with materially less attractive economics for the company.

If Deal B produces substantially more commission, ask whether the business actually wants the salesperson to prefer Deal B.

Now test other choices.

Should the employee prefer:

- more meetings or better-qualified meetings?
- new ARR or profitable ARR?
- expansion today or sustainable retention?
- one large transaction or several smaller customers?
- an individual result or the team's overall result?

You do not need to predict every behaviour perfectly.

The purpose is to identify obvious situations where the compensation formula and the commercial strategy point in different directions.

## Review the handoffs between teams

Many incentive problems are visible at the handoff.

1. Marketing hands pipeline to Sales.
2. Sales hands customers to implementation or Customer Success.
3. Customer Success hands expansion opportunities back into a commercial process.
4. Finance ultimately needs to understand the payout consequences.
5. RevOps may operate the rules and underlying data.
6. HR may own plan communication, eligibility or governance.

Reviewing those handoffs can reveal problems that are invisible when each plan is assessed independently.

For example:

- Marketing may describe a lead as qualified while Sales uses a different definition.
- Sales may receive full credit at contract signature while Finance and CS are concerned about cancellations or customer quality.
- CS may be expected to drive expansion without defined crediting between CS and Sales.

The solution is not necessarily a shared KPI. Often it is simply clearer ownership, definitions and incentive rules.

## Monitor downstream outcomes after launch

Even a carefully designed incentive can behave differently once people begin using it. That makes post-launch monitoring important.

Suppose Sales accelerates after a new commission plan launches. That is encouraging.

Now look further downstream.

- Has discounting changed?
- Has gross margin changed?
- Has customer mix changed?
- Are cancellations increasing?
- Is retention different for the new cohort?
- Are payout disputes increasing?

These downstream measures do not all need to become compensation KPIs.

They can remain diagnostic measures that help the company evaluate whether the incentive is producing the intended result.

This distinction allows the company to learn without continuously adding new metrics to the plan.

## Change the plan deliberately when the metric no longer works

Business priorities change.

A company may move from growth at almost any cost toward profitable growth.

A product may become easier to implement.

Customer segmentation may change.

Sales and Customer Success responsibilities may be reorganised.

An incentive metric that worked well last year may no longer reflect the job this year. When that happens, change the plan through a defined process.

Document:

- what is changing;
- why the existing metric no longer supports the objective;
- which participants are affected;
- the effective date;
- how existing performance is treated;
- who approved the change;
- how participants are informed.

Avoid changing historical rules simply so previous performance produces the result the company now prefers.

Our guide to [**integrating KPIs into compensation plans**](https://www.bentega.io/blog/integrating-kpis-into-compensation-plans-for-better-results) covers effective dates, source data, approvals and change handling in more detail.

## Worked example: Sales, Customer Success and one customer journey

Consider a SaaS company where Sales earns commission on new ARR. Customer Success receives a bonus based on retention and expansion.

The Sales plan rewards:

**New ARR: 100% of the commission calculation**

The Customer Success plan rewards:

**Retention: 60%**  
**Expansion: 40%**

The measures make sense individually.

Now assume the company notices that Sales is closing more customers, but early churn is increasing. That does not prove that the Sales commission plan caused the churn.

The business first needs to investigate what has changed.

- Perhaps the product fit changed.
- Perhaps onboarding is struggling.
- Perhaps customer expectations are different.
- Perhaps the sales team is selling into a new segment.

But the company should also review whether the Sales incentive makes customer quality economically relevant to the salesperson.

If the plan rewards every eligible euro of ARR equally, the rep may have no incentive-related reason to prefer a customer likely to retain over another customer that produces the same credited ARR.

Several responses are possible.

- The company could tighten qualification.
- It could change eligibility rules.
- It could modify crediting.
- It could introduce a quality condition.
- It could adjust the earning event.
- It could leave the commission unchanged and solve the problem elsewhere if the evidence shows the incentive is not the cause.

The right response depends on the actual business problem.

The important part is to **diagnose the incentive before automatically adding another KPI**.

## How Bentega helps manage aligned incentive rules

Bentega supports incentive plans across commissions, bonuses, SPIFs and KPI-based variable pay, including eligibility rules, KPI payout logic, thresholds, automated calculations, approval workflows, role-based access and employee and manager visibility.

That allows different teams and participant groups to use different incentive structures while keeping the rules and calculations inside a more governed workflow.

For example, a company can define separate logic for Sales revenue, Customer Success retention or expansion, and broader KPI-based bonus components.

[**Explore Bentega**](https://www.bentega.io/product)

## Frequently asked questions

### What is a misaligned KPI?

 A KPI becomes misaligned when improving it encourages behaviour or outcomes that do not support the broader objective the company intended.

 In incentive compensation, this matters because employees have a financial reason to optimise for the metric.

### Can a good business metric be a bad incentive metric?

 Yes. A metric can be very useful for reporting or management without being suitable for compensation.

The additional questions are whether the participant can influence it, whether the data is reliable and what behaviour attaching money to the metric is likely to encourage.

### Are activity metrics bad for incentive plans?

 Not necessarily. Activity metrics can work where the activity is strongly connected to the desired outcome and the quality criteria are clear.

Problems arise when employees are rewarded for producing volume without enough connection to quality or downstream results.

### Should Sales compensation include margin?

 That depends on the business, role and plan objective. Revenue may be sufficient for one sales model, while another company may want margin, discounting or profitability to affect the incentive.

The company should first identify whether the revenue-only structure creates a material conflict with the commercial outcome it wants.

### Should Sales be paid based on customer retention?

 Not automatically. Retention may occur long after the salesperson's work is complete and may be heavily influenced by product, implementation and Customer Success.

If customer quality is a concern, there are several possible plan and process mechanisms. Retention does not necessarily need to become another Sales KPI.

### Can different GTM teams have different KPIs?

 Yes. Cross-functional alignment does not require identical metrics.

Sales can be rewarded for revenue while Customer Success is rewarded for retention, provided the rules and handoffs do not systematically encourage one team to create problems for another.

### How often should incentive KPIs be reviewed?

 Review them whenever the business strategy, role responsibilities, economics or underlying data materially change, and as part of the normal plan-design cycle, normally once a year.

Monitoring downstream outcomes during the plan period can also reveal whether the metric is behaving differently from what the company expected.

### What should we do when an incentive metric is misaligned?

 First determine why it is misaligned. The answer may be a different KPI, but it could also be a better definition, crediting rule, quality condition, gate, threshold, approval process or ownership model.

 Then introduce the change prospectively with clear effective dates and communication.

 

NEXT STEP

## Incentive metrics shape decisions

A compensation metric does more than measure performance.

It tells employees which outcomes have financial value to them.

That is why a metric should be reviewed not only for its formula, but also for the decisions it encourages.

Revenue can rise while margin falls.

Meetings can increase while quality deteriorates.

Expansion can grow while customer relationships weaken.

Individual teams can hit their targets while the handoffs between them become worse.

The aim is not to create a compensation plan that accounts for every possible business outcome.

It is to reward the few outcomes that matter to the role, understand the trade-offs those incentives create and use the rest of the operating model to protect what should not be sacrificed along the way.

For the broader framework around metric selection, controllability and KPI-based variable pay, return to the [**KPI-based incentives guide**](https://www.bentega.io/kpis-and-metrics).

[KPIs & Metrics](https://www.bentega.io/blog/tag/kpis-metrics)

## Related posts

[![sales KPIs and incentives](https://www.bentega.io/hs-fs/hubfs/Bloggbanner%20-%20Driving%20sales%20success%20(Bloggbanner).png?height=200&name=Bloggbanner%20-%20Driving%20sales%20success%20(Bloggbanner).png)](https://www.bentega.io/blog/driving-sales-success-harnessing-sales-kpis-and-incentives-for-optimal-performance)

## [Sales KPIs: which metrics should affect compensation?](https://www.bentega.io/blog/driving-sales-success-harnessing-sales-kpis-and-incentives-for-optimal-performance)

[![How many metrics should we track](https://www.bentega.io/hs-fs/hubfs/AI-Generated%20Media/Images/illustration%20on%20how%20many%20metrics%20you%20should%20track.jpeg?height=200&name=illustration%20on%20how%20many%20metrics%20you%20should%20track.jpeg)](https://www.bentega.io/blog/how-many-metrics-should-you-track)

## [How many KPIs should an incentive plan use?](https://www.bentega.io/blog/how-many-metrics-should-you-track)

[![Incentive compensation metrics workflow showing business goals, metrics, source data, payout logic, and approval](https://www.bentega.io/hs-fs/hubfs/Incentive%20compensation%20metrics%20workflow%20Bentega.png?height=200&name=Incentive%20compensation%20metrics%20workflow%20Bentega.png)](https://www.bentega.io/blog/performance-metrics-for-incentive-compensation-what-to-measure)

## [Incentive compensation metrics by role: what should you measure?](https://www.bentega.io/blog/performance-metrics-for-incentive-compensation-what-to-measure)

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```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://www.bentega.io/#organization",
  "@type" : "Organization",
  "areaServed" : "Global",
  "description" : "Bentega provides incentive compensation management software for commissions, bonuses, SPIFs, OTE-based payouts, KPI incentives, and broader variable pay.",
  "foundingLocation" : {
    "@type" : "Place",
    "name" : "Norway"
  },
  "knowsAbout" : [ "Incentive compensation management", "Sales commissions", "Bonus plans", "SPIF campaigns", "On-target earnings", "KPI-based incentives", "Variable pay governance" ],
  "legalName" : "Bentega AS",
  "logo" : {
    "@type" : "ImageObject",
    "url" : "https://www.bentega.io/hubfs/bentega%20logo%20footer.svg"
  },
  "name" : "Bentega",
  "sameAs" : [ "https://www.linkedin.com/company/bentega", "https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61564040605445", "https://x.com/BentegaSoftware", "https://www.instagram.com/bentegasoftware/", "https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSoZx0FpEf_zqKHdIzm1ftA" ],
  "url" : "https://www.bentega.io/"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@id" : "https://www.bentega.io/#website",
  "@type" : "WebSite",
  "inLanguage" : "en",
  "name" : "Bentega",
  "publisher" : {
    "@id" : "https://www.bentega.io/#organization"
  },
  "url" : "https://www.bentega.io/"
}
```

```json
{
  "@context" : "https://schema.org",
  "@type" : "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity" : [ ]
}
```