Despite a pullback in sales compensation during 2025, companies are continuing a years-long trend of prioritizing top performers, with the gap between their pay and lower performers’ pay widening each year.
While the current state of sales compensation remains a fairly nuanced topic, a new report by sales commission software provider Xactly sheds light on a few emerging trends in the space.
Among account executives, responsible for finding new business and closing deals that convert prospects to customers, average on-target earnings dipped slightly last year across all performance percentiles. On-target earnings express the total pay a salesperson can expect when reaching 100% of their sales quota.
However, the gap between account executives’ on-target earnings at the 25th and 90th percentiles widened by about 1.7% compared to 2024, from $195,600 to $199,000. The low performers averaged $95,000 on-target earnings, while their high-performing counterparts earned $294,000, more than three times as much.
Since 2021, companies have boosted the average annual on-target earnings for account executives with five-plus years of experience by $26,000. Those with one to three years of experience have gained $7,300 annually. On the other end of the spectrum, pay for account executives has fallen by $16,000 for those with less than one year in sales and by $3,000 for those with one to three years’ tenure.
“Organizations are investing in proven, tenured sellers who can deliver more predictable revenue,” Xactly wrote. “This change also reflects tighter ROI scrutiny on sales headcount, as companies would rather retain and maximize productivity from experienced AEs than hire fresh talent.”
But that preference also may represent a trade-off, the report noted. While it can boost short-term efficiency, “it can also weaken long-term outcomes if lower early-career compensation stifles motivation, increases ramp-time attrition, or makes the AE role less appealing.”
For account managers charged with expanding revenue from and retaining the customers that account executives bring in, the story is somewhat different.
At the 90th on-target earnings percentile, earnings for account managers plummeted by $21,000 last year, to $245,000, after growing from $199,000 to $266,000 between 2021 and 2024.
The gap between account managers’ compensation at the 90th and 25th performance percentiles narrowed by 10.7% in just one year, from $181,500 to $162,000.
“This suggests a recalibration in how organizations pay AMs,” Xactly wrote. “After a stretch where compensation increasingly favored top performers, organizations appear to be moving toward more balanced pay structures for AMs.”
Further, the report noted, many companies are likely tightening pay accelerators by putting more weight on AMs’ base salary or rewarding account coverage and retention more than pure expansion.
