The Sales Compensation Show

In this episode, Alana Kadden Ballon shares her career journey from SDR at Salesforce to leading RevOps at high-growth organizations like Duo and Wiz, and now Sprout Social. With clarity and candor, she breaks down how modern RevOps leaders can evolve their teams, data strategy, and stakeholder alignment to meet today’s GTM challenges.

You’ll learn:

• Why over-relying on individual “heroes” creates brittle ops systems
• How Alana’s team spends more time fixing problems than finding them
• What a resilient data strategy actually looks like (hint: it’s cultural and technical
• Why change management is the real RevOps unlock
• The myth of the "magic tool" and what to do before you buy anything
• How to align post-sale incentives with sales without losing focus
  
  

Resources mentioned:

• Marc Benioff's V2MOM framework for strategic company alignment
• Article from First Round Review: Give away your Legos (and other commandments for scaling)

Subscribe to (and rate!) The Sales Compensation Show on:

• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In this special episode of The Sales Compensation Show, we're spotlighting the RevOps function as the true powerhouse behind modern go-to-market success. Recorded live at our virtual RevOps Kickoff 2025, this panel features an incredible lineup of revenue leaders who are elevating operations into a strategic growth driver.

Hosted by Matthew Volm, Founder of RevOps Co-op, this conversation unpacks how to:

• Align cross-functional teams around shared revenue goals
• Build scalable systems that connect planning to execution
• Continually prove the value of RevOps to the C-suite
• Move beyond tactical firefighting to long-term GTM leadership
  
  

The conversation features:
 🔹 Olga Traskova, VP, Revenue Operations at Birdeye
 🔹 Jessica Kao, Senior Director, Marketing Ops & Martech (prev. Cloudinary)
 🔹 Alana Kadden Ballon, VP, Revenue Operations at Sprout Social
 🔹 Erin O'Leary, VP, RevOps & Enablement at Bottomline

Whether you’re building a RevOps team or scaling one, this episode will challenge how you position your function—and show you how to lead from the center of GTM.The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Welcome to a special edition of The Sales Compensation Show, where we’re breaking from our usual one-on-one deep dives to bring you live discussion from our RevOps Kickoff virtual conference.

As you evaluate your GTM strategy at this phase of the year, this conversation gives you a real-time pulse on what’s top of mind for RevOps leaders at high-growth, enterprise-scale companies including HubSpot, Health Catalyst, and ZoomInfo.

Facilitated by Forma.ai's own Deniz Karadadas we speak with Sowmya Srinivasan, Ali Rastiello, and Tessa Whittaker on the following topics:

• 2025 Trends: How RevOps is adapting to changing market and tech landscapes
• 2024 in Review: Key takeaways, tough lessons, and wins worth repeating
• How these leaders consider strategic balance: Managing short-term goals while building long-term value
• Tech Stack Optimization: Tools that actually drive execution across GTM teams
• And Impact Measurement: Reframing how success is measured across departments

Grab this panel, and all of the session recordings for your team over at https://www.forma.ai/webinar-info/revops-kickoff-2025 The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Sales planning and compensation are often treated as separate functions—but that separation comes at a cost. In this episode of The Sales Compensation Show, we explore what happens when you bring both under one roof.
Our guest, Brandon Farb—Director of Sales Planning & Compensation at Allstate Canada and one of 2025’s Top 50 Sales Comp Leaders to Watch—shares how his integrated team drives alignment, agility, and frontline motivation.

We dive into why siloed planning and comp lead to misaligned goals, how to design targets, quotas, and incentives that actually work together, the role of data and rep feedback in building better plans, what sellers really need to stay motivated, and best practices for your sales cadences.

Brandon brings a deep background in underwriting, performance management, and operations—plus experience at Economical Insurance and Aviva Canada—to this conversation. His approach blends strategy, simplicity, and seller empathy in a way that’s rare—and actionable.

---- show notes----
📚 Book recommendation: Leveling Up by Ryan Leak
Connect with Brandon Farb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-farb

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Digital-first companies like Spotify thrive on data. And in the world of media and advertising, sales operations leaders have to navigate shifting buyer preferences, high-velocity sales environments, unpredictable markets, and the increasing role of AI—all while ensuring their teams are aligned for revenue success. 

In this episode, Wade Jastremski, Head of Revenue Management & Forecasting at Spotify, sits down with us to take you behind the scenes of one of the world’s most influential media platforms.

From forecasting ad revenue across volatile global ad markets to building a comp structure that scales with Spotify’s ad-supported model, Wade shares how his team balances speed, scale, and data precision. Discover how Spotify triangulates forecasts with 96% accuracy, lessons from scaling Sales Ops in emerging and international markets, why Spotify centralized RevOps (and the impact), what Wade believes AI in Sales Ops actually requires as a pre-requisite, how he thinks about quota setting, and much more!

Connect with Wade on LinkedIn here.The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Kenny Smith didn’t intentionally set out to become a top sales compensation leader. He'd originally studied music performance, wrote Visual Basic macros to automate reports, and gradually carved a career at the intersection of sales operations, analytics, and enterprise strategy.  

Today, as the Sales Incentive Plan Design Lead at Red Hat, Kenny leads global incentive design — helping align sales compensation to a fast-moving business with complex go-to-market channels and high-stakes product launches. 

And much like music, comp design, he argues, can be more improvisation than formula. It’s a balance of art and science, and most importantly, it’s not just about having the most data — it’s about harnessing and knowing what to do with it. 

In this episode of The Sales Compensation Show, Kenny breaks down his approach to building smarter, more strategic incentive plans — and why successful comp professionals often operate more like jazz musicians than spreadsheet jockeys. 

Tune in for the full chat where you'll learn: 

- Why “data-informed” can be better than purely “data-driven”
- How to validate activity metrics with cross-functional input
- Ways to navigate complexity, unpredictability, and internal bias

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

With countless ways to configure territories, quotas, and sales incentive plans within traditional ICM systems, scaling sales performance management can often feel like a huge tradeoff. 

You can (seemingly) either have highly customizable plans that are technical, difficult to change, and require deep expertise—or simpler, rigid plans that sacrifice flexibility for ease of administration in legacy ICM software.

Which raises a crucial question: Are the endless customization options of traditional ICM systems worth the operational burden? Or is there a better way to balance adaptability and efficiency? How is the landscape evolving for the needs of the business and sellers?

In this episode, we unpack flexibility and scalability with Brian Le from Notion. How does he tackle scaling comp at organizations of various sizes? We’ll explore specialized expertise, and ways brands are approaching flexibility. Join us as we discuss how to strike the right balance between adaptability and operational efficiency.

Episode resources 

• Connect with Brian on LinkedIn 
• Book recommendation: The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge 

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In complex organizations where teams operate with different KPIs and priorities, fostering a culture of collaboration with stellar sales and operations planning is essential, but endlessly challenging. Few leaders understand how to meet this challenge better than Akira Mamizuka, VP of Global Sales Operations, SaaS, at LinkedIn. Overseeing a portfolio that includes LinkedIn Talent Solutions—responsible for 60% of LinkedIn’s B2B revenue—Akira has spent years fine-tuning the art of bringing cross-functional teams together.  

From scaling LinkedIn’s LATAM operations out of Brazil to leading EMEA sales ops from Ireland, he’s mastered the complexities of driving teams' strategic initiatives across geographies. Before LinkedIn, he crafted revenue and sales strategy playbooks for global enterprises at McKinsey & Company. 

In this episode, he takes us behind the scenes into how LinkedIn ensures cross-functional alignment despite its dual nature as both a consumer platform and a B2B enterprise.

Show notes:
- Akira's book recommendation: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman 

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

In this second episode of season three of The Sales Compensation Show, our CEO and founder Nabeil Alazzam sat down with Saxton Archer, Director of Sales Comp at SOCi Inc, to explore how to manage the internal politics that come with collaborating among VPs and the C-suite.  

With a rich background in the tech sector, Saxton's held pivotal compensation roles at leading companies, like Stripe, Twilio, Collibra, and more, and we think you'll get a ton from his deep expertise as a long-time practitioner in the space. 

In this episode he shares how you can ensure timely plan releases all while advocating for designs that drive sustainable success—even when leadership has differing opinions or competing priorities. 

Episode resources

• Connect with Saxton on LinkedIn
• Book recommendation: Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again, by Johann Hari 

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so

Accurate forecasting and strategic planning aren’t just nice to have—they’re mission-critical for achieving growth targets and staying ahead of market shifts.

In this episode of The Sales Compensation Show, Nabeil Alazzam sits down with Tana Jackson, an accomplished global revenue operations leader with over 18 years of experience in go-to-market strategy, sales operations, and business transformation. Currently VP of Operations at Upright Labs, Tana has a proven track record of aligning cross-functional teams and driving sustainable revenue growth.

Tana shares her expertise on:

• Best practices for improving collaboration between sales, finance, and RevOps
• How to move beyond gut-feel predictions and implement data-driven forecasting strategies
• The importance of building change-management into daily operations and communications as a leader
• Exactly what it looks like to stay vigilant about data integrity in practice
• Which data hygiene red flags you need to watch out for as the ultimate gate keeper

If your organization wants to fine-tune your forecasting processes, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss!

The Sales Compensation Show is handcrafted by our friends over at: fame.so