A lot of times RevOps and sales compensation are talked about as separate functions. But it’s far more revealing (and accurate!) to look at what happens where those two functions collide.

So in this episode of The Sales Compensation Show, we get into both sides of the operating model with two leaders from Boomi who live at the intersection every day: Tim Cole, VP of Revenue Operations, and Taylor Stone, Director of Global Sales Compensation.  

Together, the two offer a behind-the-scenes look into how revenue strategy, compensation design, seller trust, and operational reality connect inside a modern, rapid growth go-to-market organization.  

The conversation shows why the relationship between the two functions matters more than most orgs admit.

You can tune in for a candid view of how Tim and Taylor approach team design and navigate change management in lockstep. Together with Forma.ai's CEO Nabeil Alazzam, they discuss:

• Why underinvesting in comp support creates bigger downstream problems  

• How better seller support can unlock more selling time (plus why the comp budget should be viewed with support for sellers evaluated like any other investment)

• Factors that helped Boomi rollout a new incentive program on a tight timeline

• Hot takes on how recognition often drives behavior more effectively than comp alone

We've curated our favorite takeaways here, and you can catch the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, plus below on YouTube.

Episode resources

• Connect with Tim on LinkedIn  
• Connect with Taylor on LinkedIn
• Book recommendation from Taylor: The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson & John David Mann
• Book recommendations from Tim: Superabundance by Marian L. Tupy and Gale L. Pooley and Ken Blanchard's One Minute Manager

Comp support protects one of the business’s biggest investments (it's too critical to underfund)

Based on this episode, it's clear out the gate that Boomi sees compensation support as absolutely critical. It's not treated like routine back-office overhead, and the two functions of RevOps and Sales comp are purposely interconnected.

Tim shares that, especially at large companies, variable compensation is often one of the biggest operating expenses on the P&L. At Boomi, it is a top-three line item, and the work of Taylor’s team affects a huge portion of the company. Add to that the fact that compensation is deeply personal, and Tim's broader point is clear: comp is not a function leaders can afford to underfund or casually squeeze for efficiency.

Tim argues leaders need to stop viewing compensation as a place to chase thin staffing or ticket efficiency without considering the risk. Because when the team managing one of the company’s largest and most sensitive investments is under-supported, the cost shows up in escalations and lost trust.

Later in the episode, Taylor builds upon Tim's point from a different angle.  

Her hot take asks a hard question businesses confront when budgeting: where does the next dollar of investment create the best return?

That is — companies spend a lot of time asking how to pay sellers, but not always enough time asking how to remove the friction that gets in their way. Her argument is that better support can sometimes create more value than another small tweak to the pay curve:

Ultimately, it’s worth noting Boomi doesn't make this tradeoff for headcount (the company thinks about variable comp budget more holistically than simply summing all available OTE). The point Taylor makes, however, is more about a broader investment tradeoff companies need to make generally, and that underfunding support for such an important cost center is a big mistake.

As the conversation gets to, this kind of decision simply can't be looked at in isolation, because comp is only one lever among many. Role design, segmentation, territories, quotas, and incentive design all shape performance together.

The real question for any org is what combination of investments produces the best business outcome (not whether support comes out of comp in some simplistic way).

What makes Taylor’s point especially compelling is the second-order benefit underneath it. Better-supported comp teams get enough breathing room to analyze plans and identify which behaviors are actually driving revenue. Which is the difference between a function that only processes compensation administration versus one that materially helps improve how the business performs.

The ultimate takeaway here? Compensation support is not just an operational cost to contain. It is a critical part of the system shaping seller productivity and the return on one of the company’s largest commercial investments. Treat it this way, and the conversation around the function gets more strategic fast.

Great seller support starts with how you run the team behind it

The conversation also brings up the point that better support for sellers is also a team design question. So what do high-performing teams look like in practice at Boomi?

On Taylor's comp team, her approach starts with fast feedback, over-communication, and a culture where people instinctively help each other. She also emphasizes trust as something operational. When people know where they stand and feel inherently trusted to move forward by leadership, they can keep pace with a rapidly-growing business without second-guessing every decision.  

Tim takes this idea further, mentioning that high-performing ops and comp teams start with the right people: those who want ownership and can grow into leaders. From there, drawing on Kim Scott's Radical Candor, Tim argues managers have to build enough real human connection that they earn the right to challenge directly. Done well, this accountability way becomes constructive instead of confrontational. The real sign this approach is working with your teams? Look for when this dynamic of respectfully challenging one another starts happening peer to peer, not just top down.  

This is an important reminder that comp teams manage issues that are often emotionally charged. If the team behind comp work is underdeveloped or stuck in pure reaction mode, they may still get through the queue of disputes, but they'll struggle to create confidence with the field. The quality of support sellers experience is directly tied to the quality of leadership, communication, and trust inside the team delivering it.

In a field that can be thankless, feeling understood in the day-to-day work shapes whether strong comp talent stays and grows or burns out and leaves.Which isn't just a hiring pain, it threatens continuity in one of the most operationally sensitive parts of the business.  

Taylor recommends watching your comp teams doesn't get trapped in execution mode in the monthly cycle (I.e. close the month, head into sales planning, launch the year, catch a breath, repeat). The seasonality and block-and-tackle nature of the work can burn people out quickly if you don't deliberately make room for more proactive, developmental work. You must consciously build enough bandwidth for learning, growth, and stretch projects so your compensation team is not just surviving the cycle year after year.

At the end of the day, if you want a more strategic comp function, you must build a team that can anticipate obstacles around proposed change (so as to comment on the operational weight of change with leadership), and still have enough capacity left to grow. Elevating the comp function is what turns a hardworking team into a durable one.

Speed matters more than perfection when the field needs clarity now

Another standout moment in the episode is how Tim and Taylor talk about speed.

Too many organizations still behave as if compensation changes need to wait until everything's perfectly built, fully modeled, and completely polished. This sounds responsible, but in practice, it can delay the moment when the field gets clarity.

Tim shares an example of a program Boomi rolled out entering Q3. While his instinct was to delay it until the end of the quarter, accumulate earnings, and pay once, Taylor pushed for speed.

But rather than creating chaos, the program ended up being one of the quietest they had run:

The difference here is that Tim and Taylor communicated early to sellers that they were intentionally moving fast. They openly acknowledged there could be mistakes, set up office hours and reconciliation, and made it clear that anything missed would be corrected in the next cycle.

Critically RevOps did not decide first and operationalize later, here. Taylor notes that fast changes worked in this case because comp was brought in early enough to assess what would be feasible, what the timeline could actually be, and what operational consequences would come with each option available. This makes all the difference between agility and downstream cleanup.  

This example also proves that fairness and speed aren't opposing forces. What the field usually resists is unexplained change, not change itself. Boomi reduced this risk by setting expectations up front, over-communicating, and giving people visible mechanisms for support when the inevitable questions came in. That is a better blueprint than the usual false choice between “move fast” and “be accurate.” The real job is to build a model that can do both.

Recognition still does work that comp plans cannot

Antoher terrific point in the episode is also one of the most counterintuitive for revenue leaders who've spent years obsessing over compensation mechanics.

Tim's take is that recognition trumps comp nine times out of ten. His proof point? Presidents Club.

Sellers will do extraordinary things to make it, even though the cost of that recognition experience may only represent a small fraction of OTE. This gets at the important distinction motivation is not just financial, and leaders who rely on the plan document alone are leaving a lot of performance on the table.

Tim sees that if leaders depend too heavily on comp plans to tell sellers what to do, they're letting management off the hook. Leaders need to define the behavior, recognize it in real time, and put a spotlight on it while it is still fresh. Compensation, by contrast, is often a lagging signal. It tells someone 30, 60, or 90 days later that they did what the company wanted. Recognition can reinforce the behavior right when it happens.

A plan should absolutely create a credible earnings path. But it can't carry the full burden of motivation or culture on its own.

Tim's championing thatrecognition is often the faster and more emotionally resonant signal. Many leaders tend to over-engineer plan mechanics and underinvest in the day-to-day leadership behaviors that make a comp strategy stick. But if support capacity preserves trust, and team culture preserves execution quality, recognition preserves momentum. Together, these things do something a compensation formula alone can't: they make the operating model feel human while still being disciplined. This separates a workable program from one the field genuinely buys into.

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