ICM toolkits & modeling systems

A toolkit that motivates your reps, aligns to company strategy, and builds quotas they trust — with payouts you can defend.

We design Incentive Compensation Management (ICM) toolkits and modeling programs — the Excel-based systems that let your team build, test, and run your own incentive plans with confidence, in-house, at your own pace. We design and administer the incentive programs themselves too, but our core offering is the toolkit: built once, configured to your plan, and handed off so your team can run it with ease going forward. Every plan is stress-tested before release, so the projected payout and the actual payout are never a surprise to each other.

PAYOUT_CURVE.MODEL FY26 — Component A
THRESHOLD ACCELERATOR PAYOUT % ATTAINMENT
Threshold & accelerator points, set by the model
Who's behind the plan

I've spent seventeen years designing incentive programs for global sales organizations. Now I'm building yours.

Christina Bustos and her husband

I'm Christina Bustos. I've spent seventeen years designing and running sales incentive compensation — at Hollister, Shire, Takeda, and Hospira — and I built Verity Comp because I needed it myself.

That work taught me the same lesson over and over: most companies don't actually have a technology problem, they have a modeling problem. I kept looking for a tool that was rigorous enough to trust and simple enough to actually use, and it never quite existed. So I built it.

This toolkit is the system I wish I'd had in every one of those roles — one that lets you prove your plan is fair and accurate before it ever reaches the field. Trust in the plan isn't a nice-to-have. It's what keeps reps motivated and engaged, and once that trust is gone, it's hard to earn back.

I hold a B.A. in Business Administration and Management from Carthage College, and I've spent my career since inside the room where these decisions actually get made — most recently as Global Manager, Sales Incentives & Data Analytics at Hollister, where I led the rollout of the organization's first global Power BI compensation dashboard. I've also served on the Sales Leaders Council with The Conference Board, benchmarking incentive strategy alongside other industry leaders.

I built this because I want other people in this function to have what I spent years piecing together myself — a clear, trustworthy way to get the plan right the first time. If it helps someone find the right solution a little faster and makes their job a little less chaotic, that's the whole point.

17+ YEARS IN SALES
INCENTIVE COMPENSATION
80+ INCENTIVE PLANS
DESIGNED & ADMINISTERED
18+ COUNTRIES WITH
PLANS IN MARKET
40% FASTER DATA COLLECTION
FROM GLOBAL BI ROLLOUT
15% IMPROVEMENT IN
TEAM ENGAGEMENT
25% TIME SAVED FOR
ANALYSTS ON REPORTING
Where plans usually break

Comp problems rarely show up as comp problems.

They show up as disengaged reps, quota disputes in Q3, and a finance team that can't explain a payout on demand.

Projections miss the target
A plan modeled without stress-testing threshold and accelerator math can land far above or below the intended payout — usually discovered only after it's already live in the field.
Quotas feel unfair
Territories set on gut feel or last year's number, not on trend and selling days, breed resentment before the year starts.
Payouts can't be explained
When a rep asks "why is my check this number," the answer should take one lookup — not a week of reconciliation.
Top performers aren't rewarded for it
Flat accelerators and mispriced thresholds quietly cap your best reps' upside — and they notice.
Sales plan effectiveness metrics

Every plan is measured against the same standard your strategy is measured against.

The plan simulator doesn't just calculate payout — it benchmarks the plan across three categories, so alignment to corporate strategy and fairness to reps aren't left to opinion.

Meet Objectives

Does the plan actually deliver what the business needs it to?
% to Target
Payout tracked against attainment, by component — so the plan pays for the results the business set out to get, not more and not less.

Motivate & Reward

Does the plan make reps want to sell, and reward the ones who do it best?
Engagement
Share of reps earning any incentive at all — the baseline signal the plan is reachable.
Meaningful Engagement
Share earning a payout large enough to actually influence behavior, not just a token amount.
Top Performers
How much more your best reps earn relative to the average — confirming real pay-for-performance separation.

Fairness Testing & Quota Accuracy

Are quotas set on real potential, or on a guess dressed up as a number?
Quota Achievability
The realistic odds a rep can hit their number, tested against the underlying data rather than assumed.
Quota Accuracy
How closely a quota tracks actual territory potential, so two reps with equal effort land on equal footing.
Attainment Distribution
Flags territories with too many low or high attainers — an early signal that sizing, not effort, is driving the outcome.
Who this is for

Built for the plan that's quietly fallen behind — not the one about to spend a year on a platform migration.

Most incentive compensation problems aren't a technology problem. They're a modeling problem wearing a spreadsheet.

A good fit if:

  • Your plans run on spreadsheets that grew organically over the years, with no real modeling behind the thresholds and accelerators
  • You've never formally measured plan effectiveness — pay-for-performance alignment, quota fairness, rep engagement — you just run it and hope
  • You know something needs to improve, but don't have the internal bandwidth to design a rigorous system from scratch
  • You want enterprise-grade modeling rigor without the cost and year-long rollout of a full platform
  • You have a legacy or homegrown system that mostly works, but not enough cash flow or internal time this year to justify a full platform replacement

Probably not a fit if:

  • You're already committed to implementing a full enterprise SPM platform
  • Your plans are already professionally modeled and stress-tested — you just need more hands to run them
  • You need real-time, transaction-level commission calculation across many disparate source systems

Most SPM platforms are expensive and take months — sometimes over a year — to implement, and too often the plan still isn't right afterward, because the real problem was never the system. It was the modeling and methodology underneath it. Excel and Power BI, used well, are more than capable of running a rigorous incentive compensation program. Putting the budget into getting the logic right, instead of a platform migration, is usually the faster path — and a far less stressful one.

3–12+ months Typical go-live timeline for enterprise ICM/SPM platforms — longer once real data and plan complexity surface
5 figures → 6 figures What vendor setup quotes are routinely built on, versus what implementation actually ends up costing
Locked in either way A flawed comp model doesn't fix itself by moving into new software — and once you're committed, backing out isn't easy
The toolkit

One lifecycle: model the plan, set the goal, track the payout.

Three connected tools carry a plan from design through year-end payout — each one feeding the next.

01

ICM Plan Simulator

Simulates the full year's payout scenarios from 24 months of data, recommends threshold and accelerator rates, and stress-tests the plan before it ever reaches the field.

Plan design See the full breakdown →
02

ICM Goal Allocator

Turns the plan simulator's methodology into fair, accurate monthly quotas by territory — across up to 10 components, 58 territories, and 5 rep types.

Quota setting See the full breakdown →
03

ICM Performance Tracker

Maps actuals against the plan and the goals to auto-calculate achievement and payout, including proration, eligibility, and recognition programs.

Payout & achievement See the full breakdown →
82%
Reporting

A national view comes standard. Field-level detail is built to order.

Every toolkit file includes a high-level Scoreboard and Trend view of goal and achievement at the national level, out of the box. Territory-level reporting for the field, and live Power BI dashboards, are available as add-ons once your structure and distribution needs are set.

78% TARGET
National Scoreboard & Trend
High-level goal and achievement views, standard in every toolkit file
Territory-Level Field Reports
Goal and achievement reporting broken out by territory, ready to roll out to the field
$1,000 – $3,000
Add-on
Power BI Reporting Suite
Live dashboards for achievement and goal reporting, with secured, role-based payout statement distribution
$3,000 – $8,000
Add-on
Beyond the toolkit

Two things a spreadsheet can't do on its own.

The model gets the math right. These make sure the field understands it and it looks like it came from your company.

+

Incentive Plan Document

We translate the finalized model into the plan document that actually goes out to the field — payout mechanics, eligibility, thresholds, and accelerators written in plain language, checked line-by-line against the model so what reps read matches what they'll be paid.

Field release $1,500 – $4,000
+

Brand & Structure Customization

Toolkit files, goal and achievement reports, and Power BI dashboards rebuilt in your colors, logo, and formatting — plus the structural work most templates can't handle out of the box: adding territories or rep types beyond the built-in defaults, configuring additional product components, and adjusting the roster and hierarchy tabs to match how your organization is actually structured.

Reports & toolkit $1,500 – $5,000
Services & pricing

Start with the templates, or bring us in to run the whole cycle.

Most clients start with a strategy call — we scope the engagement to your component and territory count before quoting a fixed fee.

Tier 1

Template Access

The toolkit itself — ICM Plan Simulator, Goal Allocator, and Performance Tracker files — with setup documentation and a legend for every input cell. Self-serve: you configure it, at your own pace, with email support for setup questions in the first 30 days. Does not include data migration or plan-specific configuration.

$1,200 / file · $2,800 bundle one-time — save $800 buying all three together
Tier 2

Guided Setup

Toolkit plus structured onboarding: a kickoff call to scope your components, territories, and rep types, hands-on help mapping your actual data into the files, and a follow-up review once your first payout scenarios run — so you're not troubleshooting formulas alone. Typically completed over 2–3 weeks.

$2,500 – $5,000 flat fee
Tier 4

Managed Program

We run the full lifecycle for you each cycle — modeling, goal-setting, and tracking-to-goal — plus Power BI dashboard setup for achievement, tracking, and payout statements with secured, role-based distribution. Includes a dedicated point of contact and ongoing plan-year support, so your team never has to own the mechanics directly.

$10,000+ setup then ongoing retainer

Bring your current plan. We'll tell you what it's actually paying for.

A 30-minute working session, on us — we'll check whether your projected payout and your target payout actually agree. No toolkit purchase required.

Book a strategy call