Moreover, most sales account managers are intrinsically motivated to set things up for the 20x sale, because they're likely to own the account when the 20x home run comes in.
Most sales teams have spiffs set up to account for the "real estate agent" problem where short-term deal flow trumps revenue maximization.
I agree that managing a direct sales team is a hard problem, but in terms of designing an incentive comp plan, it's hard to argue that it isn't easier than doing incentive comp for developers.
