Every time I say hold something back from the initial sale, a salesperson hears "make less money." That's a fair thing to hear, and it's wrong, and the reason it's wrong is worth running as arithmetic rather than asserting.
Same customer, two paths. Worked example, round numbers, 10 percent commission on new ARR because that's the plan most reps are on.
Path one, the way it's done now
The rep builds a $60k package. Everything in it, including the two items the customer can't use for at least six months. The buyer looks at nine things, needs three, and does what rational people do when asked to pay for uncertainty. They negotiate.
10 percent off to close. $54k.
The rep's commission is $5,400. The company books $54k, and that $54k is now the renewal price, because nobody renews at more than they paid. The two items the customer couldn't use were sold at zero, and they stay at zero, because you can't sell somebody something they already have.
The rep is done with this account. Renewals pay the AE nothing on most plans, and there is no expansion, because the expansion went in the first deal for free.
Rep's total on this customer: $5,400. Ever.
Path two, unbundled
The rep sells $48k. The three things they need, the things they can use now. The two items they can't use yet are named on the call, held back, and tied to the milestone that will make them relevant. That's a real conversation and it closes faster, because a buyer evaluating three things they need decides faster than one evaluating nine things they don't.
No discount. There's nothing in the deal to price uncertainty against.
Rep's commission: $4,800. That is $600 less than path one, on the day the deal closes, and that $600 is the entire objection. It's real. It's also the last time path two is behind.
Six months later the customer hits the milestone. The two held-back items get presented at the moment they're most relevant, at full price, $12k. On a plan that pays the rep on expansion they set up, that's another $1,200.
Rep's total on this customer: $6,000. The renewal is at $48k plus $12k, undiscounted, and there's still inventory left to sell because not everything went in on day one.
The line that matters
Path one: rep makes $5,400, company books $54k, lifetime discounted.
Path two: rep makes $6,000, company books $60k, nothing discounted, and the account has somewhere to grow.
The rep makes more. Not less. The objection assumed the current approach was maximizing their number, and it wasn't. It was maximizing the size of one deal on one day, at the cost of everything after it, and the rep was never going to see everything after it anyway.
What this actually requires
One thing, and it isn't the rep's decision. The plan has to pay them on the expansion they set up. If it doesn't, path two genuinely does cost them $600 and they're right to refuse it.
You get what you pay for. A plan that pays on deal size gets stuffed, discounted deals. A plan that pays on what a rep sets up gets shorter cycles, cleaner deals, and an account that's still worth selling into in month seven.
The rep was never the problem. The rep was doing the math correctly against the plan they were handed.
Lincoln Murphy formally named and popularized Customer Success starting in 2010 and has spent 15 years connecting it to expansion revenue and commercial outcomes. Read The Premise.