How HPE Transformed Its Sales Comp Strategies to Grow and Innovate

Sales compensation is more than a rewards program — it’s a strategic lever used to solve business challenges and a catalyst for change and growth. That is according to Rachel Parrinello, a principal and the sales compensation solutions lead at the Alexander Group, a U.S.-based consulting firm.

To illustrate her point, Parrinello (at left in the above photo) invited Trent Akagi (at right), the vice president of sales compensation and readiness at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), to the stage at WorldatWork’s Sales Comp ’25 conference in Chicago. He shared with the audience recent corporate transformations where sales comp was a major focus.

HPE, which spun off from Hewlett-Packard in 2015, is a global technology company providing IT infrastructure, software and services. Akagi currently works with approximately 8,000 sellers.

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Solving Challenges

Recently, Akagi implemented pricing model changes to reflect product line evolutions. He explained that because the company has a mix of products, it considered different measures and weights in salesperson payouts. Some of those measures and weights included:

Sales performance incentive funds (SPIF) or a short-term bonus or credit uplift
Add-on bonuses or a rate uplift
Credit adjustments (an uplift or downlift)
A measure with a product hurdle (can be a higher accelerator if the product goal was achieved)
A separate product measure (focused on product metrics)

For example, eight years ago when HPE introduced a hybrid cloud solution and service called GreenLake, the product accounted for only about 1% of the company’s business, and salespeople (who had to figure out how to sell the product) earned only a bonus for selling GreenLake, Akagi said. As the GreenLake business grew, he said the revenue model shifted to include, along with the bonus, credit uplifts and up to a 30% expanded focus measure. The incentives were offered to GreenLake specialists, core sellers and/or all specialists, depending on if they sold it as hardware or as a service.

Now, he said, approximately 80% of the company is measured with a focus on GreenLake as a service, and the line accounts for approximately 10% of the business because people know how to sell it.

Another challenge HPE faced involved crediting event options for bookings (during contracts and closing orders) and revenues (during shipments, invoices/billings or deployment).

HPE’s crediting challenge occurred in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused supply chain issues for hardware. At the time, sales were focused on shipments and there was no accountability on order timing, Akagi said. To address this, product crediting and service crediting moved to the booking stage, creating better alignment and a better focus on order timing. When supply chain issues were accommodated the following year, no quota was added.

Rewarding Megadeals

In January 2025, HPE announced it had struck a deal worth more than $1 billion to provide social media platform X with servers optimized for artificial intelligence (AI) work.

Akagi said the “megadeal” program was introduced during GreenLake deals, but those were initially around $10 million to $20 million. Now with much larger AI deals, HPE had to develop new incentive payouts for such agreements. That included creating a meaningful and predictable program with seller focus, providing appropriate payouts and not disrupting overlay crediting.

The problem with megadeals is they are unpredictable and include a longer sales cycle, Parrinello said. In addition, she noted sellers who are overpaid generally tend to believe they are worth that amount, and if they don’t make that figure again, they may become a “flight risk” and leave the company.

Akagi noted not all of the salespeople assigned to the X account were responsible for the megadeal. “If you just let the credit flow through, you would have a big issue,” he said. “We had to make sure the payouts were meaningful.”

Now, HPE generally defines megadeals as starting at $50 million, with some variation applied to different geographic regions. Akagi said the company also overhauled its existing program. megadeals must be registered four weeks in advance so leadership can communicate who will or will not be getting paid.

Based on megadeal size, the new incentive payout program is now based on three contribution levels:

Opportunity lead (one to two sellers)
High key contributor (one to five sellers)
Key contributor (one to five sellers)

Lessons Learned

Looking back at all the changes, Akagi said his main takeaways were to pursue strategic simplicity and clarity, know that adjustments will take time, and most of all, communicate. “We’ll seeing a difference in how we want the (sales) roles, but if you really want to drive change, you have to have everybody rolling in the same direction,” he said.

Editor’s Note: Additional Content

For more information and resources related to this article, see the pages below, which offer quick access to all WorldatWork content on these topics:

How HPE Transformed Its Sales Comp Strategies to Grow and Innovate

Solving Challenges

Rewarding Megadeals

Lessons Learned

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