Ex-IBM exec: sales comp makes revenue-sharing AI pricing a non-starter
JFPuget · x · 2026-10-27
The author, drawing on his IBM experience selling the optimization tool CPLEX, argues revenue-based pricing can't work: salespeople are compensated on recognized revenue within the quarter, so they will never push revenue-sharing deals that pay out far later. CPLEX delivered such high ROI for finance customers (billions of USD a year, paying for itself every few minutes) that it still sold at flat price; he closed only one revenue-sharing deal in his career—IBM's best European deal that year. The core obstacle: as a tool provider, measuring your share of the customer's ROI is nearly impossible.
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