Shawn Santos (StevenDouglas) on Compensation, Recruiter Burnout & Old Soul Operators

If a Rep Switches Products Because of Comp, Your Plan Is Working Against You

Ajay Erogbogbo is VP and Head of Revenue Operations and Strategic Initiatives at Pathward, a publicly listed financial holding company, where he designs incentive comp for commercial lending officers. In this episode, he breaks down how variable comp works when it's tied to loan origination volume with two-year clawback windows, why standardizing comp across product lines creates distortion when the risk profiles are different, and how he distinguishes between a performance issue and a design issue during monthly reviews. He also covers why the biggest structural comp mistake is designing for what's easy to measure rather than what creates value, and how giving BDOs a simulator to model their earnings changes the entire plan rollout conversation.

The Comp Plan Isn't Done When It Ships: Measuring What's Actually Working Mid-Year

Ariana Farray manages 300+ payees across 40-50 comp plans at Flock Safety, one of the fastest-growing public safety companies in the US ($200M to $300M ARR in a single year, valued at $7.5B). In this episode, she walks through her full comp cycle from design through communication to measurement and course correction. She shares why pay versus performance is the report most comp teams skip, how a post-acquisition quota miscalculation led to sellers hitting their quarterly number in January, and why SPIFs should course correct behavior but never replace the plan. Plus her take on AI in comp: "It never tells anybody they have a bad idea.

Stop Running Mad Libs: What the Top 10% of Outbound Teams Do Differently

Kris Rudeegraap co-founded Sendoso after a decade in software sales, when he watched email go from effective to noise and started looking for a better way to build relationships with prospects. Today Sendoso is the leading direct mail and gifting automation platform, and Kris has spent years watching what separates high-performing outbound teams from everyone else. On this episode of GoToMasters, he and host Mike Groeneveld get into the "Mad Libs problem" — why 75% of teams are still running templated sequences that look identical — and what the top 10% are doing with AI and multi-channel to fix it. They also cover how the BDR role is splitting into two distinct profiles in 2026, what it takes for AEs to win longer enterprise sales cycles, and why personalization is what determines whether a direct mail gift lands or backfires.

When Incentives Work Too Well: 30 Years of Comp Design in Chemical Distribution

Sam Wegman is VP of CX and Commercial Operations at Univar Solutions, one of the world's largest chemical and ingredient distributors, and has spent over 30 years in the industry. On this episode of GoToMasters, Sam and host Venkat Sabesan get into what makes comp design different in a commodity-driven, high-velocity B2B environment, including a case study on what happens when you pay only for the products you want to grow. They cover why Univar has always paid on gross margin rather than revenue, how they built a "trust and verify" system for fast-moving product lines, and why most comp inaccuracy problems trace back to master data, not the tool. If you run commercial or sales operations in distribution or manufacturing, this episode covers terrain that most software-focused comp conversations skip entirely.

Shawn Santos (StevenDouglas) on Compensation, Recruiter Burnout & Old Soul Operators

Most experienced recruiters will tell you the same thing quietly: when a candidate names compensation as their only reason for moving, it's a red flag, not a green light. Shawn Santos has spent almost 28 years placing CFOs, controllers, and VPs across accounting and finance, and the patterns are hard to argue with. Shawn is VP of Accounting and Finance Search at Stephen Douglas, where he's building out the New York and New Jersey market. He joins this episode of GoToMasters Finance Fireside for a conversation about what really moves senior finance leaders into new roles. He gets into where compensation actually sits in a job search (his framing: it's the ante in a card game), why the loudest, most extroverted recruiters tend to burn out at year three, and what separates the ones who stay 15 and 20 years. He's equally direct on tools — Bullhorn as the system of record, LinkedIn Recruiter and ZoomInfo as the discovery layer, MetaView as the AI note-taker that lets him stop transcribing and start listening — and on why bolting salespeople onto an existing CRM is one of the quietest ways to lose data integrity. He closes on the line that has guided his career: the next phone call you make can be the best phone call you make. If you're hiring senior finance talent, advising candidates through career moves, or trying to build a recruiting practice that survives past year three, this one's worth your time.