Accelerate 2025 just wrapped in Austin, TX, and it was packed with insights designed to reshape the world of Sales Performance Management. The event brought together the boldest voices the space. The theme? Growth By Design: architecting the future of revenue performance. The goal? To unpack how high-growth organizations are moving from manual processes to intelligent, connected execution.
From sold-out labs and keynotes to endless conversations between Varicent customers, users, partners, and industry leaders, this was more than just the largest gathering of SPM professionals. It was a clear signal that growth in 2025 isn’t about luck or legacy. It’s about alignment, execution, and intent. Together, we explored what it really means to drive Growth by Design. Here’s what we learned.
Growth Isn’t About Doing More
Day 1’s keynote set the tone. Varicent’s Marc Altshuller and Jason Loh were joined by Carlie Bissler from McKesson and Deloitte’s Mark Coleman to challenge legacy thinking by laying out a bold vision for the future of sales performance management. The sales back office? It’s the next frontier.
- Loh examined what he called The Commercial Effectiveness Paradox: when surveyed, sales leaders identified “Talent Gaps” as the number one obstacle to growth. Yet only 20% of those leaders say closing talent gaps is a current priority. The takeaway: there’s massive opportunity for companies willing to embrace this challenge.
- Altshuller had the crowd repeat his mantra for an AI-enabled future: “The winners will rearchitect around new, smarter, and more simplified workflows.” AI isn’t just a tool to speed up existing processes. Its real power will go to those who use it to rethink how we work.
- GenAI is helping everyone move faster, from plan generation to debugging, scenario modeling, and day-to-day admin. To show how quickly AI is coming, Altshuller interacted live with two separate AI avatars, an idea unthinkable even a year ago. Beyond that, he shared how GenAI changes how companies should approach sales performance management.
As Altshuller stated, “AI won't save you. It'll bury you if your systems aren't ready. But if you are ready then AI doesn't just help you, it accelerates you. And there's a strong advantage for this room in particular because if you've invested in sales performance management, you've already done the majority of the heavy lifting.”
Five Blind Spots, One Big Wake-Up Call
Guest Speaker Seth Marrs, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester brought a reality check. In a presentation that struck a nerve across the room, Marrs outlined five critical blind spots that tend to stall GTM success:
- AI Adoption: Most comp teams think they don’t need AI. They found out that they absolutely do.
- Lack of Seller Trust: Most teams believe simpler comp plans work best. In fact, many benefit from complex plans (if are they managed correctly).
- Reactive Compensation: Most teams use SPIFFs to motivate sellers. It’s better is to use quotas and territories to create the conditions for success.
- Shifting Deal Lifecycles: Companies rely on seller comp alone to fuel growth, but extending comp positively impacts overall results.
- Siloed Processes: Many teams assume sales and finance have the same comp goals... but that’s usually not the case!
As Marrs put bluntly: “If your comp strategy isn’t driving alignment, it’s dragging down revenue.”
What Leaders Want: Clarity and Confidence
Executives don’t want more dashboards. They want to know their strategy is actionable. And more importantly, they want to know the investments they’re making—in people, tools, markets—are paying off. Deloitte ran through examples of companies they've helped modernize and ticked off the impressive metrics that followed.
We heard the same message echoed across the room from companies like AWS, Bayer, and T-Mobile. Bayer talked about how they use comp data to improve performance, set targets, identify outliers, and design territories and compensation. AWS discussed how increasingly viewing segmentation, territory design, quota, and comp as one unified motion. T-Mobile shared how a customer service mindset in compensation impacts revenue.
Their stories brought strategy to life, with practical examples of how to break down silos and design performance engines that scale.
High-growth orgs aren’t just chasing more. They’re refining how. They’re eliminating the guesswork, and they’re building revenue systems that can flex with the business.
Real Stories, Real Results
Breakout sessions brought these concepts to the ground floor. With packed rooms and hands-on sessions, leaders from DocuSign, Humana, ServiceNow, Shaw Industries, Equinix, Fifth Third Bank, Motion Industries and many more shared how they're tackling comp complexity, territory planning, and AI integration head-on.
Attendees rolled up their sleeves to explore:
- Flexible quotas and smarter territory design
- Incentive programs that reduce friction
- Forecasting with AI and ELT to boost decision-making
From Comp Accuracy to Revenue Impact: Bridging the Gap
Leaders from McKesson, Seismic, and Varicent led a powerful main stage session focusing on owning change, tying your work to growth, and leveraging wins it to advance your career. The key takeaway: while comp teams tend to obsess over compensation accuracy, executives generally care about one thing —growth.
Change isn’t a toolset. It’s a mindset.
And when that mindset is missing? No tool can save you.
Highlights include:
- "A fool with a tool is still a fool."
AI can enhance performance—but only when paired with strategy, training, and structure. Without them, it’s just noise. - "You’re not implementing a comp plan. You’re changing behavior."
Precision matters. Rollouts should be tied to measurable outcomes, not check-the-box activity. - "It’s not just about trust. It’s about agreement."
Winning teams don’t just earn trust—they align stories to strategy and move people with intention.
What’s Next: Smarter Systems, Better Experiences
Sales performance isn’t about trying harder. It’s about working smarter, with tools that are as intelligent as the teams using them. In her main stage session, Varicent Product Leader Urooj Fatima walked through Varicent’s new capabilities, showing how they enable our users to act, optimize, analyze, and adjust.
- Act: Simply describe your intent and see how GenAI assistants executes with no training or manuals needed.
- Optimize: Set goals like balanced workload or minimal disruption and easily generate and explain scenarios.
- Analyze: Ask complex questions and get instant, contextual answers without sifting through data.
- Adjust: Use suggestions as a starting point but stay in control with manual adjustments based on experience.
To summarize, Fatima noted that “sales performance doesn’t improve with more effort. It improves with better design.”
The Takeaway?
The strongest revenue teams in 2025 won’t be the ones with the most tech or the biggest budget. They’ll be the ones that align early, move fast, and keep performance at the center of every decision.
Accelerate set the blueprint for what’s next.
Ready to build growth, by design?
