Dell has kicked off its new financial year with a shakeup to how sales staff get paid.
Under the new structure, Dell is increasing rewards for high performers but scaling back earnings for sellers who fall short of their full quota, according to an internal presentation viewed by Business Insider. The tech giant is also tightening the periods over which it measures sales progress to a quarterly basis, rather than twice a year.
The presentation was shared with sales employees in a town hall meeting on February 3, led by Kyle Leciejewski, Dell’s senior vice president of North America sales.
The changes affect sales staff across both of Dell’s key divisions: the Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG), which sells data center hardware and other AI-related solutions, and the Client Solutions Group (CSG), which sells PC hardware.
The change at Dell mirrors a shift happening across much of Big Tech, where companies have been leaning into a hardcore culture that elevates high performers, penalizes those who miss the mark, and disregards long-held views of workplace loyalty.
Every time Polly publishes a story, you’ll get an alert straight to your inbox!
Stay connected to Polly and get more of their work as it publishes.
The move is “designed to reward you for driving profitable growth, expanding our footprint, and winning market share for Dell,” the company told staff in the presentation.
“We are always assessing our business to remain competitive and ensure we are set up to deliver the best innovation, value, and service to our customers and partners,” Dell told Business Insider.
No commission under 60% of sales targets
Dell sales employees are paid through a mix of guaranteed base salary and a commission-based payment, known as their “target incentive.” The presentation used an example of an employee paid on a 60/40 mix, meaning 60% of their compensation was the salary, and the rest was the target incentive.
Under the previous salary structure, sellers who achieved between 0 and 100% of their sales target received the corresponding portion of their target incentive, according to the presentation. If they hit 80% of their goal, they got 80% of the payout; if they hit 50% of the goal, they got 50% of the payout.
The target incentive doubled for those who hit 100% to 200% of their targets.
Under the new changes, sellers who come in below 60% of their target get no commission.
For those who achieve between 60% and 100% of target, here’s the new pay structure:
- At 70% of goal, employee gets 25% of target incentive
- At 80% of goal, employee gets 50% of target incentive
- At 90% of goal, employee gets 75% of target incentive
- At 100% of goal, employee gets 100% target incentive
For top performers, the incentives just got better.
Sales workers who hit between 100% and 150% of their targets will now receive commissions worth three times the agreed target incentive portion of their salary, the presentation shows. That marks a 50% increase on what they’d previously received.
Quarterly targets
Dell is also moving sales teams to quarterly targets, according to the presentation.
Small and medium business teams already worked to quarterly targets, but now enterprise, large enterprise, DTS, AI Select, and Dell’s telecom business will move from a twice-yearly compensation plan to quarterly quotas.
According to the presentation, the decision to move to quarterly targets is linked to the company’s upcoming modernization push. As Business Insider first reported, Dell is overhauling its internal systems on May 3 to help streamline internal operations for the AI future — an initiative it is calling One Dell Way.
Dell could adjust the quota cadence in the second half of the financial year, the presentation said: “We will revisit the quota cadence and take the learnings from Q1 and Q2 to inform the decision about 2H.”
Some employees fear pay cuts
Five Dell sales employees who spoke to Business Insider about the pay structure changes said the adjustments were causing frustration and fear among some employees that their take-home pay could drop.
A data center sales rep told Business Insider that for the last three years, they had consistently hit 70% to 80% of their quota, so they were looking at a 20% reduction in their take-home pay unless they could sell more.
All five employees said that hitting 100% of a target would become harder in the new quarterly timeframe. Their reasons included that quotas had risen over the last two years, industry supply chain shortages were slowing sales cycles, and, in certain divisions, such as federal accounts, lead times were long.
Low morale
Employee dissatisfaction at Dell has been growing companywide in recent years amid layoffs and RTO mandates. The company’s employee satisfaction score — known as the employee net promoter score, or eNPS, has declined by almost 50% in two years.
In 2024, Dell’s sales teams received a 5-day RTO mandate months before the rest of the company, and last December, Business Insider reported that leaders were cracking down on attendance.
Sales staff are also dealing with tougher selling conditions amid an industry-wide shortage of memory chips. Along with most competitors, Dell raised prices on many of its products in December.
“Global memory and storage supply are tightening fast,” Dell warned its go-to-market team members in an email viewed by Business Insider. The company told its sellers to “move decisively” ahead of the price increases to “protect value for our customers and for Dell.”
On the back of the AI boom, ISG sales have been strong — revenue was up 29% in Dell’s last full financial year — but annual revenue has fallen for three consecutive years in the CSG division. In July 2025, Dell’s COO and vice chair Jeff Clarke stepped in to handle day-to-day leadership of CSG.
In a memo about One Dell Way last month, Clarke told Dell staffers to get ready for big changes.
“This is the biggest transformation in company history,” Clarke said. “I know there will be challenges, and that’s OK—we’re here to support you and work through this together.”
Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at pthompson@businessinsider.com or Signal at Polly_Thompson.89. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here’s our guide to sharing information securely.
