John Lee on Scaling Sales Comp for 5,000+ Reps at LinkedIn | Uncappd Insider series I Everstage I
What does it take to design and run one of the world’s largest sales compensation organizations, paying out nearly half a billion dollars in commissions?
In this episode of Uncappd Insider, we sit down with John Lee, Senior Director of Sales Compensation at LinkedIn, who leads a team that manages compensation for 5,000+ sales reps.
Presented by: Everstage • Uncappd Insider Podcast
Guest: John Lee, Senior.Director of Sales Compensation, LinkedIn ( / johnlee49ers )
Host: Shiva, CEO & Co-founder, Everstage ( / sivasrajamani )
If you’re in RevOps, Sales Ops, or SaaS leadership, this is your masterclass on how sales comp becomes a growth engine. John Lee shares 25 years of lessons from spreadsheets to AI agents on scaling compensation systems, driving growth, and turning governance from red tape into trust.
Join for Uncappd here for everything about sales comp
https://www.uncappd.com/
/ uncappd
YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Intro: The hardest part of building a modern revenue engine
02:20 – From analyst to architect: John’s journey into sales comp
05:10 – From spreadsheets to systems: the rise of cloud-based comp
08:55 – Designing plans that drive the right behavior
10:30 – How LinkedIn scaled comp for 5,000+ reps
14:45 – The art of agility: how priorities shift during the year
22:00 – Building one of the largest global comp teams
27:20 – Inside LinkedIn’s comp org structure
32:00 – Building resilient systems and processes
37:40 – AI in sales comp: the first inning
38:30 – How John’s team uses AI agents to flag and automate
40:20 – Why AI won’t replace judgment—it’ll scale it
44:30 – What future leaders in sales comp need to master
48:10 – Storytelling and stakeholder influence as core skills
50:30 – The biggest lesson learned in 25 years
52:00 – Why execution beats perfect strategy
56:40 – Lightning round: metrics that matter
1:00:20 – The most underrated enablement artifact
1:04:00 – Closing analogy: run comp like a Michelin-star restaurant
#RevOps #SalesCompensation #SalesOps #IncentiveCompensation #SaaSLeaders #GTMStrategy #RevenueOperations #SaaSGrowth #CompensationDesign #SalesLeadership #LinkedInSales #Everstage #UncappdInsider #AIinSales #SalesExecution
sales compensation, sales comp strategy, incentive compensation, RevOps podcast, sales ops podcast, LinkedIn sales compensation, John Lee LinkedIn, comp plan design, SaaS revenue operations, GTM operations, scaling sales comp, managing 5000 sales reps, sales commission systems, IC plan modeling, AI in sales comp, sales comp automation, Everstage podcast, revenue engine design, SaaS leadership insights, operational excellence SaaS, compensation governance, global sales comp, compensation architecture, RevOps masterclass, forecasting commissions, comp plan agility, Salesforce and comp ops, enterprise sales compensation, scaling GTM teams, sales performance analytics
In this episode of Uncappd Insider, we sit down with John Lee, Senior Director of Sales Compensation at LinkedIn, who leads a team that manages compensation for 5,000+ sales reps.
Presented by: Everstage • Uncappd Insider Podcast
Guest: John Lee, Senior.Director of Sales Compensation, LinkedIn ( / johnlee49ers )
Host: Shiva, CEO & Co-founder, Everstage ( / sivasrajamani )
If you’re in RevOps, Sales Ops, or SaaS leadership, this is your masterclass on how sales comp becomes a growth engine. John Lee shares 25 years of lessons from spreadsheets to AI agents on scaling compensation systems, driving growth, and turning governance from red tape into trust.
Join for Uncappd here for everything about sales comp
https://www.uncappd.com/
/ uncappd
YouTube Chapters
00:00 – Intro: The hardest part of building a modern revenue engine
02:20 – From analyst to architect: John’s journey into sales comp
05:10 – From spreadsheets to systems: the rise of cloud-based comp
08:55 – Designing plans that drive the right behavior
10:30 – How LinkedIn scaled comp for 5,000+ reps
14:45 – The art of agility: how priorities shift during the year
22:00 – Building one of the largest global comp teams
27:20 – Inside LinkedIn’s comp org structure
32:00 – Building resilient systems and processes
37:40 – AI in sales comp: the first inning
38:30 – How John’s team uses AI agents to flag and automate
40:20 – Why AI won’t replace judgment—it’ll scale it
44:30 – What future leaders in sales comp need to master
48:10 – Storytelling and stakeholder influence as core skills
50:30 – The biggest lesson learned in 25 years
52:00 – Why execution beats perfect strategy
56:40 – Lightning round: metrics that matter
1:00:20 – The most underrated enablement artifact
1:04:00 – Closing analogy: run comp like a Michelin-star restaurant
#RevOps #SalesCompensation #SalesOps #IncentiveCompensation #SaaSLeaders #GTMStrategy #RevenueOperations #SaaSGrowth #CompensationDesign #SalesLeadership #LinkedInSales #Everstage #UncappdInsider #AIinSales #SalesExecution
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