Coform is a community of Solutions & Implementations Leaders, solving probems together. In Field Notes, we share anonymous learnings from our invite-only meetups. In this edition, we’re digging our Jan ‘25 meetup on getting customers live with Adyen in New York.

Align Presales & Implementation Comp - So Both Win From Go-Lives.

Solutions IC ‘We’re comped on revenue closed, which often means our team hesitates to push back on poorly scoped deals as we need to hit our targets”

If you’re not incentivizing successful go-lives, you can’t expect them to happen. Teams need a shared incentive model.

Coform Best Practice (Presales)

• 70% Base, 30% variable

• Of Variable:

  • 30% individual revenue closed.

  • 70% go-live realisation of team/pod*

• 
  

• What is a Pod?

  • Cross-functional group (BDR → AE → SE → Implementation → TAM) who have part of their variable comp measured on go-live success of the deals they’ve worked on as a group.

    • ie how did usage scale compared to what expected instead of just contracts.

    • Often seen pods done by different verticals, product being sold, or size of business.

  • Drives teamwork + alignment towards this shared goal.

Charge For or Time-Box Implementation Support To Avoid Delays

Today

Solutions Leader ‘We offer free professional services to reduce deal friction but are seeing negative oucomes - customers aren’t feeling urgency and move slowly or deprioritise implementation after signing”

We see a lot of presales teams discounting implementation to close deals faster. However, far too often we see this results in delayed go-lives.

Coform Best Practice:

• Set an implementation time limit (e.g., services expire after X weeks)

• Charge a set fee or tie costs to go-live timing (ensuring urgency)

• Ensure implementation resources are valued—not seen as "free extras."

Implement a Go-Live Readiness Step Before Contract to Catch Gaps

Today

Solutions Leader: “We have a lot of deals where we think its ready to go, but the SAP integration wasn’t properly scoped out in presales. Now we’re misaligned and its a 6 month delay”

A common challenge we hear - SEs stretched thin, handling more deals + manual work, leading to critical gaps in pre-sales.

Coform Best Practice

• Review past deals with delays with implementation & identify common missing requirements.

• Create a presales validation step ****—no deal is signed until critical technical items are confirmed.

• Should result in fewer delays + issues in implementation.

One-Off Handover Calls Don’t Work - bring in Implemntation Earlier

Today

Solutions IC: ‘implementation is brought in for one or two of the last calls, and sometimes not until after a deal is signed. We’ve seen lots of misalignment and delays because of that”

Most teams rely on a combination of a google doc template, a 30 min handover call + scattered notes across CRM, forwarded email chains etc. Causes lost details & a cold start with prospects.

Coform Best Practice

• Implement a mandatory implementation review to sense-check a deal before its signed.

• Standardize the tools in which your team create content (e.g. Lucidchart, google docs) to make it easier to quickly hand over all the context.