Xactly Corp Creates a Repeatable, Buyer-Centric Sales Process with Accord

The Company 

Xactly is a sales performance management system (SPM) with an intelligent layer built in that enables enterprises to run the entire compensation process all in one system. From capacity planning all the way through paycheck and running payroll, Xactly gives sales and revenue leaders the tools they need to design effective compensation plans, model cost impact, manage territories and quotas, and calculate commissions accurately and at scale.

Representing the future of SPM, Xactly’s intelligent revenue platform is trained on over 20 years of empirical pay and performance data. It combines predictive, generative, and agentic AI to help teams move faster and make smarter decisions using real-time data instead of outdated spreadsheets or disparate systems. The platform delivers transparency, auditability, and control at every stage, allowing organizations to align incentives with strategy, adapt plans as business needs change, and drive consistent performance across the revenue engine.

Xactly’s VP of Sales for North America and Japan, Taylor Wilding, and Director of Revenue Operations, Bayley Fesler, are responsible for driving sales performance and operational excellence across global teams. To improve deal velocity, multithreading, and execution consistency, the team turned to standardization. By aligning their sales process across teams and deals, they gained clearer insight into what was working and what wasn’t. Rather than relying on scattered approaches or individual seller styles, Xactly created a repeatable, measurable process that revealed patterns, surfaced risks earlier, and made it easier to scale what drives results. 

Challenge: Inconsistent Sales Execution & Stakeholder Misalignment

Xactly helps companies across industries, from retail to insurance, achieve results like a 90% average reduction in overpayments and 60% less time spent creating compensation plans. But selling to such a diverse customer base also means navigating a wide range of stakeholders.

“Typically within our tech sector, we’ll see the RevOps or Finance team own compensation,” explains Taylor Wilding, VP of Sales. “Whereas outside of tech, it typically lives within the office of the CHRO. Everyone in the C-suite usually has a stake in the game when it comes to incentive compensation or variable comp.”

More stakeholders meant more potential for misalignment and delays. Combined with inconsistent sales execution, these challenges were limiting Xactly’s ability to scale its sales process efficiently. 

“Our sellers were doing disparate things — some using a mutual action plan that was built in Quip back in 2019, others using SharePoint or free tools,” says Taylor. “It was nearly impossible to track and standardize how we were running deals. Without that consistency, we couldn’t clearly see what was working.”

Solution: Centralizing Information & Scaling What Works

With growing complexity in sales cycles Xactly needed a more consistent and collaborative way to sell. Execution was inconsistent, and champions didn’t have a clear path to navigate internal buy-in.

“One of our initiatives was increased conversion rates. To get there, we needed standardization so we could actually diagnose where the cogs in the wheel were,” explains Taylor.

Disparate Tools Replaced with a Centralized System

Prior to Accord, sellers were using everything from old Quip templates to SharePoint and manual spreadsheets. Bayley Fesler, Director of RevOps, described the previous setup as unintentionally burdensome because reps were asked to keep information updated in Salesforce through an iframe-based tool that wasn’t built for real collaboration.

“I was essentially asking Taylor’s team to do sales homework,” explains Bayley. “Now with Accord, I can report on how things are going without interrupting their flow and they can focus on spending their time where it matters — with the customers.”

Accord was introduced to bring order and consistency. As Taylor describes it, it became the “central nervous system” of Xactly’s evaluations. Instead of sifting through email threads or Slack messages to recall deal progress, everything now lives in one place. This not only streamlines internal collaboration, it also makes it easier for champions to sell internally with clarity and confidence.

“If you think about our sales cycles being 6 to 9 months, they often start and stop. Having a centralized system that tracks everything makes it so much easier for the buyer. It actually makes evaluating software enjoyable,” says Taylor. 

Replacing Tools & Scaling What Works

It also helped consolidate Xactly’s tech stack. Bayley saw the potential early on, not just as an execution tool that improves buyer experience, but as a platform that could simplify internal workflows and eliminate redundant systems.

“That was a big selling point for me. With Accord, we ended up displacing not just People.ai, but the need for one of our enablement platforms as well. The content management piece, the deal-level execution, and the ability to surface internal components like approval matrices or quoting instructions at the right time, for every deal, was a game changer,” reports Bayley. 

With Accord tightly integrated into their CRM and fully reportable across deals, the Xactly team has expanded its use across account planning and broader enablement initiatives.

A Thoughtful, Phased Rollout

Xactly took a deliberate “crawl, walk, run” approach to rolling out Accord. The team started with Taylor’s organization, focusing first on the new logo motion. After purchasing the platform, they worked quickly to build their first playbook in time for a mid-year sales kickoff.

Initially, reps could opt into using Accord on active deals, while new pipeline deals automatically received a playbook. This soft launch helped drive early adoption without forcing change too quickly.

Within 3 months of launch, Xactly introduced a stage gate in Salesforce, requiring at least one external stakeholder to be invited into Accord in order to progress pipeline stages. According to Taylor and Bayley, this structured rollout made it easier to drive adoption and ensure usage became part of the team's daily motion.

Impact 

Since rolling out Accord, Xactly has seen noticeable improvements in: 

1. Multi-threading: 2.5x increase in stakeholder engagement
2. Deal velocity: Sales cycles are 47 days faster, representing a 26% acceleration
3. Forecast accuracy: Earlier alignment improves qualification and forecasting
4. Deal size: 23% increase in average deal size across key segments

“We’ve moved from aspirational multi-threading to actual multi-threading,” says Bayley. “Before Accord, it was hard to tell who was truly engaged in a deal; now, the team has clear visibility into stakeholder involvement across every opportunity.”

That shift has made a big impact, especially in Xactly’s enterprise and strategic segments. “We’re seeing better deal velocity,” says Taylor. “We’re also losing faster, which is a good thing. It means our reps are qualifying more effectively and spending time on the right opportunities — the ones most likely to convert.”

Accord has also helped reps align earlier with prospects on key timelines, business cases, and value realization. “It gives us the invitation to ask the harder questions earlier,” Taylor added. “That helps with qualification, forecast accuracy, and even deal size because going wider often uncovers new ways our platform can add value.”

What’s Next for Accord & Xactly 

As Xactly and Accord continue to deepen their partnership, one thing has become clear: feedback doesn’t just get heard — it gets built.

“The Accord team is incredibly responsive,” says Taylor. “We share feedback, and it shows up in the product faster than we could’ve imagined.”

With stakeholder recommendations on the horizon, both teams are excited about what’s next, especially as Xactly looks to scale strategic execution and drive operational efficiency. “Our tiered account strategy, what we call route to coverage, is all about driving efficiency,” Taylor explains. “I’m really excited for what this next phase of the product will unlock for the team.”

For RevOps, the updates open the door to smarter experimentation. “We’ll have more capacity and bandwidth to get creative, even outside our traditional ICP,” adds Bayley. “That flexibility is going to be huge for testing new motions.”

Ready to discover how a centralized deal execution platform can transform your sales process? Book a demo today and see Accord in action.