Your Salespeople Are Mission-Driven. Your Engineers Are Coin-Operated. Wait, What?

Let’s talk about the two most misunderstood species in your MSP: the sales rep and the engineer. You pay your sales team on commission. They close a deal? They get a check. Simple. Straightforward. “Coin-operated,” as many of you like to say.

Now your engineers? They’re salaried. Why? Because they’re different. They’re professionals. They’re mission-driven. They’re in it for the right reasons.

Wrong.

Let me drop a little thought bomb on your pristine little org chart: Your salespeople are more mission-driven than you think. And your engineers are far more coin-operated than you want to admit.

Let’s Start With Sales

You crafted the perfect commission plan. Quotas? Check. SPIFFs? Check. Motivational Slack emojis? Check. Then you get mad when they don’t hit their targets. But here’s the kicker: Did you ever stop to explain the why behind what they’re selling?

Let’s zoom in on cybersecurity for a second—because if you’re selling anything else without securing the client first, you’re asking to get sued later.

Why are they selling cybersecurity? To protect businesses from breaches. To provide the evidence they’ll need in court when it all hits the fan.

So why are you only tracking dollars?

Seriously. If you sell per-user pricing—and you do—then protecting users and generating MRR is the same metric with a different label.

Here’s the twist: Start tracking the number of users your salespeople have helped protect.

Give them the dopamine hit of being a protector, not just a closer. Celebrate the number of lives they’ve secured, not just the dollars booked. Same financial outcome. But now it feels like a mission. A purpose. A cause.

Now Let’s Talk About Your Engineers

You think they’re too noble for bonuses? They are absolutely coin-operated. They love to win. They love recognition. And they will sprint for a bonus if you make it achievable and tied to something that matters.

Try this:

Give them a $150 bonus every month they get five clients to 100% security program adoption. That’s right—reward them for full-stack coverage. They already know the stack. Now teach them how to recommend it with confidence.

Better yet, teach them how to document declined recommendations using Risk Acceptance Documents. (Spoiler: It could save your ass in court.)

Now you’ve got engineers chasing adoption. Sales focused on protecting people. And both teams playing for the same outcome: a secure client.

Want to Move Faster?

Put a scoreboard on the wall.

List every client.

List every piece of your security stack.

Highlight what’s missing in red.

Make it visible. Make it uncomfortable. Make it actionable.

Because the single most important thing your MSP does is communicate risk.

That’s the job.

Not tickets.

Not uptime.

Not hardware margins.

Risk communication and reduction is your core product.

And if you want to get your team aligned around that, you need to stop pretending engineers and salespeople are built from different DNA.

Need Help Making This Happen?

You’re in luck. Check out our Certified Cyber Risk Strategist (CCRS) program. It trains your team how to communicate risk, document liability, and drive security adoption that actually sticks.

Let’s make build you a team of well-trained assassins.