Former Head of Commercial Sales. Founder and CEO (exited). Six years building recruitment and enablement systems for ANZ's top SaaS companies.
Ricky co-founded Pointer Strategy to fix how go-to-market teams are built in Australia and New Zealand. The model is practitioner-led vetting, pay-on-performance pricing, and 12 months of post-placement training included with every hire.
He writes about sales compensation, hiring strategy, revenue operations, and the realities of building GTM teams in the ANZ market.
Recent articles by Ricky
One Title, Three Jobs: The 2.8x Pay Spread Inside ANZ Account Executive Ads - The Pointer Index Issue 18
The most-posted title on the ANZ GTM boards pays $78,750 at the bottom tenth of ads and $219,500 at the top tenth. That is not one job with a wide range. It is a tech closer, an insurance service role and a junior agency job sharing a name, and every blended AE benchmark averages all three.
Nothing to Script: ANZ GTM Hiring Had a Quiet Week - The Pointer Index Issue 17
Some weeks the market tells you something. This one does not. The active pool sat at 5,882 open GTM roles, a 5.1% move in a market where the median week moves 6.0%. No function retreated far enough to read as a pullback and none climbed far enough to read as a build. That is a finding, not a filler week.
The Busiest Month Yet: ANZ GTM Hiring Hit a Record in July 2026 - The Pointer Index Issue 16
ANZ employers opened more go-to-market roles in July than in any month we have tracked. The rate ran between 756 and 778 a day from April through June, a band of about 3%. July came in at 917, and every capital city rose with it.
The 50/50 Minority: Only 22% of ANZ Account Executive Ads Are Written 50/50 - The Pointer Index Issue 15
The 50/50 account executive plan is quoted in every comp guide. Across 241 ANZ AE listings that price both a base and an OTE, only 22% are written at or near it, and 41% sit at 70/30 or leaner. It holds in software too, where about one ad in four is a true 50/50.
The OTE Bluff: 17% of ANZ Sales Ads Mention Commission, 2.7% Price It - The Pointer Index Issue 14
Seventeen percent of active ANZ sales ads mention OTE, commission or uncapped earnings at all. Fewer than three percent put a number on it, and eight ads in the entire market show the base and variable split. Where the number is printed, the median OTE is $150,000 at 1.57x base, and the ads write 60/40 far more often than the 50/50 everyone quotes.
How Top Sales Teams Hire in 2026: SDR and AE Benchmarks, Targets, and Interviews That Actually Filter
A healthy sales team has about 70% of reps on target. Less than that, your expectations are broken. More, your targets are too soft. Dan Brockwell (Earlywork) and Ricky Pearl (Pointer) walk through role design, 2026 salary benchmarks, commission structures, and the interview frameworks that separate real sellers from good interviewers.
The ANZ GTM Salary Anchor Snapped Back: $97,500 to $100,000 in One Week - The Pointer Index Issue 13
Last week the median advertised ANZ GTM base broke below $100,000 for the first time in thirteen weeks. This week it snapped back to $100,000, the active pool hit a three-month high, and sales came back priced above the anchor, not below it. But underneath the round number, sales repriced up while marketing stayed repriced down.
The ANZ GTM Salary Anchor Broke: Thirteen Weeks at $100,000, Then $97,500 - The Pointer Index Issue 12
The median advertised base for an ANZ GTM role printed exactly $100,000 for thirteen straight weeks. This week it printed $97,500, and it happened in the second-highest posting week on record. Sales itself repriced, advertised ceilings compressed, and the pool rebalanced away from front-line sales toward presales and RevOps.
Forward Deployed Engineers: What They Are, What They Earn, and Why the Hottest Job in Tech Is 60 Years Old
Forward deployed engineer job postings jumped a reported 800% in 2025, with OpenAI paying up to $550K USD for the role. This guide covers what FDEs actually do, where the role came from, how it differs from sales engineering, what it pays in the US and Australia, and why the hottest job in AI is really the return of a model IBM ran in 1965.