o it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, ge

I was discussing the compensation plan of a reasonably new company with its national sales director the other day, and for a very intelligent guy he sure sounded dumb.

“We pay 10%” commission,” he asserted, though my math indicated it was 7.5%.

(These differences add up when you’re speaking of thousands of dollars on every deal.)

I asked him if he knew what’s typically paid in straight commission situations.

He said 10%.

Wrong, again; it’s closer to 20%, and 25% and 30% are not unheard of, especially if you’re speaking about paying an outsource company.

Straight commission deals mean salespeople are taking on tremendous risk. If they sell, they eat, and if they don’t they’re blamed for their own ineptitude.

When in truth, it’s very possible that selling that product or service is like finding needles in haystacks; very difficult and very speculative.

If companies felt they had the numbers down to a science, or that demand for their product was solid, they’d be able to model what constitutes good, better, and best performance, and then offer salaries plus commissions, or salaries plus bonuses, or even draws against commissions.

In effect, they’d be bankers, financiers. Most mature, proven companies are in the money business, though, nominally their signs say they sell vacuum cleaners, burgers, or insurance.

They happen to sell what they sell because they believe they can earn a better return on their investment with Albuquerque real estate than with car washes. Otherwise, as sober businesspeople, they couldn’t care what they do for a living, providing it’s honest.

The sales manager’s excuse for not adjusting the compensation plan is that “I was hired this way, and everybody else is, too!” In other words, despite the fact the firm is just a few years young, it’s already falling back on the line, “We’ve always done it this way!”

Horse feathers!

Arguing to tradition is the most common way of resisting change. It presumes: (1) How something came to be must be the best way it could have been done; and (2) The results you’re getting now, are adequate.

If you really go back to first causes, you’ll find compensation plans were designed on completely speculative grounds. The products hadn’t been sold by anyone but the founder, and it wasn’t known whether anyone else could do it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, get

traight commission deals mean salespeople are taking on tremendous risk. If they sell, they eat, and if they don’t they’re blamed for their own ineptitude.

When in truth, it’s very possible that selling that product or service is like finding needles in haystacks; very difficult and very speculative.

If companies felt they had the numbers down to a science, or that demand for their product was solid, they’d be able to model what constitutes good, better, and best performance, and then offer salaries plus commissions, or salaries plus bonuses, or even draws against commissions.

In effect, they’d be bankers, financiers. Most mature, proven companies are in the money business, though, nominally their signs say they sell vacuum cleaners, burgers, or insurance.

They happen to sell what they sell because they believe they can earn a better return on their investment with Albuquerque real estate than with car washes. Otherwise, as sober businesspeople, they couldn’t care what they do for a living, providing it’s honest.

The sales manager’s excuse for not adjusting the compensation plan is that “I was hired this way, and everybody else is, too!” In other words, despite the fact the firm is just a few years young, it’s already falling back on the line, “We’ve always done it this way!”

Horse feathers!

Arguing to tradition is the most common way of resisting change. It presumes: (1) How something came to be must be the best way it could have been done; and (2) The results you’re getting now, are adequate.

If you really go back to first causes, you’ll find compensation plans were designed on completely speculative grounds. The products hadn’t been sold by anyone but the founder, and it wasn’t known whether anyone else could do it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, ge

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In effect, they’d be bankers, financiers. Most mature, proven companies are in the money business, though, nominally their signs say they sell vacuum cleaners, burgers, or insurance.

They happen to sell what they sell because they believe they can earn a better return on their investment with Albuquerque real estate than with car washes. Otherwise, as sober businesspeople, they couldn’t care what they do for a living, providing it’s honest.

The sales manager’s excuse for not adjusting the compensation plan is that “I was hired this way, and everybody else is, too!” In other words, despite the fact the firm is just a few years young, it’s already falling back on the line, “We’ve always done it this way!”

Horse feathers!

Arguing to tradition is the most common way of resisting change. It presumes: (1) How something came to be must be the best way it could have been done; and (2) The results you’re getting now, are adequate.

If you really go back to first causes, you’ll find compensation plans were designed on completely speculative grounds. The products hadn’t been sold by anyone but the founder, and it wasn’t known whether anyone else could do it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, ge

words, despite the fact the firm is just a few years young, it’s already falling back on the line, “We’ve always done it this way!”

Horse feathers!

Arguing to tradition is the most common way of resisting change. It presumes: (1) How something came to be must be the best way it could have been done; and (2) The results you’re getting now, are adequate.

If you really go back to first causes, you’ll find compensation plans were designed on completely speculative grounds. The products hadn’t been sold by anyone but the founder, and it wasn’t known whether anyone else could do it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, ge

o it, and if so, with what rates of success.

Therefore, after a few years it’s always a good idea to revisit the plans and to ask if they’re working.

Specifically, is a 7.5% commission rate enough of an incentive to attract, motivate, and retain top flight salespeople, given the known difficulties and challenges of selling this product?

And to answer this, you don’t have to fly by the seat of your pants. Look at recent pay stubs.

Are your sellers making an excellent living, are sales booming, and are you awash in money?

If not, if you’re just plodding along, getting by, it’s time for revision, and the fact that you’ve always done it a certain way, is just an excuse and an obstruction to making progress.