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I'm not even sure they know how to value salespeople's contributions. Compensation in sales is often in the form of a lower salary combined with percentages of

by frobozz 14y ago

I'm not even sure they know how to value salespeople's contributions. Compensation in sales is often in the form of a lower salary combined with percentages of sales and/or bonuses for meeting targets. When a salesperson makes a sale, what percentage of that sale has the salesperson brought in? How much of the sale was actually generated by marketing, design and manufacture? Similarly, if they fail to make a sale, how much of that failure is their own?

mgkimsal 14y ago
Good points. At the very least, there are some processes in place such that if you directly bring in more revenue to the company, you generally share in it as a salesperson. Usually not so as anyone else in a company, unless you've got profit sharing of some sort. It's somewhat worse as a non-salesperson, in that, if you make a sale, you get a commission, and it's yours. The rest of the incoming money/profits go in to the company, but you as employee X generally have no say how the company operates. The profits that should be being funnelled in to XYZ, instead go to ABC, which everyone else can see is a dumb decision, but ... you can't influence it. The salesperson can't either, but they've gotten a direct benefit for their part already (higher/more commission).
ajross 14y ago
That's just saying that companies cannot value the contributions of salespeople vs "non-sales". Which is isomorphic to "companies cannot correctly value non-sales employees" anyway. You're not arguing with the case, just restating a corrolary. Between salespeople, you can certainly tell who is making more money than their peers.
- frobozz 14y ago
  That's a good point - if you can't calculate the value of anyone but salespeople, then you can't calculate the value of salespeople either. Calculating the relative value of one salesperson vs. another doesn't say anything about how much value either of them brings to the company, apart from the likelihood that one of them brings more than the other.

by frobozz 14y ago

mgkimsal 14y ago

Good points. At the very least, there are some processes in place such that if you directly bring in more revenue to the company, you generally share in it as a salesperson. Usually not so as anyone else in a company, unless you've got profit sharing of some sort. It's somewhat worse as a non-salesperson, in that, if you make a sale, you get a commission, and it's yours. The rest of the incoming money/profits go in to the company, but you as employee X generally have no say how the company operates. The profits that should be being funnelled in to XYZ, instead go to ABC, which everyone else can see is a dumb decision, but ... you can't influence it. The salesperson can't either, but they've gotten a direct benefit for their part already (higher/more commission).

ajross 14y ago

That's just saying that companies cannot value the contributions of salespeople vs "non-sales". Which is isomorphic to "companies cannot correctly value non-sales employees" anyway. You're not arguing with the case, just restating a corrolary. Between salespeople, you can certainly tell who is making more money than their peers.

frobozz 14y ago
That's a good point - if you can't calculate the value of anyone but salespeople, then you can't calculate the value of salespeople either. Calculating the relative value of one salesperson vs. another doesn't say anything about how much value either of them brings to the company, apart from the likelihood that one of them brings more than the other.