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There are two types of salespeople: A. Those who can and will sell with motivation to make good money. B. Those who want a steady paycheck and will sell OK. You

There are two types of salespeople: A. Those who can and will sell with motivation to make good money. B. Those who want a steady paycheck and will sell OK. Your approach values option B. Is it bad? Not really. OK sales people still make sales. But they tend to have very negative impact on the rest of the business. I only hire sales people on commission, and pay them very well. They always bring twice as much business as a salaried one.

mseebach 14y ago
It seems like they're trying to cultivate a middle-ground sales person. It seems counter-intuitive that the only good salespeople are solely motivated by blindly moving product for personal profit, and none will be receptive to do good selling on a long-term vision instead.
alanctgardner2 14y ago
> They always bring twice as much business as a salaried one. Do you have any numbers for that? At all? Also, why do we need to pay bonuses to encourage salespeople to be motivated? I don't get paid per line of code, or even by features shipped. Surprisingly, I don't just stop coding and wait for someone to throw more money at me. I work because it's satisfying, and I know I will receive a promotion and other recognition if I consistently perform well. edit: Someone linked the Fog Creek blog post about "Why do we still pay commission?", where Joel has exactly the same opinion. It's kind of demeaning to salespeople to imply they're just chasing a quick buck.
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ucee054 14y ago
And I never want to work for you implementing whatever fever dreams your salesmen promised your customers (with a free pony thrown in!)
ncallaway 14y ago
In your penultimate sentence you state you only hire sales people based on commission. In your final sentence you state that they perform twice as well as salaried sales people. These seem contradictory to me. How can you know the latter given the former? Where do your stats for the comparison cone from? Sorry if I'm being terse, I'm on my mobile at at moment...
- orangethirty 14y ago
  I have run A/B tests with salaried VS commission. Not a perfect test, I must say, because I can't test the same hypothesis on the same person. Best I can do is test on two groups and keep most factors similar. Testing people is difficult and expensive.

mseebach 14y ago

It seems like they're trying to cultivate a middle-ground sales person. It seems counter-intuitive that the only good salespeople are solely motivated by blindly moving product for personal profit, and none will be receptive to do good selling on a long-term vision instead.

alanctgardner2 14y ago

> They always bring twice as much business as a salaried one. Do you have any numbers for that? At all? Also, why do we need to pay bonuses to encourage salespeople to be motivated? I don't get paid per line of code, or even by features shipped. Surprisingly, I don't just stop coding and wait for someone to throw more money at me. I work because it's satisfying, and I know I will receive a promotion and other recognition if I consistently perform well. edit: Someone linked the Fog Creek blog post about "Why do we still pay commission?", where Joel has exactly the same opinion. It's kind of demeaning to salespeople to imply they're just chasing a quick buck.

deleted 14y ago

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ucee054 14y ago

And I never want to work for you implementing whatever fever dreams your salesmen promised your customers (with a free pony thrown in!)

ncallaway 14y ago

In your penultimate sentence you state you only hire sales people based on commission. In your final sentence you state that they perform twice as well as salaried sales people. These seem contradictory to me. How can you know the latter given the former? Where do your stats for the comparison cone from? Sorry if I'm being terse, I'm on my mobile at at moment...

orangethirty 14y ago
I have run A/B tests with salaried VS commission. Not a perfect test, I must say, because I can't test the same hypothesis on the same person. Best I can do is test on two groups and keep most factors similar. Testing people is difficult and expensive.