I like to say "money begets money". If the incentive is money, people make more money. If it's not, they don't. It's that simple. Everything money related work

I like to say "money begets money". If the incentive is money, people make more money. If it's not, they don't. It's that simple. Everything money related works this way for a reason. Sales, real estate, trading, mortgages, whatever. And I am pretty sure that no one wants their sales team to make less money, right? What you're really looking for by eliminating commissions is discipline. Not selling the product in a way that puts you under (like Oracle nearly did in 1990-ish[1]). That requires a strong leader to guide this, not changing the core incentive AWAY from making money. Oracle fixed their problem by changing their accounting. I'm not a sales person, but my understanding from sales people is that the best ones work on commission. If you were told that the best engineers required equity, would you make your company equity-free? Didn't think so. [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation#Sales_practices http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Corporation#Sales_practi...