Comment by karatinversion 2 days ago
> we don't do commissions, we just pay good salaries
The semi-joke I always heard about this was that if you don't pay commissions, you'll hire a sales team who are good at selling you that they are doing a good job, rather than selling the prodct.
Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.
Pretty much this or something like it, at least in my experience the last 30+ years.
Sales seems to attract folks who are highly 'coin operated'. The large majority (yes...always with the exceptions) really, deep down, don't care about how cool the tech is, or how it's going to change the world...they care about the game of sales and you keep score in the game by how much commission you earn. You really want the salesthing that comes in with "Forget about the salary or draw, I want a 100% commission comp plan" because that's someone who is confident enough in their ability to sell that they aren't worried about paying the mortgage or buying groceries.
Tangentially, one of the worst things I've seen a sales org do is cap commissions. All that incentivizes is "I hit my cap...ima gonna go hang out on my boat until next quarter because why work for sales I'm not going to get comp'ed on".
GP's company is (at least in their eyes) not interested in selling per se - quoting:
>> That means the sales person as they're working is not incentivized to sell as much as possible, they're incentivized to figure out the (potential) client's needs, and how we can best meet them, irrespective of what they end up paying.
I don't know what the name for that other thing is, but it's indeed distinct from "selling" that salespeople do, which boils down to begging, cajoling, tricking or coercing you to buy their shit, no matter how useless or downright harmful to you is, because that's what commissions combined with competition incentivize. Not surprisingly, the bottom-feeder telemarketing sweatshops are where this model is present in its purest form - extreme competition, frequent bonuses for top performers, and quick firing for not being a top performer.
If I have a choice, I never want to "buy" whatever someone's "selling" - I only want to do the whatever is the "buying" equivalent for the not-selling thing I don't have the name for.
It's not a B2B-specific phenomenon either. The B2C equivalent of those salespeople are car salesmen (which have meme status at this point), telemarketers, and those people doing the Amway model, trying to sell some Tupperware knockoffs[0] or barely working vacuum cleaners or whatnot at 3-10x inflated prices, making you feel like you had a good time instead of having just been scammed.
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[0] - Ironically, Tupperware was also sold in this model, but it at least wasn't shit.
Sales has to be commission based and you always hire at least two salesman.
The biggest driver to make a sale is the commission. The second biggest is fear of getting sacked because you’re not making as many sales as the other guy.