I am working on a project right now where I am implementing a new sales compensation plan that will better align with our new ‘Customer Intimate’ orientation. That being we serve a well defined set of accounts or markets and we bring them solutions, not products, not transactions but complete answers to their problems.

So I want to change the compensation plan from one of reward on margin per transaction to one that rewards revenue and margin for assigned accounts or markets along with a slightly higher base pay. My aim is to keep cost neutral about to about 10% of revenue.

The issue is that a few members of the organization don’t, can’t or won’t believe that a sales professional will work as hard if they are not ‘transaction’ rewarded and I have a problem with that. If that was truly the case then we should put all employees on a transaction reward program and leverage a portion of their pay, just like the sales team.

Side Note: I worked for Digital Equipment Corporation for 17 years and there was never a commission program and the company grew from a couple of hundred million to over $14 B in revenue and the sales teams worked very hard with only ‘base pay.’

I just don’t believe it is true that ’sales’ people are wired any different than the rest of us, at least the kind I think are successful at the sales model we want to use. They/we/I have a work ethic where we work hard and effective at whatever our job may be, minimum wage in a retail store or a CEO.

I want sales professionals whose passion it is to ’serve others’ by listening to client issues and then working with our firms resources and our partners capabilities to craft and implement ‘valuable’ solutions that provide an economic return to all parties, the client, ourselves and our partners.

It is tough to do the above when you need to get a transaction sold in order to put bread on your families table because that is how you make money.