I’m not a fan of complicated commission structures with kickers, bonuses, accelerators, and different percentages depending on what someone sells.

FIGHT to keep commissions simple.

Why? A good salesperson is innately motivated by money.

So they need to be able to look at their booked work and know almost immediately how much money they’re making.

I’ve seen good salespeople leave because their commission structures were so complicated that they couldn’t figure out what they were earning. Even though they were earning good money.

Think about that. You spend months recruiting, hiring, and training someone, only to lose them because they don’t understand their paycheck.

Make the math ridiculously easy.

Your salesperson should be able to look at their booked work, do a little multiplication, and have a pretty good idea of what their commission check will look like.

When I ran my franchise, we had a dashboard set up for each sales associate where they could look at their bookings and quickly calculate their likely commission..

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to motivate salespeople: Contests. Different commission levels. End of year bonuses. Team based kickers.

But often these complications make it hard to quickly understand exactly what they’ll be making.

A good salesperson wants to sell, make money, and understand how their effort translates into their paycheck.

Simple.