Ask HN: Commision-based % for sales force? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Commision-based % for sales force?

2 pointssogen7 comments

Currently looking to hire a couple salesmen and a question arose: For those that have a sales force, what % of the sale do you pay them for a PaaS?

I'm leaning towards: 100% of Avg Monthly Revenue per Customer for the first 3 months (read that somewhere) After that: 25% - churn %.

Thanks for your time.

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- are you hiring remote, or in office?

- are these affiliates, or "sales people"? (What do they call themselves?)

- how long is the sales cycle? Does it require person-to-person interaction? How much of it?

- who are your target customers? Individuals, or companies?

- does your competition have affiliate programs? What are their commissions? Do they have sales people? Can you poach them?

- how much money do you have? Can you invest upfront?

- does selling your product require training?

All relevant questions.

All your affiliates care about is that your conversion and commission rates are higher than the competition. All you need to care about is that your lifetime customer value exceeds your costs including commissions.

A great example was a dating site that offered a 200% commission on each sale, because they knew that once people were in their sales funnel, enough would buy buy bigger ticket items to make it profitable. They crushed the competition who was offering 50% commissions on similar products because affiliates chose to get the 200% commissions.

I find it hard to believe that no one would figure out how to game the system with shill buyers, once commissions moved above 100%. Could you point such a program out? My google skills have failed me.

Most are private, check out cj.com and shareasale.com (you'll have to sign up before you can see those kinds of affiliate programs). But he's right, those kinds of offers are commonplace.

Depends. It's all about the nature of the sale, the nature of the customer management, & the types of customers you are dealing with - that will inform your model. I'd be willing to share my experiences offline if you want ckluis [@] gmail.com

Not to mention the service cost, your realistic expectations for unit sales per salesperson (and the volatility of that figure) and whether you're paying them a base salary near market rates for their skillset.

Sales force is telesales, work from home. The customers are art-based.

Thanks, will send email.

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