Peak Sales Recruiting

Small business owners are often tempted to offer stock to key managers and employees as an incentive for them to stay and grow with the company. When an employee asks for stock as part of his or her compensation, business owners often see this as a vote of confidence from staff and a way to [...]

From time to time you will be in a salary negotiation with a sales candidate when they pull out a salary survey as evidence they are worth the compensation they are asking for. So how much weight do you place on salary surveys? The answer depends on a few factors: Was the survey conducted in [...]

We previously wrote about the impact of compensation plans on the behavior of sales reps (see Sales Comp Plans and The Age-Old Debate About What Motivates Sales Reps and Are Sales Reps Motivated by Money) and I just ran across this insightful post at the Sales 2.0 Network which shows in 2010, when the sales professionals were [...]

It has happened to all of us. One of your top sales reps enters your office to speak and closes the door behind them. You can tell by the look on their face that bad news is coming and they inform you that they have taken a position with another firm and submit their resignation. [...]

The hunter vs. farmer categorization for sales roles is a crude way to segment the sales function, but it is often a useful distinction, particularly when it comes to comp plan strategy. While new business development roles and existing account management roles both share the goal of generating sales, the roles are fundamentally different and [...]

Thought provoking video from Dan Pink on the relationship between incentives and behaviors with a couple of interesting observations that potentially relate to sales comp. According to Pink, studies show that for non-mechanical tasks that are complex and require conceptual and creative thinking, a basic amount of compensation must be paid or the person will [...]

It is conventional wisdom to think that the less base you pay a salesperson the hungrier they will be. While you certainly don’t want to hire reps who are satisfied with just their base, a low base-high commission plan has several downsides: 1. Turnover – If you pay a low base relative to other companies [...]

If you are a sales manager who has pushed your team to peak performance over the last few years at your company, you have accomplished an impressive feat, given these economic conditions. You might think you deserve a raise for your performance and you likely do, but since so many good people are still out [...]

The ideal scenario for many businesses is to have a sales team of reps who are paid on contract, with no base salary and receiving 100% of their compensation in the form of commissions. And why not? Most employers would like their reps to assume all the risk of performing and be highly motivated to [...]

The software as a service (SaaS) model continues to be popular in the tech sector, but many of the companies that adopt this model struggle to get their sales function working properly.  On the surface, the differences between the traditional software model and SaaS appear to be small, so why does is it so hard [...]