Resellers urged to 'stop paying sales staff commissions'

A channel consultant has advised resellers to place all sales staff on a flat salary as commissions make employees 'selfish'

Resellers should end the ineffective commissions system for sales staff and offer a larger base salary instead, according to channel consultant Dominic Monkhouse.

The business coach and adviser to resellers also stated that salespeople who claim they hit targets are mostly "liars and hypocrites".

"Resellers should stop paying sales commissions immediately. If you pay for results, you get less - fact," Monkhouse told CRN.

"I've had a sales role in the past that was only fixed salary, did I work as hard? I was one of the top performers in my first year, so yes. Do you pay graphic designers per logo, developers per line of code, or support people per closed ticket?

"Resellers looking to grow aggressively in a different way can carve out a niche by paying their sales staff a salary instead. Paying people on individual performance just makes staff selfish."

Monkhouse said companies he has joined usually have sales commissions in place already, but if he was starting a company today he would avoid the traditional sales commissions system.

"I would propose that resellers offer sales staff a 90 per cent salary and 10 per cent success bonus rather than the 50:50 or 60:40 splits we currently see in the channel. Even that 10 per cent success bonus could be around the performance of the whole business and its profit.

"This approach reinforces the concept of collaboration and the idea that staff within a business are in it together."

Monkhouse said the Harvard Business Review found that 85 per cent of salespeople do not hit their targets, but a salesperson's CV will always claim they hit their numbers.

"You need to ask for their P60 because they are all liars and hypocrites and are just not very good. The myth is that salespeople get commissions because they live and die by their sales ability every month and if they are no good, they get fired. That hardly ever happens," added Monkhouse.

Kieran O'Connor, sales director of Total Computer Networks said the reseller does not plan to remove its sales commissions scheme.

"The right type of commissions work as an incentive for the best sales staff. My concern with a flat salary would be staff lying back and just taking that every month."