You know, I have had fourth quarters where I was tanking on my commission plan. Yet, I never thought of this idea to make up for it: A bank teller in Clearwater had a million reasons not to open an account for an Augusta, Ga., man Monday, authorities said. Alexander D. Smith, 31, was charged with disorderly conduct and two counts of forgery after he walked into the bank and tried to open an account by depositing a fake $1 million bill, said Aiken County Sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Michael Frank. Fantastic. My favorite line from the article is the last one: The federal government has never printed a million-dollar bill,… Read More
Continue ReadingDirty Jobs Compensation
It is a week to be thankful for many things – especially if you don’t have a “Dirty Job.” No, not that type of dirty. Dirty as in the Mike Rowe series on Discovery Channel. MSN.com has a story today titled They’re Dirty Jobs, But They Gotta Get Done. A sampling of the jobs and their average pay: Butcher Leaving work in blood-stained clothes would be a serious HR issue in many offices, but the practice is nothing unusual for a butcher, whose grisly work involves cutting and washing the innards of slaughtered animals to create sides of beef, steaks, sausage and ribs in slaughterhouses and meat-packing establishments. This job… Read More
Continue ReadingFinancing Via Job Change
I enjoy skewering the mainstream media for “talking down the economy” which is a practice they condemned back in 2000. But all signs point to a slowdown in this red-hot economy which has led the Federal Reserve to target a soft landing. I’m no economist, but I found this article by John Sumser quite interesting. His take on the economy is one I have not heard (emphasis mine): The veterans, burnt by the dot com bust and the post 911 recession will argue that business will contract and layoffs will ensue. That’s the prototypical recession profile. Everywhere you turn, this scenario is forecast or implied. … Or, there may be… Read More
Continue ReadingEntrepreneurial Lessons
CareerBuilder.com links to an Entrepreneur.com article that asked… 9 entrepreneurs take a look back at their startup days and reveal what they would have done differently if they knew then what they know now. Great premise. Here’s the response I enjoyed the most (emphasis mine): “We would have spent more time and money on search engine optimization. Top placement in Google is key to any business in this day and age, and the cost of PPC gets higher every day. In addition, we would have placed more emphasis on employee commissions. We’ve learned over time that commissions and incentives drive employees to bring in more business.” How true that is. … Read More
Continue ReadingThe Expectations Set By The Offer
We’ve run into some “unique” problems in handling offers with sales candidate. Strong salespeople all share one significant ability – qualifying. This ability, when used in the negotiation process, leads to a desire for real clarity when it comes to an offer. We lost a strong candidate last week due to a lack of informational clarity within our customer’s offer. There are many variables to this specific situation, but one thing that came out was that the offer was too vague. The critical piece of information that was poorly defined was the expectations for the position. No quota, no targets and no defined levels. This is a new sales position within an… Read More
Continue ReadingNews Alert: Most Employees Faking Sick Days
Ok, it is a cheeky title to this post, but I recently read this Inc.com article – Big Surprise: Most Workers Faking Sick Days (see, Inc.com started it). In case you had any doubt: …most workers who call in sick at the last minute aren’t really sick. … The real reasons for employee absenteeism range from family issues to personal needs and stress. Indeed, a majority of workers tend to call in “sick” on Mondays or Fridays, with similar patterns appearing around major holidays, the survey found. So no surprises here but there is a very good point made towards the end of the article (emphasis mine): Still, Wolf doesn’t blame… Read More
Continue ReadingCompanies Offering "Voluntary" Benefits
We just lost a strong candidate at one of our customers this week because the company’s offer did not contain a well-defined benefits package. That always hurts. Now this morning I read the CareerJournal.com article titled Firms Increasingly Offer ‘Voluntary’ Benefits. I haven’t heard of this trend, but it is most intriguing. A growing number of businesses, large and small, are offering employees so-called voluntary benefits ranging from pet insurance to homeowners insurance to help with house closings and estate planning. The signature character of these voluntary benefits is that employees pay for them, but at a discounted rate obtained by the employer. Medical insurance will always be the top… Read More
Continue ReadingProduct vs. Service Sales Compensation
We have been running into this topic of late with offers in different industries and it is a real stumbling block for some companies. I have worked as a salesperson for both product sales and service sales with different commission plans. The crux of the issue falls on margin. We typically recommend commission plans based on margins instead of revenue. Businesses grow by making money. Yes, a simple statement, but one that can be undercut by a discount-oriented salesperson. If you provide a percentage of revenue to a salesperson as their commission plan, they are not incented to maintain the price. It is far more expedient for the salesperson to… Read More
Continue ReadingSandbagging
We’re working through some commission plans with our customers and one of the plans has a function to where the salesperson has to clear a certain quarterly revenue level before the commission plan kicks in. This approach is somewhat common and has its merits. Personally, I am not a fan of it for one reason. Sandbagging. I’m not talking about preparing for a flood (though there was plenty of that activity up here this summer). I’m talking about getting a deal to the point where it can close today, but the salesperson holds it until the beginning of next quarter, month, week – whatever constitutes the commission time frame. I… Read More
Continue ReadingBenefits Are A Benefit
I think many Gen X’ers like myself grew up in the era of $10 copays and the assumption that health benefits were required of employers. Now that I am older and dealing with grey hairs, I have learned the truth about that topic. One thing we try to stress with candidates is the fact that health benefits are 1.) a perk since they are not required and 2.) a significant piece of the compensation pie. This quick blurb is from the Career News newsletter (sorry, no link): WASHINGTON, DC –The percentage of U.S. residents covered by employment-based health insurance declined again last year, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday. In… Read More
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