

Ask HN: Commision-based % for sales force? - sogen

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?<p>I&#x27;m leaning towards:
100% of Avg Monthly Revenue per Customer for the first 3 months (read that somewhere)
After that: 25% - churn %.<p>Thanks for your time.
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chatmasta
\- 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.

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gotrythis
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.

~~~
taprun
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.

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MalcolmDiggs
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.

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ckluis
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

~~~
notahacker
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.

