Welcome to the home of Noah Brier. I'm the co-founder of Variance and general internet tinkerer. Most of my writing these days is happening over at Why is this interesting?, a daily email full of interesting stuff. This site has been around since 2004. Feel free to get in touch. Good places to get started are my Framework of the Day posts or my favorite books and podcasts. Get in touch.

You can subscribe to this site via RSS (the humanity!) or .

To Commission or Not to Commission

Interesting story from Fog Creek about getting rid of sales commissions:

Our salespeople all estimated that they were spending about 20% of their time just keeping track of what money was due them. There was constant horse trading. And, most worrying, we created a heavy disincentive to do all the service stuff that makes customer service shine. Why would you want a system that sets up after-sales service as competition against new sales, especially if you have a small sales team? Reputation and retention, after all, are both paths to revenue.

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about how you build a structure for teams to succeed. Part of that structure is salary (there are lots of other parts as well). We’re trying to figure out a system that makes the most sense for the sort of company we’re trying to build and, in turn, trying to look at accepted practices with a skeptical eye. (As an aside, I’ve also been reading the Management Myth, which explains how management consulting came to be). Anyhow, no real conclusions, but glad to see others thinking about this as well.

January 4, 2012 // This post is about: ,