Earn $125 Per Sale: Independent Design Firm Seeks Sales Agents

We need more info before can give opinion.PM info if you would like.

Where is the rest of the posting?

What price will they be selling them for?

Whatever it is, you will have to go through several "rounds" of hiring before attracting anything close to a capable candidate.

The first will be out-of-work psychiatrists and the like who will leap away from your opportunity as soon as they sense the possibility of getting back into their regular game. Add in stay-at-home moms with no phone skills and people who can't keep a job and you get the picture.

Maybe in round three you will be lucky enough to attract a candidate with some phone sales skills. But then you have to ask: what are they doing around a $125 opportunity? Anyone with real skill is making more money and getting paid more quickly.

If you are selling in that range you likely need to be paying them $300 to get their attention. Unless the sales are easy and the guy can burn out 3 a day he is going to want more of the pie.

50-50 split is a good way to show you value them. And $300 a sale is something that at least some entry to mid-level sales people are used to.

No way $125 is going to attract anyone good. Jason pretty much mentioned the important things. Finding a good rep takes time and a good commission.

Ryan who will be doing the work?

For $600 how many hours will you work?
How many will your sales person?

Will he sell one a day? Two? 3?

If he sells one that is 8 hours for sales maybe more.

His skills and drive will of course determine how many he sells.

But how many should an average sales person sell in a 40hr week?

And how many hours will it take you per order?

Give me that info and I will show you how to set this up. And tell you why you should set it up this way. I will even tell you if you should be charging more.

Basically this will be a short free consulting and hopefully eye opening.

One of the best management trainers I ever had taught me this simple idea. "Your best sales people should make more then you do." Once you learn that it will open your eyes.

Basically as a manager I was failing if none of my sales people made more than I did. There job is hard and as a manager my job is to make it easier and help them get better. Now if i think I can sell better and make more money that way it's likely I am a better sales person than manager and in that case I should be selling.

And honestly that was what lead me to decide to leave management behind for sales. And that sales job I took lead me to the marketing position I now have.

You need to value the salesperson more than yourself in this case. Fact of the matter is he's doing more of the pull than you are.

Designing is great and all, but outsourcing the design is pretty easy. And with WordPress, just about anyone can make a decent site. A sales rep is skilled, and most likely a veteran with experience.

A 50/50 commission is usually a must when you're negotiating without any kind of additional leverage.

Well if you are selling website design services then I suggest come up with some samples as your aware there are a lot of site designers and you have to bring some great sites for your price point .Sure your doing a lot of the work but if your not paying someone to sell a decent income then no sales ,no work for you also.

Let's break down the sales person pay.....
Ok let's say 4 per week just to get a round number of 10 hours of work for every sale.
At $125 you are paying them $13/hr which I suspects sounds good to many people here. Problem is that is self employed so they have expenses (phone or gas at least) and taxes (remember SS and Medicare are doubled when self employed).

Also these guys can walk in off the street to any telemarketer (my metro area is like 300K and there are at least a dozen companies) and make $10/hr plus comission doing outbound calls. And that is as an employee.

See why a good salesman will not work for $125?

Now let's break down your pay.
$600 - $125 = $475
Let's use 4hr so that means you are making $119 per hour.

So you are making 9 times as much per hour as your sales person.

Is that far? Maybe maybe not. But follow me here.

Let's pull you out completely and say you outsource the website for $175.
So now the math looks like this.
$600 Revenue
-$125 Sales Commission
-$175 Outsourcing
= $300 Profit

Looks pretty good. You should have to spend less then an hour on each project personally, right? That's like $300/hr. You're doing great.

Or are you?

See here's the problem....
As I pointed out it is easy to replace yourself in the web design side of the math. So as long as you make sales you can make money.

But for $125/sale you are not going to get a very good sales person. In a large metro area like Chicago they can make $10/hr flipping burgers. As I pointed out they can walk into a telemarketing company and make $10/hr plus comission easily.

I know I know.... What about the people who can't get enough hours flipping burgers? Or those who can't close enough sales to keep the telemarketing job?

Wait what is that? You were not thinking that?

You don't want the fast food rejects?
You don't want the telemarketing company wash outs?

Oh well in that case pay them better!!!!

Let's keep the same $600 price but change the math a bit.
$600
-$300 Sales Commission ($30/hr for our agerage guy)
-$175 Outsourcing
= $125 and still you will have an hour or less of work.

So literally by outsourcing you are making more per hour and paying the salesman better. Better pay = better sales person = more sales = More $$$

Or you can still do the website yourself.
$300 for 4hr of work is still $75/hr

Get even better and you might make the salesman split $400/$200. Just make sure your prices are good and that your salesman is well paid.

Aaron just went bananas to help the OP. Much kudos.

Just my 2 cents. Raise your prices. $600 isn't much to work with, $1000 is better, and the clients you would want to work with WON'T give you flak over a $400 difference if they value your services. If not, dump them.

With $1000 you have plenty of room to split profits AND outsource. Everybody wins.

@Aaron

As a salesperson myself, your advice about valuing your sales people is very refreshing to hear.

However, I do not think that the advice you are offering is entirely correct.

You are assuming that a good sales person (someone who is above average) is going to know how to value themselves. And that they will value themselves and their work above a $125 commission.

I think where you are making a mistake is the difference between a good or great salesperson, someone who is good at closing sales, and a smart sales person, someone who knows their value.

In almost every sales job that I have ever had, (except my first one) there have always been salespeople who have been better than me, made more leads, more referrals, more sales, but they have all made lower wages and/or commissions than I did.

They were great sales people. However, either when they first started their job, or when it came time for them to ask for a raise, they undervalued themselves. Their own personal beliefs about what the boss might be willing to pay, or what they were worth got in the way.

Maybe they were desperate for a job. Maybe they have been told their whole lives they weren't worth much. Maybe they are holding onto the belief that $10/hour is a lot of money. There could be alot of reasons why they might undervalue themselves. That doesn't mean they aren't good or great sales people, it just means they do not know how to value themselves.

Even the way that you marked out your argument about how many hours they might have to work for that $125 commission. It sure sounds nice, but you are a business person.

They aren't. Most sales people, think like employees even if they are self-employed. They won't even consider things like, travel time, taxes at the end of the year, etc.

Makes you even wonder how many warriors on this forum even think about things like taxes, and expenses. I bet even her a lot of them don't.


My point is, a person can be great at sales, but not that good on knowing what they are worth. And there are people out there who will convince you they are worth alot but they aren't that good at sales.

So to say that good sales people will want more than $125 commission is not true. And will depend on each individual sales person, and their own beliefs about their value and skills.

@Ryan I say offer up that $125 commission. You could possibly land a good, or great sales person, or you might not. But, offering a higher commission does not guarantee that you will land a good or great sales person.

I'd say definitely raise what you're thinking of paying here. For a $600 site for example, I'd consider at least $200 - $300 to be fair, and largely because the lifetime value of what you're getting in a new client could be worth thousands if you properly sell them other services and work with them for at least a few years.

Shane it's not even about the sales person valuing themselves.

It's about what other companies will pay them.

I live in the Midwest thus the cost of living is small and I will give you real world examples of pay.

Car salesman around here make at least 30k/yr or they are canned. Even with a 55hr week that is still above $10/hr.
Best car salesman locally makes over $300k/yr. He owns cars like Ford GTs and Lambos.

Telemarketing around here is minimum $10/hr for incoming nonsales. Sales starts at $10/hr plus commission. I personally know a guy who will work at one of these places for a few weeks, get canned, then a month or so later is at another. When not working all he really seems to do is play PS3. He wouldn't get past a first interview most of the places I have worked but he can still get on the phones and make ok money.

Retail Sales like furniture and TVs when on commission pay very well. I managed at a regional company that sold furniture, electronics, and appliances. The lowest paid people were in the computer/camera dept. They made a minimum pay of $10/hr unless their commission was higher. The best sales people were quickly transfer out of that department but a few that stayed made in the $30 to $40k range. All other departments you would be fired if you were not higher then about $40k/yr. I knew guys in the TV department who spent half their time doing nothing who made $50k plus. The best salespeople here made well over $100k. That's right well over $100k/yr selling stuff that best buy paid their guys $10/hr to sell.

Of course this company needed to hire better people and train them better. I had two hour plus long interviews with them including video interviews with some of the VPs. Training for normal sales people was a week in a classroom setting in the corp office. They paid you $10/hr, put you in a hotel, and paid for your meals just to train you.

Finally we get to outside sales which can vary. The local cable company pays $10/hr plus commission for door to door sales last I knew. Most B2B sales will fire anyone who makes under $50k/yr.

I personally do RVs. I just recently moved into my position as full time internet marketing.
In sales the base pay is basically $21k/yr plus commission. This varies by which units you sold but on average the commission per unit for me was in the $250 to $300 range. We keep 5 salespeople on staff(4 right now since we need to hire a new 5th) and the pay spread year to year and salesman to salesman is in the $50k to $80k range.

All that said on a coastal market you can expect some of these same positions to pay maybe double what we get in the midwest.

Sales people don't really need to know their value since the market will tell them what they are worth. Any salesman with basic skills can end up walking into even the lower paying jobs ($10/hr plus commission) and easily make $30k to $40k a year.

People on this forum as a whole seem to compare pay to low end jobs. Maybe because that is all they have known. If you want to get good sales people your pay has t be competitive with the alternatives. And even a "mini" in the car world will pay a commission of $100 or better. And a "mini" is a complete failure. It literally is the minimum you can make per car. And considering that most car guys get 30% or more of gross I think you can see how bad a deal has to be to get a "mini". The dealership didn't even get to a nickle or dime deal for the salesman to get a "mini". And yes in the modern new car world there are things like holdbacks and direct dealer incentives that help the dealer on such slim paper deals.

You can't expect to get anything but the washouts for $125. Yes you might get lucky and get the kid who doesn't know he can sell but how long do you think he will last when he is making $500 a week and talks to a car salesman who points out he just made $500 on his last sale. If he can close 4/wk when he is going out to get them he knows he can close 4/wk when they are coming to him. This is when he will start doing the math. He will see he is making $26k/yr and is having to pay loads of that in taxes.

He will be at the car dealership in a heartbeat. Or the furniture store. Or the telemarketing office. Now that he knows he is worth more he will leave.

Pay that guy $300 per sale and the conversation will go different. He will hear the the car salesman talk. $500 per sale will sound good. But then he will hear the guy only sold 8 last month and 3 of those were "minis". He will start doing the math and realize he is paid better. He will have confidence. I mean hell the "professional" only sold 8 cars last month. He closed 16 deals last month. Then all of a sudden he starts closing 5/wk then 6. He is making great money and he isn't going anywhere. Hell he starts bragging and car salesman start calling you and seeing if you are hiring. And since you have staff or outsourcers to do the work you know you can scale it up. Now all of a sudden you have 10 guys selling for you and you are giving them a 60/40 split.

But if you pay a guy below market value you can never build a business like that. Pay him above market value and if he is good he will rise to the top. If not hire another and another till one rises. They are commission only and not employees so you can have as many as you want to test out.

misc32 that's an easy number to hit. Pm me

Well, you do make some good points Aaron.

However, my point still stands.

Just because you are offering a higher commission does not in no way guarantee that you will get a higher quality sales person.

I would like to say more (or argue my point more or less, lol) but I know that just won't be constructive for the forum and this thread. lol.

So I leave you guys with that.