Comments on: Sales maggots working on commission.

By: Standard Mischief

Standard Mischief — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 01:47:13 +0000

Circuit City hasn?t had commissioned salespeople since 2003.

That’s funny, I thought I spoke plainly and it seemed he was clearly stonewalling, I wonder what his motivation was then?

By: Michael Hampton

Michael Hampton — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 23:45:05 +0000

Circuit City hasn’t had commissioned salespeople since 2003.

By: Standard Mischief

Standard Mischief — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:34:36 +0000

At one of the places I worked at, we ordered supplies from a salesperson who worked on commission. On his last week working for the company, he took one of our orders, and promptly send it three times to three different locations. The way shipping and receiving worked at my place of employment, well they had no idea what should be arriving so they signed for everything. You could Fed-Ex them a box of turds and they would sign for it.

The salesperson was counting on the fact that it would take months to sort out the confusion, and by that time he would already have cashed his check. He was right. Took us over six months.

Although I believe performance based pay as a whole is a good idea, it does sometimes change the dynamics.

By: Leah

Leah — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:20:22 +0000

While I think the idea of trying to get all your daily money on commission is horribly (you get pushy, rude people that way sometimes), I think having a base hourly wage (say, minimum) plus a small commission for sales really drives people to help customers and try their hardest.

The problem comes with unscrupulous employees who try to upsell anyone. That really sucks, and I’m not sure how to control for that. Ideally, the small commission would encourage employees to work hard and be helpful (unlike the “hey, we’re chatting here” type of people that often work in retail and can’t be bothered to help). Ideally, this commission would also encourage workers to become knowledgeable about their products and find pride in setting customers up with exactly the right system/product/etc and no more.