Evan's Blog. Meh.

Give Your Employees Unlimited Vacation Days

Some look at business management techniques like this and think they are pipe dreams or flat out silly. I disagree: I think it’s a shift in our culture and a necessary one. Just as sales commissions train salespeople to focus on the wrong results, so do strict 9-5 environments and time-tracking. Productivity, skill, and value do not relate to minutes, hours, or days. One day I hope to lead an office with unrestricted vacation time, transparent salaries, and proper 15% time.

(via 9-bits)

Hey Evan - would love to hear your thoughts on eliminating commission for sales people. (via caterpillarcowboy)

The problem with this article is that it fails to account for the different way salespeople are measured and treated within an organization.  Salespeople are usually given a much shorter leash than other types of employees.  The pressure on salespeople to drive revenue is intense.

Salespeople (the good ones at least) are like professional poker players.  The chips poker players use and accumulate are how they keep score.  Talk to any serious poker player and she’ll tell you that chips have no monetary value to her.  They are simply a means to show the other players how much better than them she is.  Salespeople (like I said, the good ones) treat their commission in the same way.  It’s a mechanism to keep score and prove you are better than anyone else on the team.

Sales is a difficult, gut-wrenching, nerve-racking and at times ugly way to make a living.  It requires people to want to have a number on their back every single second of every single minute of every single day.  And if you start to fall off you’re gone.  Miss your number and it’s not “Oh, do better next time, you’re great!”  No.  Miss your number and it’s “Bye.”  The harsh reality of being a salesperson demands compensation that is tailored to the job.

This article also makes a number of claims - for example that salespeople spend 20% of their time calculating where they are in terms of their payout - that are ridiculous.  If the sales people in his company were spending 20% - 20%! - of their time figuring out how much they were making that quarter than that is a management failure not a compensation failure.  If any of my salespeople spent 20% of their time doing anything other than selling they would be fired immediately.

For what it’s worth my sales team is extremely cooperative.  In three years I’ve not seen anyone on my team throw anyone else under the bus for anything commission related.  I do believe this goes back to management not compensation.  Well managed sales teams do not have the problems the author describes.

Sales is war.  If you look at it any other way you are not cut out for it.  If you are not ready to fight - and I mean really fight - sales is not for you.  And because of this and of the way salespeople are measured by management, I am a strong believer in sales commissions.

(via section9)