Pay salespeople's commissions on customer outcomes, not signed orders!

Hello Sales Reset Community

How many customers know that most salespeople are paid commissions based on how much they sell?

Everybody knows about salespeople’s commissions! 😀

It’s how the business world works. The more a salesperson sells, the more they earn. It’s a win-win for both the salesperson and their employer.

Perhaps not always so much for their customers … 🙁

The customer and salesperson's priorities are not fully aligned. The customer prioritises outcomes. But there’s a risk that the salesperson might prioritise winning the order to increase their income.

Some salespeople will inevitably be motivated to sell products and services that might not be best for their customers.

What can we do to fix this misalignment of priorities between salespeople and customers?

Eliminating commissions would demotivate salespeople. For many, the chief attraction of selling as a career is the unlimited earning potential.

How you'll improve sales results this week

• Implications of Outcome Based Commissions

• Sales Reset Prioritises Measurable Customer Succes …

• Sell as if your commission will be paid on outcome …

• Potential Challenges

• Join Our FREE Sales Reset Together Community

  • We’ve just opened the doors!

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

Implications of Outcome Based Commissions

What would happen if salespeople’s commissions were based on customers achieving the expected outcomes from their decision to purchase?

If customers achieve even greater success than expected, the salesperson might earn even more commission.

How would salespeople's priorities, selling processes and behaviours change if their commission was based on whether customers achieve their desired outcomes?

And if customers knew about these changed incentive arrangements, how might they respond differently to salespeople?

Sales Reset Prioritises Measurable Customer Success

At Sales Reset, one of our key priorities is to coach customers to define measurable outcomes during our sales process.

These clearly defined outcomes become the central component of compelling proposals that salespeople co-create with their customers.

If you and your company become genuinely skilled at accurately defining these outcomes, you might begin a managed shift toward a growing proportion of outcome-based commissions.

Sell as if your commission will be paid on outcomes

We’re at the practical part of this newsletter!

At Sales Reset, we’re convinced that connecting commissions to customer outcomes will become increasingly possible in the future.

In the meantime, in every selling conversation, sell as if your commission depends not just on winning the sale but on your customers achieving their desired outcomes.

Outcome-based commissions presumably mean you would take MUCH greater care to define these outcomes accurately!

You would be incentivised to develop MEASURABLE customer success outcomes that your customers could report. These reported outcomes could be used to calculate your commission payments!

Here’s what this all means in practice:

• Put more effort into COACHING your customers to define the outcomes they need more accurately.

• Develop better skills at CO-CREATING proposals as you draw in more stakeholders to ensure outcomes reflect everybody’s priorities.

• Then, you can maintain momentum in every selling opportunity as you CONCLUDE each conversation with sufficient clarity about who needs to do what and by when.

Potential Challenges

Customers don’t know outcomes: Members of our community report that it’s hard to have outcome conversations with customers. Especially if we’re speaking with people in relatively more junior roles, they might be unaware of preferred outcomes.

Making things measurable is hard: It takes a whole range of knowledge and perspectives to become skilled at developing ways to measure outcomes. You’ll need help from a range of subject matter experts.

Your company’s sales processes and structures: Your company’s structure, sales processes and standardised sales proposals might work against this way of selling. Your company might state explicitly that customer success is not your priority because other people are in customer success roles. They might state that your job is to focus exclusively on winning the signed purchase order.

Join Our FREE Sales Reset Together Community

If you like our approach to selling and want to learn more, join our free Sales Reset Together community.

We’ve just opened the doors!

It’s mid-September 2024, and we’ve been developing and testing all the major parts of our community with our Founder Members in recent months. We’ve just opened the doors!

Here’s what you’ll get as a member:

• Community: You'll get immediate access to our private online community.

• Online Training: Access to online lessons, including our Customer Success 3CSelling Quick Start course.

• LIVE! Events: Join us in our LIVE! Events online and access recordings.

• Proposal Reviews: You can request confidential proposal reviews with video feedback and recommendations for improvement.

• Learning & Earning Plan: We'll help and support you in developing your learning and earning plan using your Sales Reset Mastery self-assessment results.

• Support: You can ask questions and get support in our discussion forums.

End of Week - Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this Weekly Sales Reset valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

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