Your Commission Structure Isn't a Motivation Problem
A confusing commission plan won't fix a low-effort salesperson, and a great one won't save a broken product. Simplify the structure first, then evaluate the person against a clean number.
I sat in on a call last week where a client was ready to fire their salesperson over low effort. Fair complaint, probably true. But when we pulled up the actual commission plan, I understood why the guy wasn't hustling. Nobody would.
It was a sliding scale tied to revenue tiers, recalculated monthly, with enough moving parts that even the owner couldn't tell you what a $50,000 deal was worth without opening a spreadsheet. If your top salesperson can't do commission math in his head standing in a customer's driveway, the plan is broken before you ever get to the person.
This comes up constantly with clients running service businesses. The instinct when sales are soft is to blame the rep. Sometimes that's right. But most of the plans I look at would demotivate a great salesperson too, because they reward complexity instead of results.
Why does a complicated commission plan kill performance?
A salesperson needs to know, in real time, what closing a deal is worth. Not eventually, not after the books close for the month. Now, mid-conversation, while they're deciding whether to push for the upsell or let a discount slide.
Sliding tiers break that. The rep hits $400k in a month and doesn't know if the next sale bumps him into a better tier or if that kicks in at $500k. So he stops thinking about the tier at all and just does the minimum. You built a system meant to reward top performance and it produces the opposite, because nobody can hold the math in their head while they're working.
The fix we landed on was blunt: flat commission rate, period. No tiers. Then layer milestone bonuses on top — hit $500k in trailing sales, get a bonus. Hit it again, get another one. Simple enough that the rep can calculate his own check before he leaves the driveway.
Should you fix the plan before you fix the person?
Yes, and in that order. You can't fairly evaluate someone against a plan that confuses everyone, including you.
Once the new structure was on the table, the conversation shifted. It wasn't "is this guy motivated," it was "here's a flat rate, here's the bonus threshold, here's a 90-day landing period to ramp into it — now show me the numbers." That's a real evaluation. The old plan never gave anyone that.
We also talked about what a soft landing looks like for a new or transitioning salesperson. Ninety days to six months at a guaranteed base while they build pipeline, then a full transition to commission-only or a hybrid. Long enough that someone competent isn't punished for the ramp curve. Short enough that you find out fast if they're not going to make it.
What's the actual bar for a salesperson to earn their spot?
For most of the service businesses I work with, one to two new clients a month is the number that keeps the business healthy. Not ten. Not a hockey-stick chart. One to two, consistently, is enough to sustain growth without overextending operations.
That's a useful bar because it's checkable. At the end of Q3, did the rep bring in enough new business to cover his own comp? If yes, keep going. If no, you've got a real decision — commission-only, restructure the role, or move on — and it's based on a number instead of a feeling.
The mistake is skipping straight to that decision without first asking whether the comp plan gave the person a fair shot. Constrain theory works here too: if the compensation structure is confusing, if role design forces someone to choose between hourly stability and commission risk with no clear tradeoff, that's the bottleneck. Fix the bottleneck before you fire the person standing next to it.
What does a good plan actually look like on paper?
Flat rate on every closed deal. Milestone bonus at a clean revenue number, not a sliding scale. A defined ramp period with a guaranteed floor. And a single number — new clients per month, or revenue per quarter — that tells you whether the person is working out.
That's it. No twelve-tab spreadsheet. No monthly recalculation nobody trusts. A salesperson should be able to tell you what a deal is worth before they've finished shaking the customer's hand.
The client I mentioned is whiteboarding the new structure this week with the field team, aiming to have it live before the next quarter starts. The old spreadsheet gets deleted, not archived.
