Question

Topic: E-Marketing

Forum Selling: How To Compensate Your Reps?

Posted by Anonymous on 1/19/2010 at 3:17 PM ET 125 Points
Private Message/Forum Selling: What are some of the best ways to compensate sales people?

Our client is a large-scale reseller of consumer electronics. They actively participate in several enthusiast forums and have been asked to (and occasionally do) sell special, non-published deals on products that are MSRP only.

We would like to recommend a program to help encourage this as a new sales channel but we'd first like to suggest sales compensation schemes that work.

I'd be interested in everyone's comments / experience / ideas about the pros and cons of opening up this type of channel and how to create a comp structure that rewards this type of sales effort.

One idea: offer a flat $$ per sales fee that is essentially at or below the incremental cost per sale with tradtional PPC channels. Another idea is to give a bonus based on $ above a target price.

The idea (obviously) is to generate more revenues without violating the spirit (too much) of published MSRP pricing rules.

Note: we're NOT looking to change the agency/client comp formula. This is strictly to get best practice suggestions for how the client can compensate his sales REPs for this type of private message/forum sales activity.
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  • Posted by Future Focus on 1/27/2010 at 10:50 AM Accepted
    The best sales people like large commission to salary (or no salary) ratios. Good sales people are motivated by cash and autonomy.

    The cash must be enough to spur them to action. Also special bonuses for volume and time sensitive PO's ($100.00 to the first salesperson to get a sale of X dollars within the next 2 hrs./Pin the $100.00 bill up for all to see). Team bonuses. Create competition between the salespeople. This drives sales big time. Sales people value being the top dog (peer recognition) even more than the $$$.

    A sales perspective: Coffee is for Closers ("Glenn Garry, Glenn Ross")

    I have sold in this environment, trust me it works and it's a win/win.
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