I've read articles from credible people talking about building commission-less sales cultures and I like the idea.
But from experience in a few different companies, one of which involved me directly working with a decent-sized sales team, adverse selection is empirically a major issue.
Among the things I feel like I've learned is that the sales people who are most engaged with the product space and can converse most intelligently about the product you're building are not necessarily the people who are best at actually driving revenue, and that a fledgling product for which the numbers don't exist to guarantee a pretty steady stream of commissions will drag very intelligent-sounding ineffective salespeople out of the woodwork.
There seems to be a species of salesperson that has evolved to sell executive management on continuing to pay them while blaming the rest of the company for their inability to close deals, rather than selling prospective customers on a product. I've had the misfortune of working with some of them. At the time, they even had me on their side! It's really quite creepy in retrospect.
I'd go way out of my way to avoid attracting the sort of salesperson who is driven by anything other than transactionally closing deals as quickly as possible, just to avoid the possibility of having to work with someone like that again.
But from experience in a few different companies, one of which involved me directly working with a decent-sized sales team, adverse selection is empirically a major issue.
Among the things I feel like I've learned is that the sales people who are most engaged with the product space and can converse most intelligently about the product you're building are not necessarily the people who are best at actually driving revenue, and that a fledgling product for which the numbers don't exist to guarantee a pretty steady stream of commissions will drag very intelligent-sounding ineffective salespeople out of the woodwork.
There seems to be a species of salesperson that has evolved to sell executive management on continuing to pay them while blaming the rest of the company for their inability to close deals, rather than selling prospective customers on a product. I've had the misfortune of working with some of them. At the time, they even had me on their side! It's really quite creepy in retrospect.
I'd go way out of my way to avoid attracting the sort of salesperson who is driven by anything other than transactionally closing deals as quickly as possible, just to avoid the possibility of having to work with someone like that again.