Idlewyld

Why do we pay sales commissions?

9-bits:

So we did it, and no catastrophes struck us. No earthquakes. No plagues, and no one quit. In the year since we dropped the commission system our sales have gone up. In fact, four of the last five months have been record months.

Fog Creek describes the pitfalls of paying salespeople commissions, but misses my favorite argument: Commissions give salespeople a skewed value system. Sales is an incredibly important (and often overlooked) part of your user experience. By telling salespeople that a sale (and revenue, to a further extent) is their ultimate priority, they put customer experience second. It is a problem akin to dark patterns in UI design: By only testing the quantitative and not qualitative, you run a significant risk of slowly and quietly killing your brand.

Absolutely fascinating.