A: Notice that most of the activity from your sales staff comes around paydays. If I sell a job this week and have a chance to get some money from that job, there is more incentive for me to sell that job this week than next.
I also believe that whenever you run payroll in your company, the salesperson should be included if they've sold jobs during that period. Making a salesperson wait until the job's been completed or all the invoices have come in is ridiculous. It's tough on their morale and their budget. When a salesperson sells the job -- meaning you have a signed agreement complete with specs and deposit -- he's entitled to a portion of that commission.
I used to pay 75% of the anticipated profit on the next payday, and 25% of the anticipated profit was left in an escrow account, settled approximately every 90 days.
--Phil Rea has conducted more than 13,200 in-home sales calls and trained more than 1,750 salespeople. He shares his sales strategies each month with salespeople across the country through his MasterMind Program. For more information, or to receive "How to Quickly Increase Your Sales Without Being the Lowest Bidder," call (800) 613-4150.
