An essay by John Melonakos
Compensating Salespeople
Salesloft put up an awesome post today that shares detailed information about the compensation structure for their salespeople. Go read that; seriously it’s good.
Their process consists of biz dev reps prospecting to qualify leads which feed into sales executives who close the deals. Quotas are set at each stage and a clear promotional plan is laid out with merit-based ladder climbing. It’s a great system.
Yesterday I wrote about how general marketing principles have to be adapted to technical computing. The same adaptations hold for selling into the technical computing market. Here are thoughts on how it is different:
- The initial conversation with a prospect is often the most important; it is hard to unleash a junior sales person into a first touch with a client. It can be done, but extra focus on training the BDRs to understand how to speak the technical languages of the domains touching our market is hard.
- SaaS-based business models are not prevalent in technical computing, so compensation plans have to be modified to address other types of business models.
- Like the Salesloft post, base ranges in the $35-45k range along with heavy emphasis on commission based compensation is the norm.
- Salespeople in technical computing either need to be very technical themselves, or need to be dangerous and know when to pull in technical pre-sales help.
What are your thoughts on compensating salespeople in technical computing?