How do I pay sales commissions to sales representatives in a services business?

Did you miss our case study from when we assisted a full service marketing agency to set the right sales compensation plan for their first Sales BDM hire? 

September 2018

Business Growth Newsletter Edition #7 - Q1 2018/19 

The right sales compensation plan is critical to your first hire with a new or growing business. Some of the considerations and challenges raised in this example are particularly relevant to business owners or directors who have come from a non sales background who might be unsure where to start.

Are you too busy working in your business to have time to work on your personal finances?

In any business, aside from business owners only focussing on increasing the business sales and profits, a key part of any conscious awareness is with risk management in terms of exit strategy and protection. With all this hard work you put into running your business and not having a personal financial plan for where to direct this wealth what is the real objective of running your business?

I see time and time again business owners not understanding their plan, where to creating wealth outside of the business or getting advice from friends at a BBQ.

Most employees have a superannuation fund, so their retirements is kind of being looked after. How about your retirement and who is taking care of this?

We partner with the best in the industry and I recommend meeting with one of our associate partners in wealth advisory from Macquarie Private Wealth that looks at businesses like yours and their personal objectives in ensuring you are maximising the hard work you put into your business. With your interests in mind, they look at areas such as investments, structures such as SMSF, and ways to minimise tax. I understand making time is challenging if it's not prioritised but often it's when you don't expect an unforseen event or life event to happen or someone close in your professional or personal circles that force you to take stock about your business and personal risk position. Have you thought about some of the possible real what if scenarios to consider the impact for yourself but also those who you care about in your life?

Is your business partnership agreement watertight in the event of unforseen events or circumstances?

Some key questions to ask yourself if you haven't already as part of your business risk planning and strategy:

1) How profits are to be shared?

2) What would happen if your business partner was to pass away unexpectedly, what debt did he/she carry and what impact would this have on servicing your existing customer base. Who would take on this share of the business? Could it be the wife that you may not get along with?

3) What exit strategies are there if you want to sell the business? What exit strategies are there if your business partner wants to sell?

4) What if someone is not pulling their weight in the business, what do you have currently have in place to control this?

We are fortunate to partner independently with Macquarie Private Wealth that looks at many aspects of a business and one such thing is business contingencies. Have the right foundations in place is paramount so each partner knows the agreement and what contingencies are in place should anything unexpected happen. Everything might be ok now, but like with any of the questions I had for you above it can all change pretty quickly. These things when not applied keep any business owner up at night when an agreement is not in place.

The outcome: by having an agreement allows you to focus on the task at hand, the operations of the business.

If you haven't reviewed your business arrangements recently or made time yet to look at it, I do encourage you to allow our associate business advisors to connect with you to see if they can help you with this part of your business. Alchemise Consulting is unique as we want to look at every aspect of your business.