I keep hiring sales people who are super enthusiastic and overpromising on what they deliver. I put them through a trial month (no base + commission only) and they do not close a single deal, Even though the commission structure is amazing and I’m incentivizing them through the roof. We experienced sales people are asking for a base and commission but I’m scared that I’ll end up having a base and the same thing will end up happening. What am I doing wrong?

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Sidenote, why would anyone work for you when 100% of firms pay base+commission

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This completely - you're scraping the bottom of the barrel if you're hiring only commission-only salespeople. Hard to find any experienced talent that would be remotely interested in picking up this gig with all of that downside risk.

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No matter how attractive the commission structure seems to you, the underlying message to your hires is less appealing: "I don't belive in you. But I'll give you one month to change my mind."
Trust in them, and trust your own judgement. Very few people can slot into a new business culture and deliver results within days. Reward them appropriately. And don't imagine that the risk is all on your side.

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What is your current sales process like ? The people are hardly ever the problem

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Couple questions to ask here. How does the onboarding look like? Have the founders sat in on these initial calls and supported them throughout that first month? Does the messaging resonate with buyer personas? Are the leads sufficiently nurtured from the marketing-side? Is the sales enablement tech stack robust enough? Do you have solid logos and references to leverage?

If the product is "selling itself" and you have clear fit, even mediocre salespeople will be able to sell like crazy. I would seriously recommend spending more resources and time developing that playbook and structure, and stick to ramping up one full-time salesperson at a time so they can replicate the founders success.

You’re losing any chance of hiring a quality AE by structuring it like this. You get what you pay for at the end of the day.

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Completely agree.

i have been ion sales for over 20 plus years . when you have no base in your compensation plan it tends to effect the employees commitment level to the position . my suggestion is take some of they incentives and deploy it into salaries that are reasonable . this should stabilize the commitment level which will help sales

sorry for the spelling errors

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