Commission/Incentives
I currently hold a business development position at a small company. I was originally hired 2 years ago in a product development position but demonstrated strength in the area of business development and given the needs of the company, I moved into that position (almost immediately). There are a few other members of our 'business development team' all with varying responsibilities (and all hired after me). I am primarily responsible for writing competitive proposals for government funding. I also do sales briefs occasionally and have contact with potential clients (although other members of the team have sales as a more primary role). I am currently not on a bonus or commission schedule and I know definitively that the other members of the team make higher base salaries in addition to their commissions. My boss even pointed out that I have brought in the most business to the company recently because of several successful proposals. Is it fair/typical to expect some sort of commission/incentive/bonus for writing successful proposals or should I address this increased competency by requesting a higher base salary. Also, is it fair to expect commission if I bring in a sale - even if it is not the primary focus of my job. If so, what would be a typical commission rate/percentage I could expect. Thanks for any and all advice you may have to offer - I want to make sure I am well prepared when I approach my boss about an increase in compensation.
If your primary responsibility is not sales, you should not receive a commission on sales. The commission is meant to be an incentive to make more sales and the company should not give you an incentive to move away from your primary function. However if your proposals are part of winning sales, a bonus/incentive would depend on the degree to which your proposal plays in winning the contract. if you take what sales engineers and sales reps say and put it down on paper, I don't think you deserve much. If you prepare proposals from scratch (pricing, terms, etc...) but the sales reps do the heavy lifting part of negotiating and tweaking until they contract is won, you may deserve a small piece. If you are more involved and management feels they could not win a contract without you, there should be some incentive for you. In addition to what Chet wrote, with which I agree, I think you could have an informal chat with your boss about developing a bonus plan that rewards you for your part in helping bring in sales based on the quality of the proposals you've prepared. I think you can politely make the case that had it not been for your proposals the sales probably wouldn't have been made. But as Chet pointed out, I don't think I'd call it a "commission," but a "bonus." How much that bonus should be is difficult to say. It could be a percentage, but I'd think it should probably be considerably less than 5% of the total value of the sale, probably more along the lines of 1% or 2% range. By discussing the creation of a bonus program, you're connecting your performance to successful sales instead of asking for an increase in salary - which I think is more likely to appeal to your boss - a bonus tied to results, in other words. The approach I'd take with the boss would be to say something like, "Since you've been very generous in your comments about my contribution to bringing in more business, I wonder if 'we' could discuss the creation of a bonus plan that will allow me a small share in those new sales?" Paul W. Barada The Negotiation Expert Thanks for the great advice! | |
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