B2B Buying – Talking to sales getting paid a full salary VS commission

Brian Cohen and Nelson Gilliat sat down to discuss the B2B Buying Process and how B2B Marketing Leaders like to buy from Software Vendors.

In this short video, our co-founder and CEO, Brian Cohen talks about his preference for talking to a salesperson that is paid a full salary compared to being on commission. Be sure to watch till the end and subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Author bio

Brian has 15+ years as a marketing strategist and visionary leader with a track record of transforming the marketing function and propelling it to new heights for several SaaS companies as an advisor, consultant, and employee. He has spearheaded highly successful campaigns that captivated target audiences, optimizing the marketing funnel to maximize conversion rates, and accelerate sales cycles.

Brian Cohen is also the Co-Founder and CEO at StoryLab.ai. You can find more info about Brian on LinkedIn.

Video transcript (auto-generated)

Your preference for sellers that are commissioned versus paid a full salary plus bonus, like a marketer, a person in operations, someone in HR.

If you were to know in advance. Let’s say on the website that you know the sales team is not commissioned. Their paycheck doesn’t depend on your decision to buy, and they’re being paid fully by their employer. How does that influence you? Do you have a preference? You know, like how would that affect you? How does that affect your experience so far knowing that you have been commissioned?

I think that’s a big one. I think when you know that somebody isn’t on commission, I think just flat out trust them more.

You don’t think that they’re gonna be pointing you to a specific solution. Or getting you to this higher price plan because they get paid better on it. You know that they’re, more so than a commission’s sales rep, are going to have your best interests at heart. And really feel like they are that friend that’s providing you value and gonna support you in making the right decision.

And it’s not to say that the seller is at fault. It’s just the incentive by their sales leader can likely incentivize a seller to pressure a sell or to make a poor sale and
give the buyer the wrong product. Or try to jack up the price and the buyer can sense that and the buyer comes to the table wary of that and is on their guard and
is not conducive to kicking things off that way. And so it probably harms the win rate. Probably harms the sales cycle. It probably harms how much they actually
purchase.

I don’t want to buy too much because you know, maybe you’re over-promising and gonna underdeliver or something.

Overpricing. There’s always this,  especially when prices aren’t on the website right there’s always this feeling the somebody’s charging high so they can try to Discount down. And then you’re stuck trying to figure out where is that balance. What is that number?

What if it was full transparency? What if there was all if these AEs were paid a salary so they don’t feel like ‘if I don’t get this person to this plan
I’m not going to eat this month’.

That’s a bad incident of knowing that if somebody doesn’t take, if you don’t put somebody up that right it’s going to be a detriment to you and that’s any human. If we’re put in that situation, you’re gonna try to make sure that you can eat.

That’s really the whole purpose about quoting commission and why sales is the only departments. I have quoting commission is to pressure sell the buyer and part of that is like you know and one of the reasons why pricing is not transparent on the website is that given the 1980 sales lead model they’re trying to just force buyers into sales and sales can maybe overcharge them and try to get a higher margin. And then sales might get a higher, well because half of their paycheck is being withheld then they’re going to try and charge as much as they can because that means that their compensation is tied to that so that at the outset for a buyer is very suspicious because not transparent pricing and that your salesperson might be trying to charge more just to get their paycheck.

It is an awful buying experience and you go to like a restaurant right and there’s no pricing on the menu how does that make you feel? When there’s no pricing your immediate sense is someone is trying to put something over me and that’s really terrible. So if companies just paid their sellers properly with a full salary plus bonus like every other employee and then advertise that on the website, first of all put your price on the website and then advertise it on the website for buyers who do need sales help that that sales is non-commissioned and is paid a full salary plus bonus.

That’s gonna be a much better competitive advantage for you and for buyers to be like that’s going to be a nice sales experience. I’m going to go there and also you’ll attract and motivate and retain sellers.

I was just gonna say that. Look at the other side of that coin. We talked about how the buyers impacted right. But imagine that for many of the sellers how that feels. That experience of knowing that you have to do that. As I said earlier, we’re humans. We have morals and integrity and so that doesn’t make us feel good when we’re putting the situation to do things that we know aren’t right for the other person. And a lot of sellers do the right thing despite the incentive set out by them by their sales leaders

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