Art Post
In the world of MPS, commission for clicks is the common method pay compensation for reps. Most of the time commissions are paid off the monthly revenue click from systems that are under a MPS agreement, and in some cases commissions are paid one time for the first month’s worth of billing.
The copier commission world is a completely different story; reps are either paid on the percentage of gross profit or a percentage of the revenue for each copier that is sold.
Traditionally, copier reps can also make commissions on the maintenance or cost-per-page agreement with commissions ranging from 5-10 percent of the annual agreement. In recent months I’ve heard some grumblings that dealers are pulling back and not offering commissions on maintenance agreements or cost-per-page programs, which I find surprising since maintenance and cost-per-page agreements are the life blood of the dealership.
If I were not getting a commission to sell a cost-per-page agreement or a maintenance agreement I would be hard pressed to sell an agreement at the time of the sale. Matter of fact, if I thought the break and fix model was better for the customer I would make the recommendation to go that way. My thought process is why muddy the waters and fight the battle with pricing on the maintenance or cost per page agreement if I’m not getting paid on that?
Personally, I would like to see some kind of ongoing revenue stream for the reps in our industry. We would be more inclined to place new systems that would increase clicks (which goes along with recommending a new solution that will increase clicks), and monitor our clicks (uh oh, XYZ Systems prints are down 10 percent, let’s find out why).
Would 5 percent of the monthly or quarterly billing for each customer be too much to ask for? I think not considering that a customer producing 120K prints per year would net the dealership about $1,300 annually. If the quarterly billing was $325 per then the rep would be paid $16.25 for that account and the annual payout would be $65.
I’m thinking reps would be more inclined not to move from dealer to dealer because they could stand to lose a sizable portion of their revenue stream and would then need to start all over again, and we know what a drag that is. But for the dealers that don’t have a commission for click plan and a competing dealer does, well that maybe just enough incentive to break the camel’s back and you’ll never have any long term reps.
A recent poll of Print4Pay Hotel members finds that it’s evident that most reps are in favor of this type of compensation. The poll, Has the Time Come for Sales People to be paid on Click Revenue? found that 79 percent said yes, 13 percent said no, and 8 percent were not sure.
Eight out of 10 reps would like to be paid on click revenue. To me, commission for clicks, it’s the smart alternative to keep clients and good sales people on board for many years.
Good selling!
