It would be great if everyone we hired really understood the importance of delivering a great sales pitch, overcoming objections and offering the customer options. Too often, however, it is easier for them to buy into the customer's excuses or skip the detailed presentations in their haste to get the job done. After all, they are getting paid the same either way. But what if that wasn't the case, what if you had an easy way to reward people that met or exceeded their minimum sales goals? Well with the commissions feature in ESC, you can do just that. Let's take a quick look at how it works.
In order to setup commissions you will first need to determine your commission schedule. ESC supports up to a 3-tier system, so that you can give greater commissions to those that sell more. To do this, go to Sales → Enter Commission Codes and click the Add New button.
As you can see in this example, I setup my commissions so that if a salesperson sells up to $30,000.00 they will get an 8% commission. If they sell between $30,001.00 and $45,000.00 they will receive a 9% commission on everything that they sold - not just the part that was above $30,001.00.
The dollar ranges you use for this calculation should be based on your sales goals. So if you calculate commissions monthly, make the values here reflect what you know (first range), hope (second range) and pray (third range) the employee can sell in that time period.
A powerful thing to note is that you can have as many of these codes as you want. For example, when I set this up I created a separate code for technicians that has much lower goals on it. You could even have a separate code for each salesperson if you need it.
Once your commission codes are set the next thing you will need to do is apply them to your employees. This can be achieved by recalling each employee on the Enter Technicians screen (Dispatch → Enter Technicians) and adding the appropriate commission code.
The last thing to consider when setting up commissions is what parts and billing codes are exempt from commissions. If you have any items that you don't want to calculate commissions on, be sure to uncheck the Calculate Commissions box on the Enter Billing Codes or Inventory Entry screen.
Once your setup is complete, you can start calculation commissions by making sure the Salesperson field is filled out on every invoice and credit memo you create. Then run the new Commission Report (Sales → Reports → Commission Report) to when you are ready to pay commissions to see how much each employee earned. Be sure to limit the report to an Entry Date or Invoice Date range that matches the time period you had in mind when creating the commission codes. For example: if you pay your employees biweekly, you should run this report for that same two week time period.
Written by Eric Rausin
Featured in November 2011 Newsletter
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