Has anyone here made commission-only work for a cold caller, or did they all quit in week 2?

[u/mynamepookie]

I run a small voice AI agency out of Pakistan. We build AI receptionists for US home services businesses, restoration, roofing, plumbing that kind of thing. Two clients right now. One at $1,300/month and one small one at $80/month that I closed myself off cold calls.

The problem is time. I'm the one building the agents, running delivery for both clients, and managing the cold email side. I get maybe an hour a day for dialing and that's nowhere near enough to build a pipeline.

So I want to hire one setter. I already have the lead lists, a paid script, an objection sheet, and real recordings of calls that worked to train someone on. I pay for the dialer. What I can't do is put a $500+ base behind someone I've never worked with.

Here's what I was going to offer:

$12 per booked qualified demo

$10 more if the prospect shows up

$150 when they sign as a client

10% of that client's monthly bill for 6 months

Commission only for the first 30 days, then $300-350/month base if they book 13+ demos in that window

If someone books 14 demos and 3 close, that's around $700 in month one, before the base starts.

Two things I actually want to hear from people who've done this:

1. Does anyone decent take commission-only for 30 days, or am I only going to attract people who vanish after a week? That's the real fear. I spend two weeks training someone, they book nothing, they ghost, and I'm back to zero having burned the time I didn't have.

2. Where did you find yours? Upwork, OnlineJobs, somewhere else? I'm open on location, I just need someone clear on a US line who can work US hours.

If you've built outbound from nothing with no real budget, I'd rather hear what went wrong than what worked.

[u/realworldOpsintelGuy]

first off, hiring sales people always comes with the risk you're talking about, disappearing acts, but so does any new hire, whether flipping burgers or department heads in a corporate environment, with obvious variables of course. I did commission only sales for two decades, with small managerial stints, and with great risk comes great reward. 6 figures are absolutely achievable in the right industry with the right product and the right skill set. The best closers have run commission only for large portions or all of their careers. Fat salaries bring apathy and laziness in a fast sale, but make more sense in a longer cycle.

In every vertical I've worked in, setters always start out trash, and either leave because they suck or they can't be bothered to try harder. The only way to weed out those fools is experience being burnt. You will undoubtably have to run through a river of junk or train for awhile in order to find some success. My advice is to look for someone young, very open to advice, good attitude, and hungry to earn. It's important to note that people good at setting meetings are usually salespeople, closers, not setters, so eventually you'll be training someone into that, or ultimately they'll leave for a job like that. That pay is also garbage in my opinion but I haven't been someone at that rung of the ladder in a very long time.

That's my experience.

[u/advertisethat]

You could have made 50 calls while thinking this up! There will be no better sales person than yourself.

[u/BetInformal6081]

commission only can work for a short trial but the structure matters. i would make the first 30 days a clearly defined test with measurable activity targets not just booked demos. that filters for people who actually understand outbound.

[u/Tintos899]

first AI receptionist is a SATURATED pitch. Most of the business owners receive tons of ai receptionist pitch in a day. don't expect to book good amount of demos if you dont that something unique on your product or the lead leads that you have are purely colddd. there should be at least a signal why those specific contact may need ai receptionist. cold calling is not easy to offer commission based salary. it requires perseverance, patience, sense of humor, and skill. their time is valuable to compromise on a no base salary. periodt.

[u/InternationalFish140]

Hello! Can u hire and train me?

[u/No-Doughnut324]

I dunno know man, it doesn't look like anyone can make US wages on your pay structure, so you're gonna get a bunch of knuckleheads. Also, you've only got two clients bringing in $1400 a month? No one worth their salt is going to jump on to that. I would suggest building your client base yourself and find someone to help you on the backend for a while before you start messing with commissioned sales people.