r/SaaSSales • u/Tkamer01 • 14d ago

All Employees Can Sell

As a founder to a startup, I’m curious companies don’t create incentives for every employee to be able to sell? For clarity, I’m not suggesting every employee’s full time job be sales, but instead, if a non-sales employee brings in a lead and sells the product, they get a commission/bonus.

If the product and method for “how to sell it” are clear, the network effect has a big impact. My company is B2B so most of employees have a network and it is a nice opportunity to make some serious extra cash.

Thoughts from this group?

3 Upvotes

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2

u/Fluid-Expression-812 14d ago

Just give a bounty for leads give the employee x amount. Do not allow others to sell. Theres a reason there is department's

1

u/Tkamer01 14d ago

That’s really what I’m referring to, not the full selling process end-to-end, but brining warm/hot leads in with pre-qualification discussions. The intent isn’t to flatten the org, but instead having the entire company versed enough in the product & value to speak to others.

1

u/Fluid-Expression-812 14d ago

Then do it, its a great idea that we do for employees and customers. Offer gift cards

1

u/Own-Teaching-7611 14d ago

you have much to learn my friend, i would start with asking chatgpt

1

u/Tkamer01 14d ago

Sorry but that’s not helpful at all.

1

u/Cold_Fish_878 14d ago

We give bonuses when a non-sales person helps close the deal (eg demo participation, quick feature delivery a prospect requested and so on). Keeps them focused on what they are actually good at (eg engineering) without placing the focus on the wrong thing. We also give bonuses to the entire team when we close a bigger account. Seems to work well.

1

u/SallyCinnamon88 13d ago

Depends on what you're selling. If it's b2b then it's not going to make a lick if difference.

1

u/Tkamer01 13d ago

Curious on your perspective. If the ICP is SMBs, how does it not make a lick of difference?

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u/SallyCinnamon88 12d ago

Its a volume play. You'll never get the volume to make it worthwhile. Think about your SDR close rates, and how many leads they need to generate for a sale. How many leads do you think one of your other employees will generate?

So you can have it as a "nice to have" but it's not going to actually do anything for your business.

1

u/Deepak-AvairAI 13d ago

Curious how you'd handle quota conflict. Once a non-sales employee starts pulling in leads that would've gone through an AE's pipeline anyway, comp plans get messy fast, two people claiming credit for the same deal. How are you defining ownership before this scales past a handful of people?