So I have 2 techs working for me and when I had a commission system they did pretty good until they ****** me off one day and I stopped giving commissions.
I would like to give them the drive to earn more by extra effort but can't quite figure out the science and right percentage.
Do any business owners out there give commissions?
I can't give credit to one tech for a job since sometimes one finishes another's work. I can't give them a credit for selling the job since I sell most of the jobs. I would hate to deal with a super complicated calculation or give them percentage from my jobs either.
To be or not to be....
I've tried about everything and commission was a big PITA for many reasons. No one wants to work on 100% commissions as they have bills to pay and don't want to assume the risk of ownership. So now they want a base salary plus commission. Well that can be real unfare to you if you are not careful. Then you have the issue of who and how to delineate the commission among your employees. We gets what lead? You find one guys gets all the jobs and the other guy bitches as his salary is $100 less.
Then their is the 1-2 hrs each week extra it takes to calculate payroll and over time has to be paid on commissions toooooo....I found this out the hard way.
I would not even consider a commission unless I could not be in the store. If I could be in the store, just keep them busy. Else forget about it.
If you cannot be in the store then get a manager and pay them to keep them busy and still forget the commissions.
The closest model that works for our industry that I have seen is the auto repair Service writer who sells the work and the mechanic who gets only hourly pay to preform it. When the company hits $1200 per day maybe everyone gets $20 extra in their check the first time. Then raise it to $1300 for $20 and then raise it to $1400...each time you hit a new service only (not hardware sales) level give a bonus for the guys doing a good job.
In the end for me it was to have a good manager ( a women if you can find one) and she keeps the guys working. Then pay a flat hourly, minimize over time.
We bought a 12 pack of soda for each employee each week so they woudln't need to leave for breaks....Smoking off site outside but I avoid smokers as the worst productive employees you will ever find.
Crackys work the best but all your tools and some customers computers will disappear....
Smokers will take 10 or 15 breaks a day when you are not looking they are totally worthless. Never hire a smoker. If you do hire them for $2 per hour less than anyone else.
if you do try to do a commission then I would work it like this: I would pay minimum wage as base salary and then pay enough so that they could almost double that income with commission. So if $8 is minimum in your state and they fix 5 computers for $12 ea commission then they would earn an extra $60 for that 8 hrs shift. Their pay would be $124 for that 8 hr shift. On days you were slow they might make only 3 computers commission helping you to keep costs down and when you did 6 or 7 computers per tech per day they would make even more. On hardware I don't think i would pay at all as you can move someone from a $200 repair to a $500 sale and make less gross profit on the hardware sale....If you give anything for hardware make it like 2% of hardware sales on complete systems. No reason to pay a commission on video cards, ram and such..
If you keep in inventory larger hard drives, memory upgrades and such then you can try giving a spif to sell those items....IE ok guys till the end of the week I will give $5 (lunch money) to anyone who gets a customer to upgrade either their hard drive or their memory and $15 if you get them to upgrade both...Try and see if it helps. If it does then you can make it part of your commission but try it out first as a weekly sale special.
I had the best luck giving all employees and extra $20 or $50 when we hit a new record for the week in labor sales and for about six months we hit a new high every week. I had two techs and a manager in each store.
