Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

Here’s how to set it up at your company: 1. If you’re starting a new sales organization, do not offer traditional monthly cash commissions. It’s best to have everyone in your company compensated in the same way—so offer salespeople a competitive salary and sales performance bonuses of additional stock options that vest over time. Stock provides a built-in incentive to stick around and invest in long-term customers who are good for the business. 2. If you’re trying to transition to a relationship-driven culture, you may not be able to kill traditional commissions right away. In that case, any stock or cash (stock is still preferable) that you give as a commission should vest over time. Pay 10–15 percent of the commission at first, then another tranche in a few months, then another a few months after that, etc. If the customer leaves, the salesperson loses the remainder of their commission. 3. Every sale should be a team sale. So if you have a customer success team (the team that actually delivers, sets up, and maintains whatever is sold to the customer), then it should sign off on every deal. Sales and customer success should be under one leader, in the same silo, being compensated in the same way. In this setup, sales can’t just throw a customer over the fence and never think about them again. If there’s no customer success team, then sales should work very closely with customer support, operations, or manufacturing—create a board of people to approve each commitment.