How to Earn More in Sales

Everyone in sales is money-motivated to a certain extent.

In fact, maximising income for many salespeople will be their #1 priority.

For those who succeed, incomes of six (or even seven) digits are possible.

Money may not be your #1 driver, but if you’re in a sales job, it will certainly appear on your list of priorities.

Many companies pay generous commissions to successful salespeople, with the top ‘salesperson of the year’ often out-earning the company CEO (this is certainly true in small and medium sized companies, but not in larger companies where the CEOs are very highly paid)!

So how do you maximise your sales income?

Here are some thoughts:

1. Read and understand your commission plan in precise detail

Understand what behaviour and actions will generate the maximum income. Analyse the risks and rewards of how (and on which customers/prospects) you invest your selling time. Understand if there are commission ‘caps’ applied to some elements of your plan. Think about the timing of deals to align with quarterly accelerators.

Do not ‘scan’ the commission plan and charge off into the distance,’ thinking’ you know what will make you the most money.

Reading and understanding your commission plan in detail will be the most valuable piece of sales administration you do all year!

2. Include a large prospect in your territory

The top earners in sales generally do not have 100 small accounts; they win (or manage) business in one (or a few) large accounts.

So even if you are early in your sales career, selling into multiple smaller accounts, when you are discussing territory allocations with your manager, prepare a compelling set of reasons why you should also have a potential larger account to go after!

3. Achieve your sales target

This may seem obvious, but as well as reaching your On-Target Earnings (OTE), regularly achieving your annual sales target will result in you becoming a ‘top performer’, and receiving regular increases in your base salary and OTE.

Building a reputation for consistent performance will also make you very attractive to other potential employers.

However, achieving your annual sales target over several consecutive years is one of the most difficult things to achieve in sales, especially as your target will always be increased the following year!

4. Exceed your sales target

Many companies normally have generous commission accelerators in place for over-target performance. Almost all salespeople who are earning very large incomes will be hitting these accelerators, and multiplying their normal commission rates.

You probably will not be able to hit commission accelerators every year, so make sure that you maximise the income opportunity when you do.

5. Consider your sales career direction

Selling high value enterprise services or software to multinational corporate organisations will out-earn almost every other Technology market sector (there is nearly always a tight coupling between the scale of sales revenue/profit closed and commission paid. The bigger the customer, the bigger the deals, the profit and the bigger the commission payment).

If money is a key driver for you, consider planning your career direction to select and transition to a new Technology sector, rather than staying in your current market through momentum, rather than design.

'If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you've always got'!

How do you approach increasing your sales revenues and earning more - what works best for you?