One of the fastest ways to destroy the performance of your team isn’t to pay them poorly. It’s to keep changing the rules. I see this constantly. Revenue dips. The owner gets anxious. He tweaks the commission percentage. He tightens the bonus threshold. He adds a new...

I had a sales rep named Bill. In 2017, he sold $7 million worth of HVAC. He was the best salesperson I had. And he was in my office constantly asking for more leads. He was making $700,000 a year in personal income. The average household income in our market was around $60,000....

People talk about culture initiatives. Morning meetings. Training programs. Motivational speakers. I’ve done all of it. I believed in all of it. And I can tell you from direct experience that none of it moved the needle the way a single pay plan change did at Lee’s...

I want to tell you about a phone call I took at 9pm on a Saturday. An air conditioning system had gone out in a residential home. It was over 100 degrees that day. Both homeowners were there. The system was 16 years old. And a sales technician named Phil Filaski was about to walk out...

There’s a version of this that plays out in companies all over the country and it drives me absolutely crazy every time I hear about it. An owner puts together a bonus plan. The team hits the target — maybe they were going to hit it anyway, maybe the market was strong, maybe...

I’ve seen it happen more times than I can count. A tech turns in a spiff form. The owner or the office manager looks at it and decides something doesn’t add up. Maybe the job description is a little fuzzy. Maybe there’s a question about whether the lead was really...