Hernán Villalba Muzzin
HERNÁN VILLALBA MUZZIN
Commission plans that kill margin: selling more and earning less

Commission plans that kill margin: selling more and earning less

If variable pay is tied to revenue, you may be rewarding discounts, urgency, and negative cash without noticing.

1 min
Hernán Villalba Muzzin

Hernán Villalba Muzzin

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    • operations says “sales oversells”; sales says “ops slows us down”.
    • change requests and urgent fixes appear everywhere.
    • your top sellers leave the biggest mess behind.
    • final project margin doesn’t match the sold margin.
    • commissions are paid before collection (or before delivery).

even if it destroys margin, capacity, and reputation.

Margin vs revenue detail

<figcaption>Revenue is not profit. Profit is collecting with margin.</figcaption>

## 5 diagnostic questions (no magic formulas)

You don’t need a giant spreadsheet. You need clarity:

1) Does commission depend on real gross margin or just invoice value?

2) Is it adjusted when rework and deviations hit the project?

3) Is part of the variable tied to cash collected, not signature?

4) Is there a “minimum margin” below which deals don’t commission?

5) Can you audit it per project without endless debates?

If these questions trigger internal friction, the system is already deciding for you.

## What I do in a 15-min express diagnostic

No “implementation” in the call—just a clear verdict:

    • What behaviors your plan rewards today.
    • Where margin escapes (before, during, or after the sale).
    • A decision map: what to change first to align sales and operations.

Executive decision with data

<figcaption>Clear data leads to healthy incentive decisions.</figcaption>

CTA: 15-min express diagnostic with me

Strategic Audit

Key control points: Commission plans that kill margin

  • —Is there a defined standard for this operation?
  • —Do the same dependencies repeat weekly?
  • —Does the team know the exact decision criteria?
  • —Is there visibility into the real process bottleneck?

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