PART 1
What we pay, and where we hire.
Once you know what the team structure is, the next questions are what do we pay them and where do we hire them from. This is the nitty gritty a lot of people don't really talk about. So here is where my team sits, and the ranges I have actually seen by role.
The details people don't talk about.
Know what to pay your team, and where to hire.
Once you actually know what the team structure is, the questions change. What do we pay them, how do we pay them, where do we hire them from. That whole process is the part most people skip.
So we'll talk about where my team actually is located at, and the pros and cons of each area. Then what you should be paying them, and the things in between.
Base pay by role and area.
Set a base for each role, then add commission.
You said you're paying your cold caller 1,100 a month. That was a 1,100 base. For the closer we do 2,000, and for the lead manager we do 1,500.
On top of the base sit the commission ranges I gave earlier, the two and a half percent, 5%, and 10%. So the base is only half of what the seat actually costs you.
One note on that 2,000. The person that's 2,000, that one's local. Do not read a single base number as the rate for every seat on your team.
Check the going rate for the area you hire in.
It varies by area, so here is the range of everything I have seen. I'll start with the lowest. Philippines, 500 to $8.50, I'd say, is the going rate for most roles. A thousand is what we pay our staff, but they're really good.
Egypt, probably $7.50 to a thousand. Latin America I'll do broadly, because it just depends very much where you're at, and it can be a lot. Call that a thousand to 1,500.
US is 2,000 to 8,000 a month depending on the role. 8,000 would be someone overseeing all of your flips. The 6,000, 7,000 range would be a sales manager with commission. Then 2 to 4 k on the acquisition side, depending on the volume you're pushing them and their OTE.
Pay door knockers 2,000 base and a percentage of the contract.
On the door knocking side, 2,000 base, and then you pay them about 10 to 20% of the contract, and then they're ten ninety nine.
Somebody on the call was doing flips and wholesales. They were paying a portion upfront on the acquisition and a portion on the back end of the flip net. Before going further on that, I asked whether they were on when I was talking about pulling revenue forward and liquidating spend. That piece comes first.
And then the door knocking side, 2,000 base, and then you pay them about 10 to 20% of the contract, and then they're ten ninety nine.
BEFORE YOU MOVE ON
PART 2
Pay upfront, and no clawbacks.
This part is the pay mechanics behind the commission. I will show you how we pull a small assignment and pay the team before a flip sells. Then we get to why we never take that money back, and what that does for retention.
We assign it to our other entity.
Pull a small assignment to your other entity.
We have several entities. Some of them control all of our construction, for liability and all that stuff. So when we take a deal down, we pull 5,000 to $7,500 in an assignment and assign it to our other entity.
When our private lending money is paid to us, they don't really care about the assignment. They just see that as the purchase price, because we're assigning it to ourselves.
And for that one specifically, we will probably pull 500 or sorry, 5,000 to $7,500 in an assignment and assign it to our other entity.
Use that assignment to pay commissions on projected profit.
That 5,000 to 7,500 is what we use to pay out the commissions to the team, based off projected profit. The team gets paid at the front instead of waiting on the sale. Phil brought the framework up to me, and I said we kind of do this, but not really.
On the money model side, the idea is the cost to acquire a customer or a transaction or a contract. The faster you can do that, the higher your odds of success. I use the same thing for DataSift with the challenge. We get people in and committed to it, we liquidate the spend of that, and a large percentage buy DataSift long term.
And with that 5,000 to 7,500, we use all that to pay out the commissions to the team based off projected profit.
The assignment
How we pull revenue forward to pay the team.
- 1Take the deal downOn a deal where we are probably going to make $4,045,000, we know the projected profit.
- 2Pull a small assignmentWe pull that in an assignment and assign it to our other entity.
- 3Pay the commissionsWe use all of that to pay out the commissions to the team based off projected profit.
- 4No clawbacksIf the back end sells for less than we thought, that is our fault, not theirs.
Do not claw back a commission you already paid.
The question was fair. What happens if you pay upfront and then the back end sells for a lot less than you thought. We don't do clawbacks. That's our fault, and we just gotta do better on our projections.
You don't want to upset the team over your own numbers. Sales is mostly morale. If they're sad, it shows fast.
One of the reasons we created Trestle is that our teams hated getting the disconnected numbers and the bad numbers. That is actually where Trestle came from.
Our teams hated the disconnected numbers.
Pay a cold caller a base plus closing commission.
Yui asked about the hire in Latin America. The base is 1,100 per month and 2.5% on every closed deal, and that is a cold caller.
This is one of those things where some people don't like to pay their cold callers. One of the things that crushes all business is staff leaving and turnover.
Their base is 1,100 per month and 2.5% on every closed deals.
Caller pay
What a cold caller gets paid here.
Get good at training, then judge the business by your people.
At the beginning of all business it's just you. It's how good you are, and how much effort you are willing to put into something to make it happen. Then it quickly becomes how good you are at training people. Then it becomes how good the people around you are, and that will be the reflection of the business.
Mason handles our social media for DataSift. He got on a call with a user over the weekend because that user had questions about the challenge. That is really good hiring on our part, and there are just not many companies willing to do that. I can't be everywhere.
And, a really small example of that is, like, Mason who, handles our social media for data shift.
Pay cold callers enough to keep them.
A lot of people won't pay their cold callers much, and definitely not any commission. That is how you end up replacing them. Paying the base and the commission is how you have super high employee retention.
In all of DataSift and the REI side, we have only had two people ever quit in seven years. That is the return on paying people properly and training them.
BEFORE YOU MOVE ON