High Value Sales Pro Handbook

HIGH VALUE SALES PRO

If you ’ re a sales pro who wants to get paid more than just commission only roles…

Maybe you don’t want to be taking sales calls forever as your main source of income

Maybe you have plans of launching a business but not sure exactly what that is

Maybe you want to explore different roles with high income potential outside of sales

Maybe you want better commissions for closing deals

Maybe you want to benefit from other business’s success above and beyond just commissions

If you ’ ve been thinking about any of these things, you ’ re not alone

I’ve spoken to a lot of top level sales pros recently and these are the topics of conversation.

All of them are at the top of their game and already doing well.

But they want to take their career and use their skills to the next level

So, in this guide, you’ll see what’s possible in your ‘next step’ by leveraging skills you already have.

Understand these concepts so that you become a High Value Sales Pro

Patrick Galang

Negotiating Higher Commissions

Be good at sales

Understand unit economics

Business goals

Possible Incentive Structures

Create Joint Venture Deals

Different types of JV’s

JV with someone to co-launch an offer

JV with marketers to launch an offer

JV with other sales pros for consulting

JV to market an offer to their audience

Sales Management Services

Sales management promotion

Sales manager due to previous performance

Fractional sales management services

Create Equity Deals

Wealth creation

Future value and exit events

Negotiating equity

Launching Your Own Offer

Leverage your skills

How to launch and validate your offer

Profitable business ideas for sales pros

What’s next for you?

NEGOTIAINGHIGHERCOMMISSIONS

What you need to know:

How to generate revenue via your sales skills

Understand the unit economics of the offer

Business goals and targets

Possible incentive structures

Why you need to know these things:

Be good at sales

First things first, you need to bring value to a business. If you ’ re a sales professional, the most obvious value you can bring is by being good at sales.

Being able to generate revenue and have a history of performance (you don’t even need to be the best) means you have credibility and authority that you know what you ’ re doing.

Understand unit economics

Unit economics is typically the cost of doing business and the revenue a business generates.

This is important to learn because your ability to earn more is based on a business being able to generate a profit.

And with profit being calculated after expenses (including your commissions) you will get the best gauge on the level of commission a business can pay out.

For example:

ABC Business has an offer being sold for $5000.

The cost of acquiring a client including commissions, adspend, wages, tech stack, etc is $2500. That means the margin is $2500 ($5000 revenue less $2500 cost of acquisition).

That represents a 50% profit margin.

If the target profit margin is 40% ($5000 in sales with $3000 allowable acquisition costs) you could quite easily ask for 2-5% more. If you ’ re a good producer, this would be a great outcome for the business owner.

Business goals

As in the above example, if the business has a goal of 40% and currently they are at 50% profit margin, that could possibly mean there’s 10% of room to work with.

Not that they would give up the whole amount but this will give you the basis of what targets you could hit in order to make it worthwhile for a bonus upgrade or incentive.

This is also the reason why more commissions can be made available for outbound or self generated leads. Outbounding opt-in leads have already been paid for so the overall cost of acquisition can come down.

Self generated leads are leads the business doesn’t pay for, hence more margin to be able to share.

Possible Incentive Structures

One other thing you can implement without having to worry about margins is kpi or target based incentives.

These are extra incentives over and above your basic compensation structure for exceeding targets.

The problem is that most sales reps do not know how to structure it and do not know what’s possible.

So, by learning potential bonus structures and incentive based compensation, you can literally create your own extra commissions.

Click below for compensation structure examples so you have the understanding of what you can do.

CREATEJOINTVENTUREDEALS

What you need to know:

JV’s can come in many different forms

JV with someone to colaunch an offer

JV with marketers to launch an offer

JV with other sales pros for consulting

JV to market an offer to their audience

JV’s must be two sided - win win

Compensation will typically match input

Different types of JV’s

There are two things at play herewhat you bring to the table and what the other entity can bring.

Knowing your own skill sets and value will help determine what is a good fit JV and what isn’t.

JV with someone to co-launch an offer

This is quite simple, you and another person join forces to create an offer and launch it together.

You could be the person who brings in the sales knowledge while the other person brings in the marketing skills or the fulfilment.

When co-founding offers, it’s important to form the same vision together and decide on the direction of the business.

JV with marketers to launch an offer

In this version, you might have a new offer or an existing offer you want to grow. Rather than learning how to do or scale your marketing efforts, one option you have is to partner with someone who has marketing expertise.

Of course, one way you can scale is to simply pay a marketing agency. But the benefits of a JV here is that the person you partner with will have a vested interest in making this work.

Usually a JV partner for marketing will be compensated on a performance basis (just like you) where they rely on results to be compensated. The upside is in getting a larger part of the profits as they are a partner to your business.

And another variation to think about is a referral type of JV where the marketer refers clients to you for services and implement referral fees.

JV with other sales pros for consulting

This method is great especially if you get business owners regularly coming to you.

It may be that a business needs help in a particular area where someone in your network has better expertise or experience.

It may be that you have limited time to execute what’s required so you call upon another sales professional to assist with fulfilment,

In this method you agree on a particular split of revenue, whether upfront or on a performance basis.

JV to market an offer to their audience

If you have an offer and an influencer or another business owner who has a following can benefit from it, setting up a JV to market to their audience could be very beneficial.

In this scenario, you would market your offer to their audience and the JV partner would take a commission for the privilege of using their audience.

The thing to get right here is to ensure you have the right audience for your offer. Otherwise you may do a lot of work for no revenue.

SALESMANAGEMENTSERVICES

What you need to know:

You can get into sales management via your current offer

You can become a sales manager due to previous performance

You can offer fractional sales management services

Sales management promotion

Perhaps the most linear step up in your sales career is to get promoted into a sales manager role.

One of the best ways to get promoted is not necessarily to be the best salesperson on the team.

It’s more about making your intention clear from the beginning and being the person who adds value.

By value, I mean value in helping other team members succeed.

Becoming a mentor to others is a great way to show leadership.

While doing that, the next thing to help you stand out is your ability to communicate between marketing and fulfilment teams.

Having knowledge in these areas helps bridge the gaps in the client journey and it means your feedback will be more sought after.

Finally, whenever you are doing the work of being a leader, it’s important to document or share your work with decision makers. What they don’t know will not help you when it comes to bringing on new sales managers.

Sales manager due to previous performance

As in scenario 1, there’s every chance of stepping into a sales manager role in a different offer if you can demonstrate the work and qualities of a sales manager.

If you follow the above steps, if you ’ re not able to get an opportunity at your offer, there’s a better chance of transferring the work you ’ ve done to help you get a start in sales management.

Fractional sales management services

Being a sales manager does not have to limit you to one sales team.

As long as you stipulate outcomes rather than time commitment, you have an opportunity to manage multiple teams.

In this scenario, the main points to consider is effective management of the individuals within each team.

Your ability to empower the team members to be responsible and self motivated is the key.

And once you ’ ve dialled in some processes and efficient data and people management, you’ll be able to offer fractional sales management and consulting as an offer.

CREATEEQUITYDEALS

What you need to know:

Equity is a great way for future wealth creation

Businesses you take equity in must have future value

Great if the business has a chance of an exit event You may not see a return for a while

Not all businesses are worth having equity in

Wealth creation

Most of us in sales or sales management on a revenue share model are in a cash flow business.

What I mean by that is the income is tied in with your input and time.

If you leave the role, you don’t make any income.

That may be in the way of a sale event, a buyout or passive income through dividends.

If you understand the different models of business, you can begin to work out your opportunities based on your personal goals.

Future value and exit events

The real benefit of having equity is the potential for pay off in the future.

If a business is built towards that, then taking equity is a good move.

Here are two examples where equity may not be beneficial:

Coaching businesses reliant on a personal brand

If that person was not there, it would not function

Agencies reliant on one person to deliver

If that person leaves, then there is no business

Retention rates of clients need to be high as well

An example where equity would be viable is a business with recurring revenue and not reliant on an individual to produce the result. That’s why SaaS companies sell well because they are more reliant on technology for delivery, rather than people.

A passive income play for the future - 50% equity

Negotiating Equity

A quick note on taking equity. This should be discussed well in advance.

There’s no point in building something to a certain level and then asking for equity, you ’ ve missed the boat if this is the case.

If a business is worthy of having equity in, bring it up early and in the beginning, even if it doesn’t get implemented at a later stage.

Once open, you’ll need to research the market for the same business models to determine what type of equity stakes are being offered to staff, advisors or contractors.

That way you’ll be able to negotiate the best outcome for you.

LAUNCHINGYOUROWNOFFER

What you need to know:

A great way to take your skills and monetise it

Gives you the best control

Easy to do but difficult to maintain

Leverage your skills

Perhaps the most satisfying thing is to be able to launch and grow your own thing.

As much as it’s beneficial and rewarding to have your own offer, it also comes with stress and challenges

To get started, there are a two resources for you below

Click on the thumbnail to watch this video on business ideas

What’s next for you?

Well, if you’d like to be surrounded by a community of your peers who are levelling up and are doing the things you might be wanting to do…

Check out this video below and read through our website

The Collectiv Community

And if it resonates with you, please send me a DM via Facebook so we can have a chat - https://m.me/itspatrickgalang

See you on the inside!

Patrick Galang