I am trying to understand how to fairly compensate sales people in an organization.

In this case, we are talking about a B2B company that sells hardware (mostly systems, not individual components) to small and medium businesses and, sometimes, larger enterprise-level organization.

There are dozens of compensation systems. Some produce a mercenary sales force (commission only), which is likely counterproductive. Others can cause a situation where an occasional large sale earns the sales person an exorbitant amount of money (high base salary with a fixed commission from dollar 0).

I am looking for resources on how to design a workable sales compensation structure.

Frankly, one of the things that has always bothered me is the asymmetry that exists between the engineers who create the product and sales people who can make millions selling it. Not sure if anyone has come up with a way to deal with that asymmetry other than, perhaps, stock options.

Thanks.