I'm wondering why commissions are structured the way they are. For example, in a SaaS company with a subscription model, I'd imagine that it would align motives of sales people better if the commission would be paid from each monthly payment instead of as a lump sum when the deal is closed.
Hello, world. Fog creek blogged about not paying sales commissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3425331
Yeah, incentives for sales people can be a bit whacky. For one, they're rarely encouraged to do what's best for the company (and therefore their colleagues) in the long-run, but rather wind up taking a very self-centered, short-term view.
There was an interesting article I saw a while back (can't remember if it was here on HN or not), about paying sales people salary only, no commission. From what I remember, at least one company tried it and found that it worked really well.