1/31/2024-Compensation: What Should You Make?

The best track for managing your earnings facet of your career is to get a mentor. Find someone more tenured than you who can counsel you on reality and what your earnings path will look like.

As you know, a life in sales can be really good for your bank account.

Sellers absorb a lot of stress, but the payoff – ahem, payouts – can be financially exciting.

The answer to "What should you make?" is always whatever the market will bear.

Within reason!

Push for a higher base salary, and you may watch your quota shoot up. Same if you push for a higher backend payout.

Every company has a cost of sales they use to manage profitability, and while you mostly care about your earnings, you don’t wanna get highlighted on a sheet somewhere in Finance.

If your last 2023 commission deposit is hitting today – or soon – you can close the book on last year and assess your total year comp.

If you believe you were under-compensated, schedule a meeting today with your manager to talk about it. (It ain’t good to walk around feeling irked.)

But before you do anything, cool your jets…your meeting with your manager must be a business discussion void of emotion.

Create your business case by presenting the data that suggests why you should be making more this year. The strength of your data will dictate your approach to the meeting.

According to US News and World Report, sales representatives made a median salary of $63,230 in 2022. (2023 data is not yet out.) The best-paid 25% made $93,280 that year, while the lowest-paid 25% made $47,220.

But those figures don’t really matter…your industry and the company you work for dictate comp ranges.

However, "relativity" is an important concept for sellers like you as you navigate a career that tries to extract maximum earnings against pricing yourself out of the market. If you "work for the man" (as the saying goes), there is a cap on what you can make. Unfortunately, ego can get in the way when commission checks get larger; it’s natural to imagine a bottomless pit of commission monies there for you.

The best track for managing your earnings facet of your career: get a mentor. Find someone more tenured than you who can counsel you on reality and what your earnings path will look like.

Scoring more compensation is not at all like this scene from What Happens in Vegas… but you wish it were!

Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher are so fun to watch in this 1-minute clip.

You, on the other hand, work hard for your earnings. And how you navigate your compensation with your manager and company is important.

If you do and say nothing, your manager will think, "we cool."

Are you?