A salesman turned down $500k annual base salary offers, negotiating zero base pay with 15-18% commission instead. He hits several million in monthly revenue and says the commission structure lets him earn far more. His advice: get good at sales, then demand commission-based pay.
They tried to negotiate me taking a larger base. Like, one wanted to actually pay me a base of $500,000 a year, but they wanted to lower my commissions. And I'm like, why would ever do that? I'm going to make far less money. I was like, I don't want the base of 500 grand. I want zero base. And instead of you paying me, you know, 8 to 9 or 10% commission per sale, I want to get paid 15%. And if I hit these, and I threw out crazy numbers, several millions of dollars a month, I want you to pay me all the way up to 17 and 18% because I was 100% confident in my. I hit those quotas, like, every quarter. So I always got paid a way higher percentage, but I was selling millions of dollars a month. Anytime I would negotiate with the company, I always got rid of the base and got a higher percentage. As a salesperson, you want to acquire that sales ability so you can go in, negotiate high percentages based on performance, and you're going to make a ton of money.
