General Consultant Discussion

Spotted online - this looks like one hell of a commission report - pretty wide price range too. If they've never used eLance before they're in for a surprise (they will get $200 bids from people overseas who have no idea what they're doing). Not sure if @DanBurleson is interested in looking https://www.elance.com/j/mas90-commission-report/28268474/

I'm interested and looking...

Or they could simply pay commissions on paid invoices only? (I have done custom commission reports and they are a PITA, in my opinion....)

I'm not interested in the 'arms reach' relationship with client and the size of the Terms of Service (66 pages) definitly puts me off for the moment. I'll look at this when I have run out of work and propose an amount to cover the cost of a discovery quote.

Got to figure that if they have such a complex way to calculate commissions, they are going to be high maintenance.

This post irks me in many ways. Start with the listed avg proposal price (and the prospect's max budget amt). Does that even have to be divulged at this point? I hope that means the price to produce the quote not to complete the project. I mean how do you price properly without any scoping / spec'ing in place and without getting a true idea of the value to the client. I'm in the middle of my own complex commission report and fortunately got a much better price than the avg or max budget after showing them how much their manual, tedious, time consuming Excel efforts are really costing them. But how do you show that to the prospect on eLance if they just receive a bunch of quotes? Won't they just look at numbers alone? And they have indicated the unreasonable 'arms reach' relationship' and long Terms of Service that Dan pointed out - that obviously makes the deal more expensive and un-alluring. It's no wonder - they must have posted on Elance because inquiries in the MAS 90 community were ""too expensive"". I was going to say they have sadly misjudged but then look at the profile of Russel Logan below the post. It says his minimum hourly rate is $33/hr. I don't do hourly myself but really WTF does he have any clue .. does he have any MAS 90 experience? Where does he live - West Cupcake, AK? This will validate the client's false perception of what MAS work really involves and that real MAS consultants / developers are expensive instead of priced to match the value they're really receiving.

Perhaps he lives in CA. I saw an ariticle that listed the top 10 cities (+100k) wiith the highest unemployment. Seven were in CA. Perhaps he's turned to consulting as he can't find a job. This report looks like you could make a career out it!

And this is the 'state of the state' with the majority of prospects these days. MAS prospects are some of the worst in the cheap ass department. The clients you've had for 20 years are fine as they are used to things, but the newer ones moving from var to var at $125/hour or less are the problem children. And as somebody else hinted at, 90% of these ridiculous commission schemes that clients/prospects 'must have' can often be solved with a simple new approach. IE paid invoices only, or commission on profit instead of revenues. But owners are so afraid that somebody might know their margins etc, that they will twist like a pretzel to hide the facts form employees when 90% of the employees know the deal already anyway...

It could never figure out why some owner/managers want employees who don't know or can't firgure out whats going on. To one I suggested that they change the Help Wanted sign to Clueless Help Wanted.

Allright, Alnoor Kless!

In my commission project, client has a ""call center"" full of salespersons that are paid on booked orders, not paid invoices. If customer returns product, commission is deducted from salesperson's pay. They are a precious jewelry wholesaler that sell to jewelry retailers and dealers. So order amounts can get potentially high. The salespersons have no special training for this industry and are paid 100% on commission, no salary. Whats been happening every 3 months is an employee will work in cahoots with a customer to place some expensive orders and then customer returns them within the number of days of return policy (which is liberal because these customers are retailers and dealers not consumers) Before return occurs, employee quits and absonds with the extra commission.

Myron - You're right on the money! He's in San Diego and that county does have some of the lowest unemployment in the country (city of Visalia and El Centro in SD county I just looked). And he turned free-lance only in 2011 (W-2 before then).

When I first was looking to redesign my web site many years ago I put it on eLance. Big mistage. You get what you pay for.