The 10X Hustler

In the article "Secret Symphony: The Ultimate Guide to Readable Web Typography" [1] the author covers `line-height`, line width, proportions, and stresses the importance of getting typography right for to your readers. The article then goes into some golden ratio stuff, which may be a little more than you are interested in, but give it a look!

[1]: http://www.pearsonified.com/2011/12/golden-ratio-typography....

It's funny, "hustler" definitely has a couple of meanings in American pop culture that would have negative connotations for most people. To a lot of people, it means something sorta like "con man" or "pool shark" and the connotation involves conning people out of their money. To other people it's synonymous with "drug dealer" which has it's own connotations.

BUT... "hustle" also has a pretty positive association in other contexts. For example, being a fan of (American)football, you often hear players described as "having hustle" which basically means "good work ethic, doesn't loaf on plays, always gives full effort until the whistle, etc."

And now we're seeing this startup related use of the word hustler which, to me, basically means "entrepreneur with hustle" or "entrepreneur who has great work ethic, works his butt off to find a way to achieve his goals, has pigheaded determination, etc." This almost strikes me as combining a bit of the connotations of the "drug dealer" thing with the football player example. Not exactly, but you can see elements of both... Anyway, used in this context, I don't see the problem with "hustler."

However, in the rest of the business world, a salesperson is about the easiest potential hire to evaluate. Ask them to pitch the product they will be selling and then ask to see their past two year's of W2's with their commissions earnings to see what they've done in the past.

1) engineers should get a similar form of compensation, in my experiences 'bonuses' don't come anywhere close to what commissions do.

2) how can sales get commissions AND a salary. should be one or the other

3) commissions incentivise sales to sell ANYTHING they can get a commission on, not necessarly the things you want to sell or are good at making. one needs to be very careful in what sales is allowed to sell.

4) how can a product or service be returned or canceled and the commission still paid! insanity! no clean sale and the corrections fall through the cracks...

yeah... I'm a little bitter.

I think there are basically 2 forms of distribution at start-ups that multiply together. The distinguishing factor seems to be whether relationships can make a real difference ie talking to people (partnerhips, PR etc) or are not needed (growth hacking). There is a ton of interplay e.g. you could do all sorts of smart stuff to hack a big social platform, but propriety early access to new platform features via a great relationship with one of the platform team will give you a differentiated toolbox.

For the first type of distribution a great salesperson who is also highly intuitive about product, growth hacking, scalable systems etc, can have even more impact than if they are just selling as part of a traditional sales team.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20030501/25416.html

Excerpt:

Want to stir up controversy among a group of business owners? Ask them what's the best way to compensate salespeople. It's like throwing raw meat into a den of lions. You can just sit back and watch them go at it. Over the course of 25 years in business, I've developed my own system for handling sales compensation. I've also become convinced that the way most companies do it is a recipe for trouble.

I'm referring, of course, to the practice of paying sales commissions. Unless you're very careful about how you use them, they almost always have the effect of undermining any sense of unity and common purpose in a business. How? By putting the salespeople in a separate category, by making them stand apart. Granted, sales commissions aren't the only culprit. It doesn't help that most companies put the salespeople in separate offices, hold separate meetings for them off-site, and treat them far more gingerly than other employees at performance review time.

But commissions play the largest role in distancing salespeople from other employees. The result is a lot of animosity and resentment, leading to inevitable conflicts. The accounting people complain that the salespeople make special deals with customers and then don't inform the people who do the billing. The operations people complain that the salespeople make unreasonable demands. As the owner, you're constantly having to mediate between departments while resolving disputes among the salespeople themselves over who has which territory, who handles which customers, and who gets the leads coming into the office.

You also have to cope with the great fear all owners have that their salespeople will leave and take customers with them. That's actually more likely to happen with a commissioned sales force than with a salaried one. For salespeople on commission, the customer represents security. As long as they have that connection, they think they have a means of earning a living. Consequently, they have a strong interest in making sure the customer belongs to them rather than to the company. They resist letting anyone else have a relationship with the customer.

To protect themselves, owners come up with all kinds of mechanisms aimed at preventing salespeople from getting too cozy with customers. One approach is to transfer every new account from a salesperson to a customer-service rep, who handles the relationship from then on. Another technique is to reduce the commission over time. Such systems may or may not weaken a salesperson's hold on a customer, but they don't address the underlying problem. The salespeople are still not members of the team. Their focus isn't on making the company successful -- it's on looking out for No. 1.

So yeah, commissions cause their share of problems as well...