Sell For Scale - The Sales Playbook for Growth

The New Way to Compensate Sales Reps (That Actually Works)

• Dylan Starr • Season 1 • Episode 6

Share episode

The old way of compensating sales reps is broken. Let’s fix it.

In this episode of Sell for Scale, I break down the outdated compensation models that are burning cash, killing retention, and keeping founders stuck. Then I introduce you to a smarter, scalable solution: The Profit Partner Model.

You’ll learn:
 ✅ Why most sales reps quit within 90 days
 ✅ How to attract A-players without draining cash flow
✅ The difference between a sales rep and a profit partner
✅ Two comp plans—one for lean startups, one for scaling companies
✅ How one model can get you to $300K/month without bloated salaries

Whether you're hiring your first rep or trying to keep your top closers, this episode will show you how to align compensation with performance—and finally scale your sales team without stress.

💬 Got questions about your comp plan? DM me on Instagram (@dylanstarrofficial) or LinkedIn.

🎥 Listen now. Then share it with a founder or sales leader who needs to hear this.

#SellForScale #SalesCompensation #ProfitPartnerModel #StartupSales #B2BSales #SalesLeadership #CommissionPlan #ScaleSmart

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

🎯 Want to Close More Deals with Less Resistance?
Download my Ultimate Agenda Formula—the same framework that helped Malick close $54K in his first week and Jason Capital scale to $1.3M in 4 months.

If this episode hit home, subscribe and share it with someone who needs to hear it.

🧠 PS: If you're ready to build a sales machine without relying on superstar closers, DM me and let's talk frameworks.

What if your next sales hire didn't cost you anything upfront and still built you a sales system that prints money? Most founders believe they either need to pay high salaries to attract talent or deal with flaky, commissioned only closers who end up bouncing in 90 days. Anyway, but there's a new model and it is changing everything. Today I'm gonna break down two compensation paths. One is for early stage founders who do not have big budgets, and the other is for more established companies who are trying to retain reps at scale. Let's get into it. Sales compensation is broken. Here's what most companies are facing. Reps want to base pay, but they don't perform. Commission only reps want hot leads or they disappear. Let's call them what they are. They're order takers. Founders burn cash. Hiring reps who never ramp up. Or worse, they rely on only one or two closers and they still stay stuck. There's no clear path for a sales department to scale without overextending or for closers to actually grow into leadership. That's the gap we are going to solve today. By the end of this episode, you're gonna know. The profit partner model and how it creates true alignment, How to use revenue share to attract a players without an upfront salary. and a proven hybrid comp plan for more established companies. If you've struggled with sales, hiring, retention, or motivation, this episode will hopefully give you a completely new lens. My name is Dylan Star and this is Sell For Scale. I've worked with businesses on both ends of the spectrum, startups with great offers, but no budget for a full-time sales leader and established companies with cash flow. But are struggling to retain reps. In both cases, the same question comes up every single time. how do I get someone great without killing cash flow or sacrificing performance? And that is where the profit partner model came in. I started training closures, not just how to sell, but how to build outbound higher reps and run the entire sales organization. Instead of just paying them a salary, I trained them on how to earn equity through the revenue they created for the company. That shift alone created true alignment in the organization. Now businesses get a real operator. And closures get more than just commission. They get to build a business right alongside the owner, according to the Sales management association. Sales leaders who have ownership in their outcomes, this is via rev share, profit split or equity Stay longer and perform higher. The average tenure of a commission base closer is only about three to five months, and that's if you're lucky. but revenue share roles tied to system ownership. See a six to 12 month increase in retention, especially when the rep feels like an actual stakeholder in the business. We're not just talking money, we're talking alignment and scale. Okay, so let's simplify it. Let's say you are an early startup founder. You could be in the coaching space, you could be in B2B, AI technology, SaaS, whatever it is. What do you do in the very beginning if the only thing you're good at is developing a product? Or like most business owners I talk to, they always tell me, well, Dylan, I'm just a tech guy. I'm not a sales guy. I'm not a marketer. I don't, I don't know what to do the business, but I, I could build a good product. How do you actually grow that business in the startup phase? And who should your first hire actually be? Now, in the previous episode of the podcast, I mentioned a guy by the name of Mark Birch, and he's the guy who scaled HubSpot to a hundred million. And again, his book phenomenal. If you have not read it, it's called the Sales Acceleration Formula. Always recommend that book to everyone. Great read, and I really liked the guy because he thinks with an engineer mindset, he wasn't even a sales guy when he got hired to go and grow this business. And he talked about who the first hire should be. Now, naturally when we're thinking about this, our instincts is a killer sales guy who, someone who could just sell, right? some people think it may be a sales leader or manage manager, someone who can actually go and manage the team, but what he actually found was. The very first hire is someone who is basically an entrepreneur. They've done a little bit of everything and they can get through the grit and grime of getting out of startup.'cause let's face it, in the startup phase of a business, you're just sitting and walling in the unknown. Most salespeople you hire, they're not gonna sit and wait, especially only for a small commission in the hopes that things are gonna take off, right? Entrepreneurs are mentally tough to be able to go and deal with that, but not salespeople. So what do you do? What I have found in work in this industry for a very long time is finding somebody that you can actually partner with to handle all sales. I actually interviewed a lot of my clients that I spoke to and I said, Hey, listen, if you had to start all over, just outta curiosity, if you never had to deal with sales again, and what I mean with not deal with it, I mean, you only focus on branding, on content, on serving your clients and making the product as good as possible, like you just handle fulfillment. But you had somebody like myself who could handle everything sales. In fact, you don't even have to be involved in sales unless I ask you to record a video to put it into the sales process. But I handled everything. Sales. I grow the team, I close the deals, I handle follow up, I organize the CRM. Heck, even back in sales. That's just my department. I stay in your lane and you stay in in your lane. Would you have been okay with giving, let's say 50% of all revenue generated in the company? Out of everyone I asked that question to. I think about eight or nine people now, 100% of them all said absolutely in a freaking heartbeat. If it meant that I didn't have to stress over this anymore and I could just focus on the business and dealing with my clients, I would absolutely do it, and that is where the profit partner model was born. Essentially, in this model, you do a 60 40 or 50 50 split. With another person that has more skills than just sales. And by more skills, I mean they actually know how to refine an offer. They actually know how to manage the CRM. They know how to hire people. They know how to train people and close deal themselves. This is very, very important. By having all these other skills, they become significantly more valuable to your business because their only job is to hunt, gather, and bring in business now. If you hear 60 40 or 50 50, and that scares you. Think about it this way. While you're getting 50% of all revenue, they are generated. It is the profit partner's job to split a percentage of their own 50% with the people they hire. So if I were to take myself and put myself in the profit partner shoes, let's say I'm the profit partner of your organization, that means a $10,000 deal closes great iron fit 5,000, you earn 5,000, right? Simple math. Now, when I go to build a team. If I hire, uh, an appointment setter or another sales rep to be a closer and I wanna pay that closer, let's say 10%, and they close the deal, what that means is I give 10% of my 50% to that closer and whatever percentage I'm saying that I wanna pay out to the appointment setter. So it is the profit partner's responsibility to divvy up their commissions and to be in charge of everything sales to the organization. And you get to keep your. 50%. Your job is just branding, marketing, bringing in deals. Now, if you're gonna be spending money on ads, um, it is good to have a clause in your agreement to basically say, Hey, we'll just deduct ad spend. So if I spend $10,000 a month on ads, we're gonna deduct it. Out of the total cost and we'll split 50 50 revenue left over completely fair. Totally recommend that. But the benefit here is it motivates the profit partner to make as much revenue as humanly possible. And the model, frankly, I mean, it just works. Now, what's the downside of this model? Here's the downside. When you get to the point where you're generating about $300,000 per month, that is like the red line. That is the red zone. Any to go beyond that, you need a really, really good operator. Everything at that point is operations, and it's kind of at the rate of scale when you need to hire more sales leaders, maybe hire someone in legal, a good person in finance, and. If you're bleeding the company at 50% revenue at that point to scale beyond 300 k, it's really, really difficult. So the model will shift, but this process is designed to get you to that 300 K per month as fast as humanly possible. And let's be honest, most founders are completely content with making$150,000 a month, even if 150 K is going towards their sales team. If you do decide to scale beyond that, then it's a separate conversation. You can change the model and you can absolutely grow, and they can get a small percentage of equity on the backend as you guys try to ramp up to, let's say 500 K or a million a month. But the key here is you don't need to hire a rep. You need to hire a profit partner, someone to build the system, close the deals, and hire and train reps as the business grows. Now if you've already put in a lot of legwork in the process, like you pretty much already know what your offer is, what your price point is, you've already gotten sales, you kind of have a little bit of traction. Going and doing 60 40 or 50 50 scares you. It's completely fine to bring somebody on and pay them 20 to 30% of commissions and let them earn their way up to 60 40 or 50 50. Totally okay to do that. But the key here is no salaries, no risk, just a performance based partnership. So let's break this into two tracks based on wherever your business is right now. Track number one profit partner model. And this is good for early founders in the very beginning of startup, a hundred percent performance base, so no salary, revenue share is only tied to whatever the rep brings into the business, and as they build the team and take on more responsibility, their rev share can of course increase over time. And you're not hiring a sales rep, you're bringing in an actual cooperator. No overhead. A real system gets built in place. And the rep becomes a long-term partner. Track number two. This is what I call a hybrid comp plan. This is best for more established companies. You can do a ramp phase where they get about a 2000 to three K where base salary or draw, and only 10 to 12% commissions. And then they go into a performance phase where they actually get higher tiered commissions, think 15 to 20% plus tiered bonuses at any level that you have set in place. And finally, a leadership path. They get team lead bonuses, overrides, or even rev share just for mentoring other people on the team. This gives predictable income, allows high performing reps to stay in your company even longer, and it scales well across multiple teams in the organization. So here's what I want you to do this week. Ask yourself this question, do I need to hire a sales rep or do I need to hire a profit partner? Then just reverse engineer your comp plan based on what you actually need. Do you need a scale? Great. You need a builder. Do you need stability? Great. Then you need a good team with structure. If you align compensation with the season your business is in, growth becomes more predictable. So are you struggling trying to determine which model will fit your business right now? If so, then find me on Instagram or LinkedIn and shoot me a message. Happy to have a discussion about it. And if this episode opened your eyes to a better path, then hit subscribe and share it with a founder or sales leader that you know, I. Now let's talk about how to retain reps on your team and build a sales culture that people wanna actually stay in. In the next episode, I'm gonna walk you through the systems and leadership layers. I've used to keep closers loyal. I. Performing and growing inside the business. You're not gonna wanna miss it. See you on the next one.