A great compensation plan is the key to success in sales. If you can motivate your top people through a combination of appropriate salary and effective rewards from commissions, bonuses, and stock, success is headed your way.

There is nothing worse than a sales person who believes they are not being paid fairly. This becomes a poison in an organization.

Many companies start out with the theory that their products sell themselves and that sales people are only marginally useful. If you believe you can be successful without sales people, you will find out otherwise quickly.

Today's customer has even less time to make up his or her mind. Good sales reps can make a difference by getting consideration of your product at an appropriate time in the buying cycle. Great sales reps bring personal credibility to your products and remove barriers to purchase. Sales reps also help fine tune product offerings by providing timely feedback to their companies.

For every sales that just "falls into the lap" of a sales person, there are five to ten that never go anywhere and five to ten that take a great deal of work and creativity to move through the sales process.

Pay your sales people well, listen to them, and make them an effective part of your company with a compensation plan that rewards their long term efforts and their short term results.