Re: Welcome to the world of software sales!
"Another downside of being in sales (and this will probably be of more interest to the readers of The Reg) is that when we sell stuff to a customer and the implementation team make a b*lls up of implementing it, the salesperson is not only delayed in getting paid the commission, but if the customer refuses to pay the full amount due to the b*lls up the percentage that the salesperson gets is also reduced."
I used to work for an IBM business partner, and can tell you that's how it works at IBM too. If a customer buys a software product, they often have the right to return it if unused. When that happens, the commission is reclaimed from the seller - which is good, because an unethical seller who sold the client something they didn't want or need ultimately won't get paid on the deal, so it forces them to focus on stuff with real value.
Where this falls down is when the seller has left the company or moved out of Sales by the time the client returns the product. There's no way in hell that IBM will be left out of pocket, so it's the seller who owns the client account at that moment who is responsible for paying back the commission. Which sucks as you're paying for somebody else's mistake. I've seen sellers join Big Blue, collect a negative commission in their first quarter due to their predecessor's f*ckups, and then leave disgusted and demoralised. If they were any good, we used to snap them up.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
