How to structure commission for lead generation contractors
Deciding whether to base commissions on total job revenue or gross profit prevents home-service lead gen partnerships from lasting long term. Without a clear definition, you risk spending weeks training salespeople who ghost immediately or struggling to find a fair split that works for both sides.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1negotiating a flat fee per closed jobDid this help you?
- 2switching to a tiered commission structureDid this help you?
- 3doing the cold calling personally for an hour a dayDid this help you?
- 4offering performance-based tiered commission structuresDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“we never clearly defined whether that meant 6.5% of the total job or 6.5% of his profit.”source ↗
“For contractors or people who do home-service sales/lead gen: what would you consider fair here?”source ↗
“I’m trying to find a structure that works for both sides long term, not just win this one job.”source ↗
“Does anyone decent take commission-only for 30 days, or am I only going to attract people who vanish after a week? That's the real fear. I spend two weeks training someone, they book nothing, they ghost, and I'm back to zero having burned the time I didn't have.”source ↗