Advantages of straight salary

Francesco Rizzo established Forrest’s Bike World, a retailer of bicycles and related parts and gear, in 2003 in Milan, Italy. The company saw steady growth in its first few years and had opened eight stores throughout Portland by the beginning of 2013. Francesco is the owner and acts as the general manager for all stores. Each store has one manager and four to six salespeople, with two to three working on the sales floor at any given time. Francesco himself is a bike enthusiast and rides more than 200 kilometers per week. He encourages his sales staff to do the same and looks for fellow bike enthusiasts when hiring. As a result, the sales staff generally loves to buy equipment from the store, especially since Forrest gives an employee discount of 10 percent.

Francesco’s sales revenues increased by almost 15 percent each year for the first five years of the company’s existence. But since that time, sales revenues and profits have declined at approximately the same rate. According to Francesco’s analysis, the decline did not seem to have a single cause: a down economy, opening too many stores too quickly, rise of price from suppliers. He has tried to reduce costs to maintain consistent profits but has cut them to the point where the only remaining reductions would be to begin closing stores, which he does not want to do.

Francesco has always prided himself on having a top-notch sales staff. Although the staff shares a common bond of love for cycling, they are a heterogeneous group in other ways. About one-half are in their 20s, one-quarter in their 30s, and one-quarter in their 40s. Some have families, some do not. Some are married, some are single. Some rely solely on the job income to live, some do not. For the first six years, Forrest paid his staff a straight salary in the range of €22,000 to €34,000, depending on sales experience, with an annual bonus of €500 if the salesperson met the standard sales quota for the year. Forrest liked the stability the salary provided his staff, especially those with families. However, after the sales began to drop with the onset of the recession in 2008. Francesco decided that the staff would sell more if they were better motivated. So he instituted a new compensation plan that paid the sales staff on 100 percent commission. To allow for some stability, there was a system of a “draw” where employees could borrow against future commissions. This plan has now been in place for almost four years, but sales are still declining. Forrest recently sat down with his best store manager, Luca Moretti, to assess the commission based compensation plan.

They started with Francesco’s business goals in order of importance: (1) increase sales revenues relative to quota, (2) increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, (3) increase sales for certain product lines, (4) take advantage of bike knowledge of the sales staff, and (5) encourage bicycle riding in local events.