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I don't have an answer for you, but I have worked on the other end of this relationship - as the designer, salesman, coordinator, supervisor, estimator, hole digger, ....
My best design/build job was paid hourly and year 'round. It was paid well. I think it worked out pretty well from a business point of view on both ends. I did get overtime over 40 like anyone else.
One of the things that you have to ask yourself honestly, as a business owner, is just how much work you can handle before you are over your ability to get help or manage them right. Very few of you are going to be able to take on an endless supply of jobs if you had a salesman who could produce them in my opinion and from my experience. That means that the salesman more importantly has to get you the best jobs within your ability to produce rather than just more jobs. If this makes sense to you, read on.
Your pricing should be based on your experience of the overhead cost of producing the specific types of work vs. losing TOO MANY jobs due to high price. The key words are "TOO MANY". So this would mean that you have your pricing system that produces a hard number and not one that you would look at and say "I might be able to tack on $4,000". If it makes sense to tack on that four grand, your pricing system needs updating rather than the particular job's price. I got side tracked, but the point is that the salesman should not be tweaking your prices - they should be set.
You should be working in a particular market in terms of affordability and not all over the place. That means that you and your salesperson should know that you will be over priced for certain potential clients or the particular task that they want done. You have to accept that by pricing it out just like any higher end job and knowing that you probably won't get it. But, if you do get it the money is there to cover it. I definitely would not want a salesman nailing this job at a lower price for a commission and don't think you would either.
I'm doing a poor job of it, but the point that I'm trying to make is that you don't need a salesman to maximize how many jobs get sold. You need a salesman who can max out the gross on the sales he has the opportunity to make. That is not by adding directly to the price, but by building interest and enthusiasm into a project that results in increasing the scope of the job, and adding ammenities and plants.
The increase in value that the salesman brings also lifts up your body of work a little each time. That keeps you away from bidding on little simple jobs that every other landscaper can and should be able to do for less money and puts you into doing jobs that they can not effectively compete in getting. Since many lesser landscapers can not get in the door to bid on these jobs and you increase your prices for things like seeding and mulching ... and you are making much more by moving materials the little guys can't - bigger plants, pergolas, masonry, swimming pools,...
Now why would it be better to pay your salesperson hourly?
Because your salesman will not be very interested in aspects of the job that you need him to do, if his pay is more depenent on something else. He'll feel bitter every time you have him doing other tasks. He'll also want to make sales that will benefit his pay with less regard the overall benefit. You also have to know hat it is very rare that a landscape contractor can supply a full work week of sales work on a year 'round basis. There are feast times and famine times throughout the year. Worse yet, you might have to stop a successful salesperson if they sell more work than you produce. That won't go over well, if that effects his pay.
Why is it good to get paid hourly if you are a salesperson. Steady income is always a good thing. All the reasons mentioned above cut both ways as well. Learning to do more things within the company increases your value within the company (and elsewhere later on, if need be). By doing more you become a main player in management of the company. That makes it much easier to improve how you benefit the company through sales and marketing which further increases your value (and pay).
The more the designer/salesperson is involved in other aspects of running the company, the less they stray into doing odd things or spec'd odd plants that you can't find. When you have to find them, or have to build things, you tend to spec' only what you can deliver. It is easy for an isolated designer/salesperson to get more interested in helping the client than the business when they ae left out. The more involved they are, the more they feel like they are part of the business.
It is much better to compete with 10 other landscapers and land 20 jobs with lots of plants, hardscapes, and other amenities than to compete with 200 landscapers to try and land 100 seed jobs and a few shrubs here and there. A good multitasking designer/sales/manager type can help make that happen as long as you can produce the product that he is trying to sell.
A lot of designers come from outside of the landscape contracting world and don't fully get it. Some are artsy people looking for an outlet. Some are gardeners looking to "go to work loving what they do", and some are out of school and don't know much about making a living. They are outsiders and will behave like outsiders unless and until they become insiders.
That's just my perspective on it.
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