Welcome - and congrats!

If you're reading this - you're likely either interviewing for a sales role with Audal Labs, or you've just started one. So congratulations! - you're now part of a highly-innovative tech brand, serving clients around the world.

As with all new sales roles - there's a distinct methodology we use around our team structure and commissions - which this guide hopes to explain. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to seek further assistance from your internal contact.

The way we pay: Base + Tiered Residual on Gross Margin

Our primary products are agency development services and our SaaS product. As such - most of the interactions you have with clients should not be in aim of supporting a small, one-time sale - but in pursuit of long-term relationships. To make your pursuit of this personally profitable, we've decided that a Base + Residual structure is the fairest way. This Residual is payable on the gross margin for what you sell.

Commission percentages

Our residual commission structure is tiered based on sustained performance. This is to ensure that high-performers are rewarded for their consistent effort.

  • Tier 1: Averaging $1500/week in sales over a 3 month period - 1% commission on gross margin
  • Tier 2: Averaging $3000/week in sales over a 3 month period - 3% commission on gross margin
  • Tier 3: Averaging $5000/week in sales over a 3 month period - 6% commission on gross margin
  • Tier 4: Averaging $9000+/week in sales over a 3 month period - 9.5% commission on gross margin

The benefit of tiered residual

On paper when you first see the commission percentages on offer - you might think they're fairly low compared to typical 'gross-margin' based commission systems. However - once you take into account their tiered - residual nature, you'll realize that you'll make much more than you'd expect! This is because:

  • Residual commissions for the lifetime of the customer, will pay out up to a lifetime maximum of ₦10m. As our targets are design agencies and enterprise that usually provide a lot of recurring work - long-lasting residuals aren't difficult to achieve.
  • Tiered percentages, based on performance. This means the better you do, the more commission you'll unlock on every sale and residual. This is capped at ₦10m for Tiers 1-3, uncapping at Tier 4 (though can never exceed 20% of the client's lifetime billings).

Relevant Products/Services:

  • JAMStack WordPress site - minimum range $2.7k USD - $15k USD
  • JAMStack NetlifyCMS site - minimum range $2.7k USD - $15k USD
  • JAMStack WooCommerce store - minimum range - $6k USD - $20k USD
  • JAMStack Shopify store - minimum range - $6k USD - $25k USD
  • JAMStack Sanity CMS + Gatsby site - minimum range - $3k USD - $20k USD
  • JAMStack Strapi CMS + Gatsby site - minimum range - $3k USD - $20k USD
  • Site maintenance (retainer) package - $600 USD / month - includes site hosting and 5 dev hours per month, with additional hours priced at $50 USD/hour
  • PressLess Headless Page Builder - free with site maintenance (retainer package). $129 USD/month if they do not have a retainer package.

Our Ideal customer

So - how does one actually make sales and commissions in practice? Well, based on our market research and our current stable of clients, our best clients are usually Design agencies that service profitable SMBs - usually with gross revenue per project of $10-20,000 USD.

Customer Job (Needs):

  • Pixel-perfect design implementation for their design projects
  • Sites that are naturally optimized for Search Engine Ranking
  • A dev. team with strict adherence to Schedules
  • A dev. team that can deliver Fluid, performant animation when required by the design

Anti-needs:

  • Sticking to strict budgets - they always have concise budgets, but usually don't mind if the projects goes over cost by a small amount
  • Constant contact and updates - they're usually too busy designing the projects and running their business to want daily updates on work. They just want someone to get the work done to a high standard, with minimal input from them.
  • Design services - we don't offer them, they probably already do them in-house. If the client really wants us to take care of design for them - we can do this - though consult with Engineering team first.

Pain points:

  • They don't have a dev team in-house
  • Their current dev team delivers excellent results, but is high-cost - they feel like they should be making more per project, but also would never want to sacrifice quality at all
  • They've probably experimenting with trying to find cheaper dev teams - but none have been able to deliver a product that they can comfortably sell (too low-quality)
  • They do little-to-no external marketing, and all their business comes from referrals - which means they absolutely need to make every project fantastic

Pain relievers:

  • We can and do meet strict deadlines, usually with little lead time (for cases where their existing developer pulls out, or is unable to complete work by specified due date).
  • Our sites are tested across a 60-point Quality Control checklist, in multiple browsers - for pixel perfect implementation, for accurate web responsiveness implementation, and of course correct functionality.
  • We're very hands-off - once we've received the brief and the design files - they can be confident we'll deliver a fantastic result every time. No need for daily standups, constant check-ins - we do the work with the attention-to-detail that they do theirs.
  • We're lower-cost, when compared to general rates across the industry. On average, our projects get delivered at a 30-40% discount versus our competitors. This is due to our well-established processes, our own internal technology, and a commitment to innovate continuously.

Gain creators:

  • Our sites are performant and highly-optimised - they're built on JAMStack platforms, with a lot of custom tech - up to 10x faster than traditional Wordpress, up to 3x faster than Webflow, SquareSpace, and other page builders.
  • Our sites are more secure than traditional sites - JAMStack platforms separate their websites from their backends, naturally tightening security by a lot, and preventing/substantially reducing risk of many typical web attacks (Denial of service, brute-force, and more).
  • We ship our brand new Headless page-builder SaaS for free with all new projects. It makes editing and updating sites fast and easy for everyone, with drag-and-drop functionality, and inline editing like Webflow. It also will impress their clients, often stopping them needing to hire developers to make small changes to their sites - which means that their agency can charge more for the projects.

How to quote

Quoting of projects is to be done by the engineering team only, and only once designs (or wireframes) have been received from prospective client. Make sure to try and capture as much relevant information from the potential client as possible, and summarize these for the engineering team. These will include:

  • General project description and scope, in their own words
  • Project stack (what products/services from the ^above they're looking for)
  • Existing website address (if they have one they're looking to upgrade)
  • Designs they have
  • Other similar websites they like
  • Direct competitors and their websites
  • Indirect competitors and their sites

  • What is most important to them in a new site (ranked) - provide them the options of:

    1. Speed
    2. Security
    3. Design implementation perfection
    4. Fluid and performant animation
    5. Performance across new Google Search metrics such as Core Web Vitals
    6. Naturally great SEO
    7. Customer/visitor experience or Customer/visitor checkout flow
    8. Fast, easy editing experience
    9. Meeting every deadline
    10. Strictly adhering to budget
    11. Constant progress updates
    12. Site performance on very legacy browsers (IE11, iOS 4, etc)
  • Due date for the project (for work assessment, preparations for 'go-live')
  • Go-live date

On price matching

We don't try and price match our projects - in general industry terms they are already much higher-value per dollar spent than our competitors. Explain to the customers that they are more than welcome to field quotes for their project from our competitors (Bejamas.io, PagePro.co, Ikius.com, TheNewDynamic, Unikorns) - and they will see that we already beat their prices quite substantially. If in the rare case, they have indeed found a competitor that is willing to offer them a lower price than we have, ask them to provide a copy of their quote for handing off to the Engineering team - and then hand this off to the Engineering team. Only then will we be able to potentially price-match.

Your goals

Every sales team is driven by overarching financial goals, ours is no different. While we do place an emphasis on finding the 'right' customers to work with long term, as opposed to just trying to hit monetary goals, those are still of importance. Here is a list of the fixed-term and on-going goals you'll be expected to achieve:

Week One of employment

  • Identify and research 20 new potential clients
  • Make successful contact with 4 design agencies who go on to request more information

Week Two of employment

  • Make one $2000 USD sale, or equivalent to $2000 USD deal

Month Two of employment

  • Have one customer that you've recruited sign on for a second project

Month Six of employment

  • Have six customers that you've recruited sign on for a second project

Every week

  • Identify and research 20 new potential clients
  • Make successful contact with 3 new clients who go on to request more information

Every month (minus your first)

  • Create business worth $10,000 gross (equivalent to $2300 USD to $2400 USD / week) - either in the form of new business from new clients, or from existing clients re-ordering. This of course does not mean sell 4-5 projects a month - rather try and aim for selling a smaller amount of higher value projects (i.e. a single E-Commerce project every month will get you very close to these goals).

Your responsibilities

  • Keep the engineering team always informed about new deals, new customers, potential projects
  • Always try and prioritize E-Commerce projects where possible (due to their higher value)
  • Report your numbers accurately to your supervisor
  • Always try and meet your goals - especially around customer first-contact
  • Always prioritize qualified potential customers over under-qualified - we're looking for repeat business, from businesses that fit into similar profiles - instead of lots of 'random' projects where life-time customer value is lower.

Further questions

This guide aims to be fairly all-encompassing. However - if there's anything you need clarification on - please do not hesitate to reach out to your supervisor. Good luck!