The sales meeting started calm and ended with a phone flying across the room. A 15-person trading firm had two salespeople who both handled one large account. The order was booked through “the relationship” — but the credit was split 50/50. Then the client doubled the order, changed the shipping terms, and both reps claimed the full commission.
An honest disagreement turns into a costly habit
The owner’s fix was to give everyone half. That made both reps angry, and worse, it taught the whole team that commission was negotiable. Within one quarter, disputes consumed the equivalent of 17 days of management time — days not spent on customers, pricing, or new leads.
I sat in on the next sales review with the ERPNext Consulting team. We didn’t need to see more emails. We needed to see the stages of a deal, and which rep added value at each stage.
A clear split of stages instead of opinions
We set one rule: a deal’s commission is assigned the moment the deal is recorded as won, with a fixed split based on what actually happened at each stage.
- First touch — whoever made the customer request a quote gets 15 percent of the commission.
- Negotiation — the rep who managed the price negotiation gets 55 percent.
- Handover and delivery — the rep who ran the order to final payment gets 30 percent.
The key principle is commission follows the paper trail, not storytelling. When a salesperson’s role changes, they add their name to the stage record at that time — not after the money arrives.
What changed when the team felt the new rules were fair
Over the next quarter, commission disputes fell from eleven to one. Salespeople went from hoarding leads to collaborating on big accounts. The ERPNext Consulting implementation gave the owner a live view where every open deal showed its expected commission — no more spreadsheet surprises at month end.
That one meeting? The phone-thrower has now closed 20 percent more deals by working together instead of in two separate silos. Fair rules beat good intentions. Write them down, make them visible, and let the system arbitrate.