are you paying them by the hour?
I just had to share this story. Years ago I had a potential client tell me he paid by the hour to have his house painted. Guess how much he paid? $45,000. And the house is not that big.
I was shocked. I thought he was joking!
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Yes. That’s how they have to be paid in California.
Well that’s ok, but the question is how is he paying you? If he was paying good money I can see how he would cut you back… But if he wasent then hes just a thief… Carpet cleaning is back breaking work… I did it 8 years
To OP, Fastest way to get them to be faster is pay them commission… They will hustle to finish fast and move on to the next job! Or simply head home early… This way you can add more jobs to there route, specially if they are motivated sellers… $$$$$&
he was paying 25% of the truck as payroll. When two guys had to split 25% of the truck for the day it was a huge pay cut because they would NEVER double a regular day for one guy. He made more money with the one man per truck as well even though he had to purchase twice as many trucks. Very expensive. Each guy had his very own rig. Accountability was the name of his game.
His top guys use to do about $800 a day and keep $200. This is 20 years ago so I’m sure they bring in more now.
That is not bad for 20 years ago… Thats actually very good money.
The last company I was with was Techs where at 20% all across the board no bonus… And helpers where at 5% and $50.00 to start off… So when helpers showed up to work, they had already made $50.00 for showing up and 5% of all sales… Techs got nothing, if they canceled and I had no more jobs lines up id go home with $0.00
I liked it, I was with a strong company and it was all high end. Standard room under 250 sqft was $125 so money did ad up rather quickly, and we used Rx20’s no wand pushing…
In Massachusetts we can work around that law by offering the employee minimum wage or commission from week to week. They choose the higher amount. Only catch… they can’t work overtime because getting payed time and a half is a problem for some reason when a guy is on commission.
In California too… As long as they pay you minimum wage its fine, if your commission surpasses them you get your commission…
Is it safe to assume that the employee would be terminated if they failed to bring in enough revenue to cover minimum wage in commissions on a regular basis?
I don’t know if that would be a legal reason to fire someone, my guess is no!
But if your in sales and you can’t bring enough money in to earn more than minimum wage, then sales aren’t for you… I worked 6 years for commission companies and never once did I get minimum wage pay, even in winter…
What’s minimum wage now? $8? If a guy can only clean enough windows in a day to cover $8 an hour in pay he gets terminated, right? That’s just to slow!
$9 is minimum I’n California…
Like I mentioned above, I em not sure you can terminate an employee legally for not making more than minimum… I know my old boss would talk to people who couldnt sell and would suggest them other type of jobs no requiring sales skills…
For my company, it makes more sense to pay straight hourly. They can make commission on up sales but other than that its straight hourly. In California a window cleaner is a non exempt employee meaning their pay must equate to something hourly, minimum wage or higher and that they get paid overtime. Straight commission has too many variables and California is too strict.
When you pay min. wage it wont take long for them to figure out they get paid the same for working slow and easy vs fast and efficient, guess which one they choose to do.
You need to figure a way to get them on commission, bonus at the end of the week for “X” work completed or something to get their butts in gear. And NEVER let them feel like they are not replaceable, because they are
Who is this person?
you can do a hybrid, whichever is greater base hourly + overtime or commission. its rare for the commission to be less
covered on all the overtime, motivation to develop an efficient pace for the employee
commission is based on the typical 30% of revenue cap for daily production. if dialed in to 8 hour days its a definite win/win. (esp with my observed usual 6.2 billable hours out of 8)
even ay $9 I arrive at $186 daily production! lol! us veterans can do that in 1.75 hours or less!!
although a lead with a helper, the helper can almost only add about that much to the day total.
If you look in the archives Chris layed out the commission structure for All County Window Cleaning. It was excellent.
Couldn’t people just set up a pay scale that’s minimum wage plus commission. Two separate amounts on the pay stub.
Also the percentage is very low, like zero or 1 percent, until the guys hit a volume you are happy with and then it goes up. When the volume is excellent the percentage payed goes way up. So the top guys are making triple what the newbies make. If they get bored with the job and slow down they loose money, quite a bit of money. How much the guys are pulling in on commission also becomes a game. Nobody wants to be the bottom payed guy. They greenhorn.
