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There was always a little jealousy around Sales.
“They get commission.”
“They get incentives.”
“They get rewarded just for doing their job.”
Meanwhile, HR, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Operations and other departments receive their monthly salaries without an extra percentage every time the company makes money.
So why should Sales be different?
It sounds like a fair question.
Until you remember why sales commission existed in the first place.
Sales Was Never Compensated Like Every Other Department
In many traditional sales structures, employees accept a relatively modest basic salary because a meaningful part of their earning potential comes from performance.
The bargain is straightforward:
Lower guaranteed income. Higher potential income if you perform.
Sell more, earn more.
Bring in more clients, earn more.
Exceed the target, earn more.
Have a terrible month? You may earn considerably less.
That is why comparing the commission earned by a salesperson with the fixed salary of someone in a support or operational department can be misleading.
People see the commission.
They do not always see the risk attached to earning it.
Then the Company Removes the Commission
Now imagine management changes the structure.
Commission is abolished.
Performance incentives disappear.
But the basic salary stays largely where it was.
The KPI remains.
The revenue target remains.
The pressure remains.
Management still expects Sales to acquire clients, reactivate dormant accounts, retain existing business, chase leads, increase deposits, grow revenue and exceed targets.
Only one thing has disappeared:
the financial reason for doing more.
This creates a very different employment equation.
Before:
Basic salary + KPI + commission + incentives
After:
Basic salary + KPI
The company may have reduced its compensation costs.
But has it also accidentally reduced its employees’ reason to generate incremental revenue?
“Everyone Else Works for a Salary”
This is perhaps the most interesting argument.
Why can’t Sales simply work for a salary like everyone else?
They can.
There is nothing inherently wrong with operating a fixed-salary sales department.
But if a company wants Sales to be compensated like a conventional fixed-salary department, it should consider whether the entire compensation model needs redesigning.
Suppose a salesperson historically received:
€2,000 basic salary + €1,000–€3,000 potential variable compensation
The employee accepted the €2,000 guaranteed component partly because there was an opportunity to earn considerably more through performance.
Removing the variable component does not necessarily transform that structure into a competitive fixed-salary package.
It may simply become:
€2,000 basic salary + €0 commission + the same sales target.
The upside disappeared.
The downside did not.
But Sales Is Not Just Another Department
This does not mean Finance, Legal, HR, Compliance, IT or Operations are unproductive.
Quite the opposite.
These functions can be essential to the survival of a business. They manage money, people, systems, contracts, regulatory obligations and operational risk.
But their contribution is usually measured differently.
Sales and Partner functions in many businesses have one particularly visible responsibility:
Generate and grow revenue.
Management can often draw a relatively direct line between sales activity and money entering the business.
That is precisely why performance-linked compensation became so common in sales.
The incentive aligns two interests.
The company wants another €100,000 in revenue.
The salesperson wants the commission attached to generating that €100,000.
Both sides have a reason to pursue the same outcome.
Remove the employee’s upside and that alignment becomes weaker.
What Happens at 100% KPI?
This is where the behavioural problem becomes obvious.
Imagine the employee’s annual target is €1 million.
At €800,000, the employee is below target.
At €1 million, the employee achieves KPI.
At €1.5 million, the employee significantly exceeds expectations.
At €2 million, the employee has generated twice the target.
Under a commission structure, every additional sale may benefit both sides.
Under a pure fixed-salary structure, the employee might reasonably observe:
€1 million = same salary.
€1.5 million = same salary.
€2 million = same salary.
Management may still expect employees to be ambitious, professional and committed.
But there is a difference between expecting employees to perform their jobs and designing a system that actively encourages them to outperform.
That additional effort matters enormously in Sales.
One more call.
One more follow-up.
One more difficult client.
One more dormant partner reactivated.
One more negotiation.
One more attempt to save an account that is about to leave.
Those small discretionary efforts can collectively produce substantial revenue.
Then Motivation Starts Disappearing
The effect may not be immediate.
Employees still have jobs.
They still have responsibilities.
They still have KPIs.
They still have managers.
So they continue working.
But gradually the question changes.
It is no longer:
“How much can I sell?”
It becomes:
“How much do I need to do?”
That is a dangerous behavioural shift in a revenue-generating department.
Some employees stop going beyond their targets.
Some stop aggressively pursuing difficult opportunities.
Some begin looking for other employers.
Some remain physically present but psychologically disengage.
Eventually, management sees something else:
Performance is declining.
And Now It Becomes a “Performance Problem”
This is where organisations need to be particularly careful.
If performance falls after a significant change to the reward structure, it is easy to look at a dashboard and conclude:
“Sales is underperforming.”
“Employees aren’t motivated.”
“Productivity is too low.”
“We need stricter KPIs.”
“We need fewer people.”
“Perhaps AI can do some of this work.”
Maybe.
But there is another question that should come first:
What changed before performance changed?
If commission and incentives disappeared and department-wide performance subsequently deteriorated, management should at least investigate whether those events are connected.
Otherwise, the organisation risks treating the symptom while ignoring a decision that may have contributed to it.
The AI Question Makes This Even More Important
Businesses are increasingly looking at AI to automate lead qualification, customer communications, CRM workflows, account monitoring, analytics and other parts of the sales process.
That can make excellent commercial sense.
But imagine this sequence:
Remove incentives.
Employee engagement falls.
Sales activity declines.
Revenue performance deteriorates.
Management concludes the department is inefficient.
Automation or headcount reduction follows.
That sequence raises an important governance question.
What if part of the performance deterioration used to justify restructuring was created by the organisation’s own compensation decisions?
That does not mean every restructuring exercise is improper.
Nor does it mean AI should not be used.
It means management should understand causation before drawing conclusions from performance data.
Contractual Discretion Is Not the Same as Commercial Wisdom
Many employment contracts and incentive schemes expressly give employers discretion to amend, replace or withdraw commission and incentive arrangements.
Whether a particular change is legally permissible will depend on the contract, the scheme and applicable employment law.
But there is a broader management lesson.
Having the contractual power to make a decision does not tell you whether the decision is commercially effective.
A company may have every right to remove a performance incentive.
It still has to live with the behavioural and commercial consequences of removing it.
That distinction matters.
This is not an argument that commission must exist forever.
It is an argument that compensation design, KPI design and commercial expectations should make sense together.
Perhaps the Real Question Is Not “Why Does Sales Get Commission?”
For years, employees in other departments may have looked at Sales and wondered why they received additional rewards.
Perhaps the better question was always:
Why did the company choose to pay Sales that way?
The answer was rarely generosity.
Commission was designed to encourage behaviour that generated additional business.
It transferred some compensation risk to employees while giving them the opportunity to participate in the upside when they performed.
So if an organisation decides that Sales should now operate like every other fixed-salary department, that is a legitimate business model to consider.
But then it should consider the whole equation:
Is the basic salary still appropriate?
Are the KPIs appropriate?
How is exceptional performance recognised?
What motivates someone to significantly exceed the target?
What happens to retention of high performers?
And most importantly:
What happens to revenue?
Because there is little value in saving money on commission if the company loses substantially more through reduced sales.
Sometimes, the Only Realistic Choice Is to Leave
There is also an uncomfortable reality that should not be ignored.
If the company has decided that commission and incentives are no longer part of its sales model, employees may have very little power to change that decision, particularly where the applicable contractual arrangements give the company discretion over such schemes.
An employee can disagree with the decision. They can lose motivation. They can believe the new compensation structure no longer reflects the pressure, targets and revenue responsibilities attached to the role.
But remaining indefinitely in a job they no longer want to perform is unlikely to solve the problem.
If an employee cannot accept the new structure and no longer sees sufficient reason to continue in the role, the practical choice may eventually be to look elsewhere.
That may also be the consequence management needs to consider.
The people most capable of generating sales may also be the people with the greatest ability to take their relationships, experience and sales skills to another employer offering a more attractive performance-based package.
So removing commission does not necessarily mean employees will simply accept lower earning potential and continue producing exactly the same results.
Some may disengage.
Some may do only what is required.
And some may leave.
For management, therefore, the question is not simply:
“Can we remove the commission?”
It is also:
“Who are we prepared to lose after we remove it?”
A compensation decision that saves money today can become considerably more expensive if it drives away the people responsible for generating tomorrow’s revenue.
The Bottom Line
Commission is easy to see as an expense.
Every payment appears on a spreadsheet.
Removing it creates an immediate and measurable saving.
The revenue that might never be generated because motivation disappeared is much harder to see.
It does not appear as an invoice.
There is no line item labelled:
“Sales we could have made.”
That is why management should be careful when converting an incentivised revenue function into “just another department.”
The question is not whether employees should receive special treatment.
The question is whether the company’s compensation system still encourages the behaviour the company expects.
Because if you remove the incentive to sell more, keep the same aggressive revenue targets, watch motivation disappear and eventually ask why Sales is underperforming, perhaps the performance review needs to look at more than the salesperson.
Commission is a cost when you look only at payroll. It can be an investment when you look at revenue. The difference depends on which spreadsheet management is reading.
Keywords: sales commission, sales incentives, employee motivation, sales performance, sales KPI, commission removal, sales compensation, performance incentives, employee engagement, revenue growth, sales team motivation, compensation strategy, performance management, sales productivity, AI replacing sales jobs
This article is for general business, governance and informational purposes only. Employment rights concerning salary, commission, incentives and changes to compensation arrangements depend on the applicable law, employment contract and individual circumstances. It does not constitute legal advice.
8 September 2026