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The sales bods (or Account Managers as they prefer to be called) where I work have some funny ideas about remuneration.

The company pays commission based on revenue, quite rightly in my opinion. You don't get your commission based on the date of the sale. You get it when the company pays for the goods. So with a one off sale you will receive your percentage of that sale when the bill is settled. Sell a five year contract and you will receive your commission monthly or quarterly when that period's bill is settled.

There are very sound business reasons for this. Imagine a five year contract to be paid monthly. Each monthly payment would be only 1.6666666% of the total. So imagine the company pays 5% of the total in commission. It would be four months of bills before the company got a single payment from the customer of which a single penny did not go direct to the sales bod.

Imagine further that the customer went bust before the end of the contract. Why should the salesperson have received their 5% up front? Six months in and the customer goes bust. The salesperson has received 5% of the gross and the company has also only received 5% of the gross.

Companies who pay commission up front are beyond foolish.

We had a new sales person who started complaining about this arrangement about three months into his employment. He threatened the company with legal action. The sales director told him "You want your commission as a lump sum? You negotiate a contract where the customer pays for the service as a lump sum."