Commission on end targets is the wrong lever for engineers. It turns collaborators into territorial competitors, and it rarely produces the sustained commercial behaviours you actually need. What works is rewarding the commercial activities that create results, combined with intrinsic motivation, recognition, and a clear path for progression. Engineers are driven by solving problems and being valued for expertise, not by chasing a payout.
Key facts
- Commission on end targets is the wrong lever for engineers. You need activity targets combined with intrinsic drive, not end targets with commissions. Engineers are driven by solving problems and being valued for expertise, and end-target commission turns collaborators into territorial competitors.
- The first rule of “technical sales club” is: everyone lifts. Commercial contribution should be a normal part of how your whole technical team operates, not something your team are bribed into!
- Value is in the eye of the beholder. Engineers who understand that truth, and learn to help buyers discover it for themselves, outperform commission-chasing salespeople every time, without the cultural damage.
- Engineers like things to work, fit, progress efficiently. They don’t chase money and materialism like ‘old school’ sales people do. Help them get what they value by supporting and equipping them to do so with ethical ‘sales capabilities’ designed uniquely for engineers
- A free 5-minute starting point is the ROI and Capability Diagnostic, which reveals the revenue within reach for your team and the capability gaps standing in the way.
Why does commission on end targets usually backfire for engineers?
Engineers are wired to collaborate, diagnose, and solve. End-target commission cuts across all of that. The moment you attach a personal financial reward to closing a deal, you change what the engineer is optimising for. They stop thinking about the buyer’s problem and start thinking about their number. They hoard accounts, resist sharing intelligence, and become reluctant to refer internally in case someone else gets credit. Commission on end targets is the wrong lever for engineers. It turns collaborators into territorial competitors, and engineering firms that have tried it typically describe the same symptoms: a culture that gets fractious, and pipeline that gets hidden. Chasing commission increases the likelihood of unethical sales behaviours. The commercial behaviours you actually want, asking the right questions, building trust, staying curious, require the engineer to be fully focused on the buyer. Commission pulls that focus somewhere else entirely.
What reward structure actually works for engineers in commercial roles?
Reward the commercial activities that create results, and let recognition, progression and ‘being smart’ do the motivating. That means setting clear activity targets, things like meetings held, discovery questions asked, proposals scoped properly, and follow-ups completed on time, then recognising those behaviours publicly and consistently. Engineers respond strongly to being valued for expertise, to being seen as the trusted advisor in the room, and to a career path that rewards commercial contribution without asking them to become someone they are not. You’re not selling; you’re helping people buy. When engineers genuinely internalise that, intrinsic motivation follows. No commission needed. Add recognition, progression, and a culture where the first rule of sales club is: everyone lifts, and you have something that compounds.
Are there situations where commission does work for engineers?
Yes, in narrow and specific circumstances. If an engineer has moved into a hybrid or full commercial role, has already made that identity shift, and is comfortable holding the commercial conversation end-to-end, a commission element can reinforce momentum and align incentives. The key word is ‘moved into’. If they are still primarily an engineer who is being asked to generate revenue on the side, commission tends to create anxiety, not drive. And can create self-serving behaviours that actually damage the customer experience. You have been warned! It also works better when the commission is tied to activity milestones rather than closed revenue alone, so the engineer is rewarded for doing the right things at each stage of the buying process rather than just for the final number. Structure it wrong and you get territorial behaviour. Structure it right and it can complement an already-functioning commercial culture.
What example do you have that tells us about motivation and performance?
We worked with a client with an under-performer – with the lowest results in the team who was about to be let go. Ten months without a sale, no learning curve, just struggle. Before letting him go, Mark was asked to coach him. Mark built rapport, understood what was actually getting in the way, and worked with him incrementally. Within one month he was the top sales performer in the team. Two to three months on, he was consistently one of the strongest performers. Across the company, gross profit moved 18% inside months. The underperformer’s profit lifted 35% in a single month. His mindset was the block. It was like he was playing golf holding the golf club the wrong way round! Once that shifted, everything else compounded. No commission structure was the answer here. Commission would have added pressure to a person whose constraint was entirely internal. The fix was understanding what was actually getting in the way, then addressing it properly.
How does commercial culture affect whether commission works or destroys performance?
Commission lands very differently depending on the culture it lands in. In a culture where everyone lifts, where commercial contribution is seen as a natural part of the engineering role, and where trust and collaboration are strong, a well-designed incentive can add energy. In a culture where commercial development is still fragile, where engineers are not yet confident in commercial conversations, or where leadership has not yet modelled the behaviours, commission introduces competition where you need cooperation. It accelerates the wrong things. The commercial culture has to come first. Get people genuinely helping buyers to buy, build the habits and the confidence, create the conditions where discovery and trusted-advisor conversations happen naturally, and then consider whether any financial incentive adds to that or undermines it. Most firms reach for commission before the culture is ready, like it’s some magic sales enhancer. It’s not.
What should an MD do instead of introducing commission to increase commercial output from engineers?
Start with a clear diagnosis of what is actually limiting commercial output, and what truly drives the individuals. THAT is the motivator to play with. In most technical SMEs the constraint is not motivation, it is mindset, capability, or system. Engineers who do not understand how buyers buy, or who do not have a paint-by-numbers structure for commercial conversations, will not sell more because you put a cheque in front of them. They will just feel more anxious about the thing they already find uncomfortable. Get all we can out of all we’ve got by investing in building genuine commercial capability across the team, creating a culture where everyone lifts, and putting activity-based targets in place with regular recognition. The ROI and Capability Diagnostic (below) is a five-minute starting point that reveals the revenue within reach for your team and the capability gaps standing in the way.
Does commission motivate engineers to sell more?
Most MDs assume that engineers, like salespeople, will perform more commercially if there is money on the table. It feels logical. If the reward is big enough, the behaviour follows. But engineers are not motivated the same way career salespeople are, and applying a salesperson’s incentive structure to an engineer’s psychology tends to produce the opposite of what you want. Commission on end targets is the wrong lever for engineers. Engineers are driven by solving problems and being valued for expertise. End-target commission turns collaborators into territorial competitors. It also reinforces the identity conflict that stops engineers engaging commercially in the first place, because it frames the whole activity as ‘selling for money’ rather than ‘helping someone make a good decision’. The real motivators for engineers are mastery, recognition, and progression. Build those into your commercial culture and you will get far more from your people than any commission structure will deliver.
Is your current incentive structure helping or hurting commercial performance?
Three signals worth checking. First, are your engineers sharing commercial intelligence openly, or are account relationships becoming siloed and proprietary? Territorial behaviour is often a sign that the incentive structure is rewarding the wrong things. Second, when you look at your pipeline, are engineers progressing opportunities through consistent commercial activity, or only engaging when a deal is close to closing? End-target focus kills mid-funnel behaviour. Third, when you talk to your engineers about commercial conversations, do they describe the work as helping buyers solve real problems, or do they talk about it in terms of targets and commissions? If the language has shifted to the latter, the culture has shifted with it. A five-minute ROI and Capability Diagnostic will surface the deeper constraints (below – free).