I have been with my current employer since Aug. 2015. It is a family owned business (I know the family) with a good niche product that is relatively new to the market.
Additionally, the sales cycles are extremely long 12-18 month+ for production orders of good volume.
When I was first hired, they said that they were hopeful I would reach sales in the $1-1.5MM in about 18 months after starting. This number was purely a guess.
Over this full year, I expect to be in the 200k range which the company is pleased with. I have a lot of good projects that are pending, just need more time for proofing by the end user before they order volume quantities. Additionally, the other two salesmen are not in the 1-1.5MM range and they have been with the company longer than me.
I am paid a base salary that I can live off of, especially if I reduce wasteful spending. And, I am paid 6% commission on the gross margin of the sale. If I were to reach the $1.8MM range, my commission rate would increase to 10%. I negotiated the figures with them based on my expectations of where my sales would be from their thinking when I started, that is way off so I am behind compensation wise from what I expected to make. In fact, they stole me away (my own choosing) from another industry where I would almost certainly have made about 20-25% more money this year than I actually have. But, I expected when I started and still do that the long term advantage in compensation is with this company and industry.
My question(s) are:
- Should I wait until January/end of fiscal year to ask?
- Or, should I wait until more of the big projects start going through?
- Should I expect a (cost of living) salary bump or expect to be at the same base for my whole career?
Any suggestions or comments are appreciated!