I am working on creating a sales compensation plan for a recurring revenue model are there any pitfalls I need to be aware of when creating this?

Do you have any internal sales professionals? You should at LEAST have an internal sales director who sets the strategy for a sales force. Then you determine if the proper path is a contracted sales force. I've known companies that have used outside sales teams however NONE that have seen the type of success that outweighs having an internal team.

People hate calls. People hate emails. People hate mail. Do you really want your first impression to be that of an interloper and a pusher? Then again, most recipients aren't event going to look at what you send them. What is your niche? Office managers for private family healthcare providers in Peoria? Athletics department directors for NAIA schools? Sales managers at wholesale car dealers that make over $180 million per year in gross revenue? Know your niche and define your buyer (and it better be the CIO or VP). Is your buyer female or male? Older, middle age, or younger? What about her or his college education? What does he drive? Where does he live? Where does he eat his lunch and get his coffee in the morning? What does he read? Etc. Go to your buyer. Find congregations of your buyer. Professional associations. Conferences. Meet-ups. Trade shows. Offer to do free presentations--not on your product but on best practices or trends you observe in the industry. Make your presentation about solving problems your buyers deal with every day. Write blogs or columns for media they read. Again, focus on what they need/want to read. You will have a hard time keeping enough business cards in stock and click-throughs from your byline. This is a true "targeted outreach campaign." Don't waste your money and time with anything less than this. You're going to do great. Please let me know if you'd like to talk about it more!

Instead of repeating the wisdom of others, I'll link to it below. Here is a great blog post on hiring your first salesperson: http://tomtunguz.com/when-to-hire-a-salesperson Also, Mark Suster has written a ton of great post on his blog about startup sales. http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/on-selling/

This is not my specialty, however, I have been in your position many many times -- maybe this will help. If the product is in-tangible, then look for JV partners on the Internet. Try to find an expert that deals with these JV opportunities (like me). If the product is physical, then look for sales organizations that have networks of sales people across the country. You do the deal with the organization and the independent network of sales people sells your product. It's a sweet setup if you can negotiate a margin that works for everyone. Hope that helps - Cheers - Nick

It sounds like you're off to a good start with your lead generation. While it is important to keep lead volume strong, it's even more important to have a way to follow up with these leads and continue pushing them through your sales funnel until you can convert them into revenue. Without that follow-up, especially if you're generating leads through PPC, you're likely wasting the budget and energy you're putting toward your marketing efforts in the first place. The first thing I'd recommend you do is create an automatic "kick-back" email that triggers as soon as a lead downloads your ebook. Be sure to thank them for downloading, give them a link to access the ebook, and then (most importantly) include your call-to-action for the next step you want them to take. Second, figure out how you're going to handle these leads from a sales perspective. If you're stretched for bandwidth, I'd recommend a system where you assign dollar values to different types of leads, and only have a sales rep follow up with your highest value leads. How much is an ebook lead worth to your business? How much is a demo lead? What about someone who actively requests to be contacted? You'll find that as you get these systems and processes underway, it'll be extremely useful to have a CRM system both for integrating with your marketing efforts and for helping your sales team to be able to sort and prioritize the leads they're reaching out to. Lead conversion is a daily focus of mine in my role at HubSpot, and I'd be happy to chat further about how to get a strong marketing/sales funnel set up so you're better equipped to manage the leads you generate and better able to convert them into dollars. Let me know if there's anything I can do to help!