The disappearing bonus

Last week there was a company meeting. My boss said it wasn't necessary to make the trip over to attend. Not a major meeting or anything and she'd fill me in on it, afterwards. But, shortly after the meeting ended, she sent me an email that she was leaving the office for the rest of the day and would fill me in the next day. I'm still waiting LOL

I'm sure it was mostly about the fact that we are opening another satellite office for some of the employees and also, that for the first time in just about ever, our sales are not meeting the goal set for the year. WTH?!! Of course, this affects our bonus, which is based on meeting the sales goal at mid year and at the end of the year. While 90% of our income is commissions, a % based on sales, the bonus program isn't based on our commissions $ received, but rather our gross sales $.

The past couple of years, while the push is, of course, to reach our sales goals, it's also been emphasized that we could definitely be doing better on the commission % we actually earn on those sales (after all - that is the actual income to the company). They've pushed to increase our % by a couple of points. Every point is about an extra million dollars in commission to our company for a year - all "easy" money. It doesn't cost us extra manpower or time to price our projects a bit higher when we can. Anyhow, while we've always met out sales goals and earned our bonus, the commission % earned has stayed the same the past several years.

Now this year, our sales are not where they should be (even less than this time last year) BUT, our commission % has increased over 2%. That is wonderful. That means our bottom line net income will be over 2 million dollars more than last year, based on the same sales total.  So, while our sales are not where they should be at this point, our total commission dollars are more than where they normally are, now that we are getting more out of those sales.  BUT, our bonus isn't based on that.  So, kinda stinks that overall - the employees/sales force are making the company the same amount of money as before, we would not get our bonus this mid year.  The extra crappy part is that for this year our bonus's went up from 10% of our salary to 15%....and now for some reason we aren't meeting our goal. Poop!

One of the owner's sent out an email a week or so ago, telling us not to stress out too much over the drop in sales. The company is still very strong financially and at the end of the day, it's is after all just a job selling stuff. It was a nice email, but I'm sure everyone would rather the sales be up and getting a nice bonus next month!

Why sales are down, I really have no idea. We are 20% below are sales goal YTD so far, and 14% below our sales total at this time last year. Ouch! It does make one wonder about the correlation of increasing our % earned on those sales. Did it end up taking more time away from making other sales? Or did it cause us to lose sales because we were too high priced and the customers went with another manufacturer to buy some of their products? Because everything I am hearing about the area we service is that construction is on the increase, so by association our sales should be increasing, not decreasing. I thought business's were feeling optimistic about the economy and investing more. We have had a bit of turnover in our sales force, but nothing more than usual in a given year. Though I found it odd that the person that got the very highest % of raise (15%), out of everyone, a couple of months has decided to leave the company.

Personally, it will be another hit to my budget, especially since I also did not receive a salary increase this year. It wouldn't have been so bad to not get the bonus, if I had received the 4-9% increase that just about every single other employee got. Or vice versa - it wouldn't be too bad not to get a raise, since they increased the bonus program by 5% (and we've never had a problem getting our bonus before). While I do not budget the bonus in my monthly budget, it of course has ALWAYS been a nice boost to income to get it twice a year, these past years. I am hoping some adjustment will be made to take into account that we are actually earning more money, even though our sales are down. The owners are very fair and generous, so I have a feeling it will all work out in the end.