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Seth Godin on Commission

September 23, 2009

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So I was going through my nor­mal hun­dreds of morn­ing emails and although I gen­er­ally breeze through Seth Godin’s posts (I’ve found them to be the equiv­a­lent of Tweets, short, unin­formed, the inter­net equiv­a­lent of a sound bite with­out sub­stance) this par­tic­u­lar post made me pause:

Every­one gets paid on commission

Beyond the fact that it’s about 5 lines long I have a num­ber of issues with what Seth is propos­ing here:

  1. Being paid on com­mis­sion implies that every func­tion is cus­tomer fac­ing. In any com­pany there are sup­port, infra­struc­ture and sec­ondary func­tions which make an orga­ni­za­tion actu­ally work. How would you pro­pose cal­cu­lat­ing their com­mis­sion. Gen­er­ally Seth, these are referred to as bonuses.
  2. Not every post, arti­cle or piece of news media is directly mea­sur­able. Exam­ple: Sun­day Morn­ing Polit­i­cal Talk Shows, they have a very low directly mea­sur­able audi­ence. How­ever their influ­ence through syn­di­ca­tion, media dis­cus­sion is sub­stan­tial. Should these shows and their hosts be mea­sured on commission?
  3. Doing great work does not nec­ces­sar­ily mean that there is a defin­able B2C con­ver­sion rate attached to it. You often men­tion brand­ing, cus­tomer loy­alty and the like in your books and blog. Now you seem to con­tra­dict your­self by say­ing every action must have a mea­sur­able con­ver­sion to a sale.
  4. In the world of jour­nal­ism it isn’t always about appeal­ing to pub­lic appetite. In fact it is about the media inform­ing the pub­lic, in your world I would pre­dict that many jour­nal­ists would sim­ply write what is con­ve­nient to increase rat­ing (or traffic).

Those are a few of my rea­sons that Seth Godin is way off base here. Seth, take a cou­ple of hours off and watch Glen Gary Glen Ross then think about your post, your posi­tion and the fairly shal­low insight you pro­vided. Is that thought leadership?

Unless of course you meant bonuses and incen­tives rather than commission.

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Written by Dan Nedelko · Filed Under Features, Internet Marketing 

Comments

8 Responses to “Seth Godin on Commission”

  1. Jeff D Wyatt on September 23rd, 2009 7:11 am

    In read­ing Seth’s post, I think the point wasn’t so much that every­thing is cur­rently mea­sur­able and employ­ees should be held to a strictly com­mis­sion– based com­pen­sa­tion model, but rather that the model for good work and employee value is chang­ing as effec­tive­ness can be more accu­rately mea­sured in today’s dig­i­tal world.

    I think that Seth would agree with you that the not-so-easily-measurable facets of a busi­ness, like brand­ing for exam­ple, remain an essen­tial part of a suc­cess­ful busi­ness model, despite their intangibility.

    How­ever, t the facets of a busi­ness that are read­ily mea­sur­able (like traf­fic to a cer­tain journalist’s blog posts) should receive com­pen­sa­tion through a commission-based structure.

  2. Dan Nedelko on September 23rd, 2009 7:34 am

    I agree with your obser­va­tions Jeff but on the last point (and his major point) I strongly dis­agree that Jour­nal­ists should be com­pen­sated based on a com­mis­sion structure.

    My point being that the pro­fes­sion of Jour­nal­ism would degen­er­ate into a morass of self serv­ing pop­ulist dri­vel designed to feed the masses.

    Although it could eas­ily be argued that this has already happened.

  3. Jeff D Wyatt on September 23rd, 2009 7:55 am

    AKA Fox News

  4. Seth Godin on September 23rd, 2009 10:38 am

    I wasn’t say­ing “should.” I rarely do.

    I was describ­ing what’s hap­pen­ing, not what I want to have happen.

  5. Dan Nedelko on September 23rd, 2009 10:44 am

    You cer­tainly seem to be advo­cat­ing it (my emphasis):

    In fact, in a dig­i­tal world where every­thing can be mea­sured, we all work on com­mis­sion. And why not? If you do great work and it works, you should get rewarded. And if you don’t, it’s hard to see why a ratio­nal orga­ni­za­tion would keep you on.

  6. Jeanne Heydecker on September 23rd, 2009 4:22 pm

    This is the path that jour­nal­ism is tak­ing and has been tak­ing for a long time. Back when TV news was just a cost cen­ter and not it’s own P&L, they didn’t have to make a profit, and the news was *gen­er­ally* more inde­pen­dent and unbi­ased. Print jour­nal­ism is even worse. Its ever polar­ized take on the news is evi­dent, and what Amer­i­cans cel­e­brate is peo­ple who can hit a ball with a stick or star­lets who wear short dresses with no panties. What hap­pened to jour­nal­is­tic ethics? Many coun­tries sub­si­dize the press; and for a coun­try who’s basic rights include free­dom of the press, we should get back to the busi­ness of report­ing facts and not sen­sa­tion­al­iz­ing every story. Pop­u­lar­ity (i.e., eye­balls) does not equal con­ver­sion to sales. Cre­atives, includ­ing jour­nal­ists, should under­stand basic mar­ket­ing as an adjunct to what they do, but mar­ket­ing peo­ple are sup­posed to drive traf­fic to great prod­ucts, while those that make great prod­ucts should focus on con­tin­u­ing to develop good work.

    That said, jour­nal­ists have to under­stand that their indus­try is chang­ing and the old guard needs to really embrace web 2.0. Writ­ing for online enti­ties is dif­fer­ent than print. Find­ing news on sites like twit­ter and aggregating/distilling that for the reader is going to be a big part of that future. Being able to make sense of that noise, gen­uinely par­tic­i­pat­ing in a dia­logue with read­ers, com­ment­ing, and being part of the com­mu­nity will become valu­able skills (but only in a world where Man­age­ment thor­oughly under­stands and rewards it — huge dis­con­nect now). Jour­nal­ists who don’t get it, won’t be work­ing for much longer.

  7. Dave on November 22nd, 2009 3:59 pm

    Godin is really hit or miss. He has some posts that are gold. But he also has a TON of fluff that is just posted as link-bait.

  8. Crystal Admiral on January 27th, 2010 9:45 am

    I also com­pletely dis­agree any jour­nal­ists should be com­pen­sated based on a com­mis­sion struc­ture, what will hap­pen to the news?

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