Designer versus Salesman payment for jobs

Business
1

Hello SitePoint Friends,

I have someone who might want to start some sort of business with me. She would get the web jobs and I would do the designing. I’m wondering what the ratio be for each job. I think there is a lot of work that goes into designing and programming versus sales. Would 60 (me) vs 40 (her) be ridiculous? Should it be 50/50?

Thanks for your help.

2

This is one of those things where it varies considerably. If they are a good salesman, they will be able to get good money for the jobs. For example, we had a salesman that would get sell customers on a $2000/month budget, and then anywhere from 10-30 hours of actual design/programming work was needed. He was a good salesman.

Then we have to ask if you are a good (and error free) designer. Can you knock out a page layout that sells in 5 hours? (I know some who can). If you are fast and good, and the work sells easily without much negative feedback from customers, you are going to have a bright future with a good salesman.

I think you need to try to decide how much you need to make, and how that will factor into the cost. You might want to tell the salesman that you will start with 50/50 or 60/40 but that you need at least $x per hour of time worked on average, and further assessment may be needed in the future.

3

Another great way to structure that relationship is to split 50% of net, not gross. That is tricky when there are no expenses i.e. a single designer - but you can still track hours and build in a leveled internal rate, net it out and split the rest.

And don’t look at it like a ‘designer vs. salesman’ thing - it doesn’t need be adversarial!

4

Allocate the amount according to your working hours like per hour, what rate you want to charge.
I was doing the same think,bring business & done it by developers but it was an I phone applications.My ratio was 30% of the total deal.It was quite minor but on $1000 deal 30% is not bad & I didn’t need to put any effort to get the business, it was a part time thing but if you are doing it on a commercial basis, so the ratio might be vary.