re: People who work in sales: how do you like it?

For a newbie I'd definitely get a healthy base pay a s safety net, everyone thinks they are good salespeople until they arent or times get tough. I'd honestly say maybe 1 in 4 or 1 in 5 salespeople at our company would last long term on a low to no salary plan. We've taken a few salespeople on those types of plans, and for them it never worked out, but those people were mostly unproductive for a period of time and getting "nudged" to do better. We actually had 1 salesperson who had a $100k base, and he sold 1 really big fairly long term deal he would get commission on (2-3 years). He basically sold nothing for almost a year after that, and we moved him to $50k base from $100k to motivate him more, still nothing after another 6 months and he got taken to $0 salary after that, and he still sold nothing for another 6 months, and then got let go. This was all just due to laziness though on his part, not because things got dried up for 2 years in a row. He was sitting happy making $100k base and another $100k/yr from that big deal he booked.