How do I Track Sales?

Hi guys, a friend of mine is a photographer. He wants me to pimp his skills online so he can get sales with local clients. He's agreed to pay me a certain percentage of every client he closes the deal with.

But I cant figure out how I'm going to track his sales?

Sure I can track leads! With a Google voice number, I can track the number of calls etc. but that would be just a lead. Its his phone, so a client finds him online, calls him up, he'd answer the client, meet up with the client, offer upsale, close the sale. But I cant find a way to track the sales, not just the leads, since I'll be getting paid for the percentage of the sales only.

He owns the website. It says his name in the url too. He makes clients sign an agreement, but how do I know if he's going to tell me about ALL of his sales and pay me for them?

We tried to come up with a solution so the sales are transparent to me, but couldn't. Basically every solution we could come up with had a loophole and I'm the one at risk.

I'd appreciate any advice.

your payment system doesn't have something for that?

KlaAz0r said:

your payment system doesn't have something for that?

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He gets paid! Like I said, he attends the calls, meets the customer, do their job and collect the cash/check/paypal. I just market him online so people call him in the first place.

A payment system wouldn't help either as he'd be able to shave my earnings by simply asking every 3rd client to write a check to his name, and not report that sale to me.

Nobody wants to reply?

If you find an easy solution, you'll solve a problem of mine as well.
You could have access to his books, but who knows if he's going to try and cheat 2 at the same time and not report the sale?
Not to mention that you would have to look into his books regularly, not by surprise, or he'll feel too uncomfortable, sooner or later.

Only one other way I can think of: getting back to your leads and asking for feedback. You would definitely find out if a sale was made. It could work, but more to catch him and fire him than to get all payments, unless he knows he is being checked. At least in this case he won't necessarily even know that you are checking. It does require extra effort on your side, though, and it may not work in all situations.

Let me know if you figure it out!

There really is no easy answer to this, and I think it's a common IM challenge, especially since you're so distanced from the actual day to day operations.

The only thing you have going for you is his incentive to earn money. If he sees that you are doing really well and bringing him a lot of clients, the incentive for him to cheat you is reduced because he's going to risk losing that business.

I guess you could try and negotiate some sort of performance bonus based purely on leads to mitigate your risk a little.