Seeking advice for how to structure compensation for first sales associate at Series A company, no historical sales data

Hi elphas!I work at a Series A transportation startup and we are hiring our first sales person. I'm seeking advice on how to structure compensation for this person, including a range of total compensation and how that breaks down between salary and commission. The challenge is that we don't have a lot of indication on conversion rates or lead times, and sales during the next few months will continue to be difficult. We have two candidates that we like, one with 9 years of experience, and one with 15 years of experience. We are flexible and want to structure something that makes sense for them, but at the same time stay lean/scrappy with our budget, and structure the compensation so that they are incentivized the right way.Any feedback that you may have are very appreciated!

Here's my feedback based on years of experience: Keep the structure as simple and transparent as possible. Since you don't have a lot of indication on conversion rates or lead times, and sales during the next few months will continue to be difficult, give them a way to get small and fast wins. For example, make some short wins around numbers of outreach/calls/meetings, or whatever. behavior you wnat from them. If they feel successful early on, that helps them stay motivated.They also need to see a clear path to how much they can earn short and long-term. The biggest part of their paychecks should be commission/equity/bonus and they should have a path to making what they consider to be a lot of money! You may want to be transparent and have them help craft the base + commission plan -- asking them for input can help them to have buy-in to the plan. This is important: Do not ever change the pay structure by lowering commission. So make sure you're not over-compensating at the beginning. One way to prevent this while things are unclear is to offer early one-time bonuses in lieu of a set commission while you're getting more data. For example, if you start out by paying 20% but then you realize that's too high, you can't go backwards. You can only increase commission but you can never decrease it unless you want to hire a new team.It doesn't matter how long they've been in sales, good sales people are motivated by money. Some hiring managers feel uncomfortable with the topic of money, or look for people who have other qualities and say that they're about the mission, etc. But sales is about money. I only hire sales people who have money as one of their top 2 career goals. Find out what their personal motivation is. Recognize them and reward them often. I hope that this helps!