Should I pay techs commission, spiff, or straight hourly?
Short answer
Hourly plus a capped spiff on upsells works better for most residential service teams than pure commission, which tends to produce pushy techs and inflated tickets.
Pure commission changes what a tech sees when they walk in
When a tech's pay depends heavily on the ticket size, the customer's furnace stops being a problem to solve and starts being a number to grow. Even honest techs feel that pull, and dishonest ones will act on it. That's how shops end up with a reputation for upselling everything.
Straight hourly with no incentive has the opposite problem: techs have no reason to mention the second issue they noticed, or to close the maintenance plan, or to hustle through the day. You get safe, slow, and under-selling.
A blended structure keeps both honest
Base hourly pay covers the bills and removes pressure to pad a ticket. A small, capped spiff on specific, defined wins, like closing a membership plan or completing a repair same-day instead of a callback, rewards the behavior you actually want without turning the tech into a commission hunter.
A blended pay structure example
| Base hourly | $28/hr |
|---|---|
| Spiff: membership plan sold | $15 flat |
| Spiff: same-day repair close (no callback) | $20 flat |
| No spiff tied to total ticket dollar amount | correct |
The math: Keep spiffs flat-dollar and tied to specific behaviors you can verify, not a percentage of the invoice. A flat spiff can't be grown by upselling parts the customer doesn't need.
Where owners get this wrong
- Tying pay to a percentage of ticket size, which creates an incentive to inflate scope.
- Making the spiff so large it overwhelms the base pay and turns every call into a sales pitch.
- Paying spiffs on results the tech doesn't fully control, like closing a big install that took three visits and a salesperson.
Worth knowing: Whatever structure you pick, review actual ticket averages by tech monthly, if one tech's average is far above the team, look at the tickets, not just the number.
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