Have you heard of any social media marketing company wanting a % of your business?

[sheenae]

I will try to make this quick. We sell a product and one of our sales people, who really has done great, has come up with this idea for us to do social media marketing, he wants a percentage of sales because he will really be doing all the work which is fine but he feels we need to hire a social media company that has only been around a year or 2 who is "hungry" to work and will work on commission and who will want 25% of our company as ownership because he thinks they will work harder then anyone else. I have never heard of any social media company wanting ownership of a company they are working with. Have you?

*Mind you this isn't our product, my mom owns the product we just buy it off of her wholesale and sell it. We would be promoting our own website. So he wants to give up a % of our company we are building with a product we don't own.

[Fulcrum]

I won't repeat the words that went through my head when I read this. Does this sales guy have a financial interest in the aforementioned social media marketer

Give up 25% of your company for a social media marketer? Not only that, but a hungry social media marketer!!! Ballsy request.

[vangogh]

What Brad said.

Giving up 25% of your company for social media marketing sounds like an awful deal. I wondered if the sales person has a stake in the social media company as well. You can find marketing forms that will charge you to do work. If you don't have the cash for that, you can find companies that will do the work and base what they make off of the results they deliver, similar to giving them a commission. Giving away part of the company is a little too much, especially before they've proven they can even do the work.

[Harold Mansfield]

I've heard of all kinds of people trying to muscle in on a percentage of a business. Yes, internet marketing is hard and a good marketer is worth a decent fee. But I'd sooner destroy my business and burn everything to the ground before I would agree to give a (non-partner) stranger 25% of my company, let alone to someone who has only been around 2 years.

"Hungry" is a great quality, but it doesn't trump experience, knowledge, and a solid plan with a proven track record.

Tell who ever suggested this to you to go jump in a toxic land fill and get 100% of that.

[tmcmahon]

Yeah, that sounds shady AF, haha. I like to pitch rev-share deals to clients where I'll get a cut of online sales driven by my efforts which sounds like it's fairly common.

I'd be much more willing to partner with a developer for a software/app or something rather than pay them upfront to save on startup costs, but not for a marketer I didn't know for an already established business.

[KristineS]

Hiring a company to work on commission - that's fairly standard, social media companies do that. Why do they need 25% of the business though? Shouldn't they work harder because working harder will make their commission higher? I wouldn't give away 25% of the company. Definitely worth investigating the sales guy allegiances and motives.

[BizAdvisor]

I have a guy mow my lawn twice a month for free. All I had to do was include his name on the title of my house! What a bargain!

[curtishowe]

I have heard of companies that will do a profit share of the sales they do for you yet not of company ownership. That makes them partners in the business and allows them to control corporate strategy. Not a good idea. We prefer to just charge a fair price for our services and provide great value for our clients.