Small Business Advice Required

We’re looking for some quick business advice please… £30 to whoever delivers the best advice!

We’re a small service provider start-up. We’re bumping along ok in our 18 months of operation; privately owned by two directors, operating in profit and have no debt (bar about £7k the company owes us from personal funds injected). We have some decent customers so far, but looking to inhale a good few more now the business is ready and we (both directors) are available.

We have a contact who we worked with previously (he was our boss!) that is a very good sales person/new business. He is very interested in joining our venture and currently is available. He brings with him natural new business skills, a potential contacts book and he knows the industry and services we offer. He loves going out networking, making connections, conferences, meetings – all the stuff we dislike and don’t really have time for (yet appreciate the importance).

Given his strengths, and the hole he could plug within our business, we’re keen to cautiously try him out for size and see if he could benefit us. We have already told him we currently have no money to pay him (as we are not taking wages ourselves) but he is fine with this as he is looking to get his teeth into a project long term… And this is our quandary.

He is after a business incentive for which his efforts (currently unpaid) can be rewarded. He has come from a corporation where he was a head, is now in his early 40’s, seeking more freedom and risk/reward – understandable. However we do not wish to part with any shares or make him a director. We feel that 3 chiefs is 1 too many and a potential recipe for conflict.

So here’s the question: What can we offer this guy to give him both a medium term and long term incentive? We already offered a short term, pure commission incentive and he wasn’t too interested on that alone. I think commission on new business is a given, but what else could we offer on top of this as a carrot? Also how could we deliver his commission? (Customers pay monthly for our services with us having about a 50% margin). How could we factor in a trial with him?

Any help, greatly appreciated.

*Apologies in advance for any people that submit a proposal that we do not choose, I’m sure we’ll have a few very good ones to pick from but of course can select only one*.