In 2026, cross-border e-commerce has bid farewell to the reckless era of making money just by selling goods.
Platform rules are becoming increasingly complex, traffic costs are rising, and market competition is intensifying.
In this war without gunpowder, the core competitiveness of enterprises is ultimately people, but most small and medium-sized business owners are still in the “primitive tribe” stage in terms of salary incentive management.
The traditional ‘basic salary + commission’ salary model has its shortcomings exposed as the team grows.
‘Black box’ commissions, with opaque rules, complex and changeable calculations, undermine employees’ sense of security and trust; purely sales-oriented, operators adopt low-price spirals or even illegal methods to offset performance, focusing only on sales and not profits; ‘uneven droughts and floods’ lead to the collapse of teamwork and fierce competition for resources; salaries are out of touch with the market, and companies are at a disadvantage in the competition for talents.
For example, Mr. Wang, the founder of a 150-person cross-border e-commerce company, increased the basic salary of all employees by 10% in order to stabilize military morale, but this caused a series of problems.
High-performing employees feel that their value has not been recognized, the management authority of middle-level managers has been weakened, and ordinary employees believe that the salary increase cannot match their efforts. Negative emotions spread, team morale hits rock bottom, and the loss of core talents accelerates.
‘Stars Go to the Sea’ also found itself in a similar predicament.
Before the reform, the company’s salary was “basic salary + sales commission”. Star operators had links to popular products but were unwilling to share their experience and refused to promote new products. There were many internal conflicts within the team, and profit growth was weak.
After many failed salary increases, star operators were poached, causing huge losses to the company.
After learning from the experience, Mr. Chen, the founder of Stars Overseas, introduced the KSF (Key Success Factor) compensation full performance model.
The core idea of KSF is to allow employees to create and divide value together with the company, and to transform employees into ‘operators’.
KSF’s implementation plan is divided into three steps.
The first step is to redefine the value of the position and clarify what results the position is ultimately responsible for, how to quantify and measure it, and the ‘bonuses’ the company will pay for excess results.
The second step is to extract KSF indicators and design a more three-dimensional indicator matrix that focuses on profits, such as cross-border e-commerce senior operations positions. Based on the balance point, employees are encouraged to receive additional rewards after exceeding the balance point, and employees are guided to comprehensively focus on profits, advertising efficiency, etc., in line with the company’s strategic goals.
The third step is to communicate and reach consensus among all employees, and organize a ‘Performance Consensus Workshop’ to allow employees to participate in formulating plans and enhance their sense of participation and recognition.
Half a year after the implementation of KSF, ‘Stars Go to Sea’ has undergone a transformation.
The company’s overall sales increased by 28%, gross profit margin increased by 5 percentage points, the average monthly income of core operating positions increased by 22%, the voluntary turnover rate of core employees dropped by 40%, the team atmosphere improved, and the boss was liberated.
In the current business environment, the traditional salary model has caused enterprises to fall into a vicious cycle of ‘increasing revenue without increasing profits, and failing to retain talents’, and the KSF salary model provides enterprises with a new way of solving problems.
Cross-border e-commerce bosses should review the company’s salary system, introduce the KSF model, establish a transparent, fair, co-created and win-win value distribution platform with employees, and build solid talent barriers.
