In most sales careers, the more you sell increases your earnings. In other words, sell more-earn more. As simple as this seems and as obvious as it may be, when you discover that your income decreases despite you having closed more sales, the reasons may be very hard to accept and to understand.

Is it You?

Hey, let's face the possibility that you may be the cause of your diminished earnings. While it may not be comfortable to consider that you are not the perfect sales professional, considering your involvement should be your first point of your detective work.

Start by reviewing your recent sales and compare them to sales you made when you were earning more. Do the sales have the same amount of profit? Do your recent sales include as many options as those made previously? If you don't discover anything obvious that jumps out at you, you'll need to take a deeper look in the mirror.

Have you gotten lazy with improving and adding to your sales skills? Have you started taking shortcuts during your sales cycles? Are you making sure that you have kept up with any changes to your compensation plan and have utilized each and every commission-augmenting promotion that is available to you?

Is it Your Industry?

An industry can be viable and growing one day, and contracting and dying the next. While most industries don't disappear overnight, it is not uncommon for sales professionals to be the first to notice a decline in an industry.

The markers of an industry in decline include less competition as businesses begin to pull out of the industry and either close their doors or refocus their efforts towards a different industry.

Another marker is the introduction of new technology that renders an established industry less viable. What often happens is that business leaders, who may suspect an industry contraction, lower their market costs in an attempt to make as much revenue as possible in the time the industry has left.

Is it Your Company?

If you are confident that the cause of your diminished paychecks is not you or an industry contraction, the next inspection point should be your employer. Has their been any changes in your senior leadership structure? Has your company launched a new product or service that is not being well received in the market?

Whatever the underlying reason, your lower paychecks could be that your employer has lost some of its focus to taking care of their sales professionals.Your company may have intentionally made it harder for their sales reps to earn high commissions. This may be done to control expenses, put more money in the company's bank account, prepare for an expansion or to increase the bonuses of senior leaders.

Be careful not to judge your employer too quickly, even if many of the indicators point to them being the cause of your lowered income. There may be challenges that they are facing that you are unaware of and they may be working diligently at fixing whatever problems that are causing their employees to earn less money.

Yet the possibility remains that your employer is simply one that you should not be working for. There are sales-based companies that evolved, either slowly or quickly, from a company that was good to sell for into a company that doesn't reward its sales professionals appropriately. If this is the case, and if your company is demonstrating that they show no signs of "righting their wrongs," dust off your resume,hit the streets and find a company willing to pay for your time, efforts and talents.