Have you had any difficulty setting up a Grunt's commission in a Grunt Fund (Slicing Pie)?

Thanks for using a Grunt Fund! You are off to the right start with your business. The model should feel right, unless something is askew. My gut tells me that you are contemplating taking the commission on top of a fair market salary that is similar to your partner's. So, when you do your job well you get gravy, when he does his job well he does not.

Setting sales comps/spifs are treacherous but in this case, unless I am reading it wrong, the issue is one of escalating bus dev comp that could throw off the "balance" of the founding team. If the read is wrong ignore the rest...

This will likely not be a very popular viewpoint among sales people, but IMO 'relationships' themselves should not really be valued at all. It's only when those relationships translate to actual sales that they should be entered into the reckoning as commission (if commission is a factor in compensation). And anyway, who's to say that the product dev doesn't have some obscure relationship that will result in 100% revenue growth?

Thank you for those very those high quality answers and comments! They are very useful and to the point. Some of these invite more questions and comments, so here I go -

@ Lawrence - I agree with your point. And yes, above everything else (cash, space, furniture), the core is work hours earning market revenues in the form of equity. That's at the heart of the Grunt Fund model, and perhaps the most important piece of it. I encourage you to read the book, it's a very easy read and well worth it I think.

@ Mike. On principle I agree with the heart of what you wrote, where I have difficulty is applying this in an early startup context, and also reconciling your post with chapter 3 of Slicing Pie, for the following reason.

There are two of us (most of the rest is either contracted out or smaller level grunts), and we're working in an extremely uncertain environment. We have no revenue track record, no proven business model, all we have is a business model, a product we're building, and hopes and dreams, out of which, sure, we can make nice good looking excel sheets. We're trying to roll out the build-measure-learn cycles (lean startup) as fast as we can. One of us has particular expertise in product development, the other is business oriented, and while we each have our own expertise, we take most key decisions together, as would be most natural in such a setting.
So I have difficulty in qualifying me (business guy) as a "sales rep" though, sure, I am in charge of busdev (as well as custdev, sales and marketing). More to the point, setting sales targets would have very little basis until we've proven that we're able to generate the first $ in revenue, particularly if that accounts for large portions of lost GHRR revenue. Ultimately, work goes into key learning, and hopefully sales will follow. Of course, we could nevertheless split functions and consider a % of total salary dedicated to pure sales, and commission that part. That said, it feels a little phony to both of us, for the same reason you mentioned that CEOs and executives don't usually take commissions.

More importantly, the salary structure of sales rep wasn't the basis at all for our wish to set commissions. It wasn't to "reward" business dev or sales (sorry if that wasn't clear in the original post). It was meant as a way to value the key network (what you call "relationships") of possible prospect customers I was contributing into our startup. In your book, in chapter 3, you have explanations for how to account for various contributions in the business. Of these is time, cash, supplies & equipments, ideas, and relationships. In that last part, you mention cases linked to relationships that land a sale, or other types of relationships that can land a series A for example. And you suggest setting up a commission structure to value those relationships in the Grunt, similar to what the market would value "a finder's fee". All this makes sense, and in principle, is not necessarily directly linked with the function of "sales rep". You could well imagine Grunt1 who translates his relationships by introducing key prospects to the startup, even though he may be the product dev in the startup. So I see these two issues "sales rep commission" and "relationship commissions" (based on realized sales) as possibly distinct, and certainly not always the same. Am I missing something or reading this wrong?
To link this directly with our issue, the question is: how do you value the relative contribution of a Grunt, not in time, but in "relationships" that can ultimately land sales?

@ Chris: Yes, capping commissions is a very good solution. Very clearly, commissions, whatever the reason/form, must be well calibrated / contained so as not to skew off balance. That much is very clear, and capping is a possible solution to that.
As for (a) & (b), the point is not to reward in cash at this point, but essentially in something somewhat similar to your options solution, except in a simpler way more appropriate to our early startup, through a Grunt Fund. I think your solutions apply well to startups post-seed funding, or post series A.

I like Jake's response.

Thanks for starting this thread! Really curious to hear other opinions, I am running into the slicing pie model more frequently. With the caveat, I have not read the book....