I have a request from a new client, who just inked a contract for exclusive rights for North American distribution of a very nice European CAD&Styling software line.

In order to make his numbers, he thinks he needs "100 feet on the street" this year, a combination of both VARS and independent sales agents/reps, none of whom will be employees.

He wants a performance-based element in my pricing.

Obviously, I can't do a simple %-fee agreement on this:
- there is no base salary
- even if I estimated one at $50k, he'd be into me for $1M

Due to the overall project, I think it makes more sense to charge a single project consulting fee would be most appropriate. On top of that simple project fee, I'd add $X per VAR and Y$ per Independent Sales Agent.

Essentially, this is far more than recruiting. This is building/managing a recruiting machine for his business model, then marketing it to the industry. After I hit 100, this could continue to be used indefinitely, by either paying me to manage the pipeline and process the candidates or by doing so internally.

I'm thinking of creating an invite-only website w/whiteboard presentation by the founder on the superiority of his business model and giving a run-down on the sales and compensation programs. Then, doing the actual recruiting(read: sales) work in terms of soliciting select VARs and Independent Sales Agents and engaging them to switch over to selling his solution.

From what I've seen, his business model(on both the support and compensation sides) is definitely superior to the industry and the actual software suite appears to be so as well.

My question is... how & how much would you charge for something like this? I have a ballpark figure nailed down. I just want to know if others out there have done similar projects and, if so, what their billing model and overall project costs were.

Even if you haven't run into this, but have some ideas, I'd like some fresh perspective.

Thanks!