[swombat]

If taking away commissions didn't hurt sales, why would reinstating them fix some hypothetical sales problem? This makes no sense.

Because the reason why sales didn't drop might be because of wider factors that outweighed the removal of commissions. Once/if the "water level drops" and management start panicking, they might consider reversing their position on sales commissions, at least to see if it makes a difference for the better.

Seems like a pretty obvious line of thinking to me.