It's a living. Long hours, nights and weekends, but that is the car business. Total lack of any leadership.
Pros
If you are over 40, you can still get a decent paying sales job here.You will work harder than you ever worked in a B2B sales job, for less money than you have ever made. But it beats Walmart, Starbucks, or other retail sales jobs. Attractive women can do very well here. They do not need to know anything about cars, they do not need a college degree. They just need to know about people. It helps if they are the same etnicity of the majority of buyers. We do get frequent training from the manufacturer about products and crap traing from some corporate yahoo telling us how "True Price" and word tracks are the answers to everything. The medical benefits are good in this area because we have Kaiser. But most of the company has Blue Cross, which really sucks and is expensive. (I tried it my first year and dropped it in favor of Kaiser) The dental plan doesn't save you any money over pay as you go. There are some typical discounts that all big corporations can get for cell phone, movies, disneyland, etc. We get pizza or some other food on Saturdays where everone works 8:30 am to 7:00 pm. We work almost every weekend and all holidays except Thanksgiving and Christmas, the only two days of the year the dealership is closed. There is no holiday pay, it is just another regular workday. We get 6 to 7 days off a month. Our particular manager is very good about allowing us to choose our days off. The employee purchase plan for vehicles as described in the handbook would be a good deal, excpet it is at the discretion of the General Manager, who has no trouble making a few grand in profit off an employee purchase. On average, I make $500 in commission on a car. We get paid on both the front and the back end. So if I sell 10 cars a month, I'll make about $5,000 a month gross. I live in a very high cost of living city. I see 20 somethings earning $10,000 a month working in tech or marketing. Rent is expensive here, so $5,000 a month is not a living wage in this area. There are good months and bad months. On a good month, I can make $,8,500. On a bad month, barely cover my $2,500 draw. There are people here who consistently make over $10,000 a month in commissions. They are very experienced, agressive and very good at what they do. Our particular dealerhsip has a very orgainzied workflow, but it still takes 4 hours to meet, greet, test drive, close and deliver a car. And the rep basically does it all, from being a porter to retrieve the car from the lot to getting the car filled with gas after sale to teaching the customer all the features of the car. If the cusotmner isn't sure what they want, it can be longer. Only 2 out of every 10 cusotmers will actually buy, so there is a lot of wasted time with non-buyers. And a lot of standing around waiting for a cusotmer to walk in. We have an open floor, so every cusotmer is fair game to every rep working. But we work hard to be nice to everyone. There are times everything goes great until you run the cusotmer's credit and discover they are not financially qualified to buy a car. Any car. Their outsourced Technical Support is uniformely excellent.
Cons
Favoritism runs rampant. Certain favored reps get "spooned" deals that the managers have already negotiated. There is zero opportunity for promotion. To be promoted, one must move to another dealership and if you don't know the right people, you will never get the job. It is an "Old Boys" network. They mostly hire from outside. And they give prospective employees this stupid "Hartman Value Profile" test that asks questions like "What is worse, buring a witch at the stake or blowing up an airliner?" It is impossilbe to have any communication with any executive at Corporate HQ. I don't even know what 90% of them do there. Any communication is either ignored or sent back to the GM, who is now pissed off that one of his employees involved corporate. The name of the game here is give lip service to corporate, pass the audits, be able to recite The Playbook and then go back to business as usual. No one at Corporate wants to hear anything from a sales associate. They routinely roll out new technology without any mechanism for taking feedback. They post nationwide standards that may work in some less competitiver markets but don't work in more competitive ones. The do not tkae into consideration cost of living in setting salaries. $10,000 a month goes a lot farher in Phoenix than it does in Washington D.C. The Sales Managers and General Manager are way overpaid for what they do. There isn't a one of them that could actually do my job. Our GM is rumored to make $25K a month and never has to talk to a cusotmer. Works 7:30 to 3 PM, plus Saturday morning. He takes lots of vacations and micro manages everything, right down to the coffee and the bathrooms. Our General Sales Manger makes about $18,000 a month. Finance Managers make about $10,000 a month and clients are literally dropped into their lap. All the managers may have been great sales people in their day, but they are not leaders. This company promotes based upon sales achievement, not leadership. To be a great sales person means to be totally focused on your personal goals and satisfying your cusotmers. It is a solo game, not a team sport. Great leaders may not be the top performers, They are the ones who think outside the box. And that kind of think is neaither appreciate or rewarded. All ideas for new and better ways to do things are seen as complaints and being negative. There is very little delegation of authority. No one working here except the GM actually knows how much the dealership makes or loses, it is a closely guarded secret. All information is on a need to know basis. Since they are paid on the combined gross profit, a manager never has to work long hours. They can go home and still earn money. But as a sales rep, if I want to leave at the end of my "shift" and a cusotmer wants to come in later in the evening, I have to stay to even have a chance to make the commission. Otherwise, I can choose to split with another rep, but that is like taking $250 out of my wallet and giving it to him. So I stay, sometimes 10 to 12 hours in a day. Even though under the law, we are considered "exempt" employees, we are still required to punch a time clock and be right on time for our "shift" or face discipline. But they don;'t care (and don't pay for) staying late.
