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SALES MANAGEMENT Recruiting, Teaching,Management & Compensation of Salespeople #6 BYGRAYSON SCHWEPFINGER the recruiting section of these articles with a few personal preferences that perhaps should have been noted at the start of the articles. Number one, I rarely hire anybody that has ever seen a manufactured home! My experience with hir- ing people fromwithin the industry has been al- most universally poor. Since I want the salesperson to sell the way I want the salemade. Too many times I find they bring their bad habits with them and they insist on using them at my location. I am sick and tired of hearing, "That isn't the way we did it where I worked before!" I also find that the only skill they bring that I can use is product knowledge. This is one of the easiest things to teach and the informa- tion is constantly changing anyway. I can al- ways rely on a trip to the factory and factory rep to help me with people new to the industry. Unless they can convinceme they are truly will- ing to consider change I would rather start out fresh with someone else. Another concern I have is if they were a re- Before we go any further I would like to close ences and I'm sure there are exceptions to all of them. However I am an odds player and go for what happens most often. I mention them merely for your consideration. Lets move on to different ways to compensate salespeople. COMPENSATION ally good salesperson why are they leaving where they currently work. There may be a good rea- son for this but this too is rare. Another thing I rarely do is hire car or real estate salespeople.My experience is they rarely do well in our industry. This puzzled me for a number of years since you would think that both could easily make the adjustment to our indus- try. In the case of a car salesperson I find that they are not satisfied with the pace of our in- dustry. They are used to closing sales and get- ting paid in terms of hours not weeks or months. I also find that many of them are ego driven and need the satisfaction of the sale at a much faster pace than our industry supplies. In the case of real estate salespeople I think they miss the extremely rare opportunity to sell a re- ally expensive house and make a commission that could be in the thousands. I also think too many of them, and their friends, view our in- dustry as a step down in career choices. This AUGUST 2012 28 THE JOURNAL package. You can choose anything from a straight salary program to a commission only programand everything in between. Regardless of what you choose take the time to do it wisely! One of the worst things you can do to a sales- person is to be constantly changing their pay program. Regardless of which program you pick the There are numerous ways to create a pay that any prospect I consider has had a degree of success in selling some sort of big-ticket item. Successful selling is a combination of a number of skills developed over a lifetime. I amnot sure I can teach somebody how to sell. I am sure that if they know how to sell another big-ticket itemI can teach themhow to sellmanufactured homes. As Imentioned these aremy personal prefer- attitude is not conducive to creating a success- ful salesperson. When looking for a salesperson I like to find limit to what a salesperson can earn. Although I don't advise it, you may wish to place a limit on earnings. Regardless of which way you choose it should be clearly stated in the pay pro- gram. As part of this program spell out in de- tail how any sales in progress would affect any monies paid should the salesperson leave. If you are going to pay something you may want to make it a graduated scale depending as how much work is left to complete the sale. As with the personal job description have the salesper- son sign your copy of the pay program stating that they have read, understands, and agree to the terms. File your copy in their company file. For the purpose of these articles whenever I mention the word profit I mean the difference between the delivered cost of the home and the retail price it was sold for. You may choose to use a different approach, adjust your program accordingly. I find some dealers are reluctant to let their salesperson should be able to easily figure out how much money they made. I find that if they know how much money they will make as they are making the sale they are more likely to try harder to close the sale. Your pay program should be written down in salespeople know their prices and profit mar- gins. I personally have always felt that if I did- n't trust them enough to know these numbers I probably shouldn't have hired them. Besides, if they work for you for any length of time and haven't figured out what these numbers are they are probably too dumb tomake a good salesper- son. Next month we will start to discuss in detail detail and a copy given to the sales person. It should be designed to encourage the kind of ac- tivities that generate profitable sales. Make sure that the salesperson understands that sell- ing homes is not his only job. If you don't out- line what else is required when you hire them it is not fair to tell them later things you forgot to mention. The easiest way to overcome this is to use the job description outlined in previous articles by including it as part of this written program. Most sales programs state there is no all the various methods there are to paying a salesperson. Until then-GOOD SELLING. T J Grayson Schwepfinger is a nationally known speaker and member of the manufactured home Hall of Fame. He specializes in sales and sales management training and can be reached for com- ments or more information at his e-mail schwep1@aol.com or his phone 610 533 4969. Website – www.graysonschwepfinger.com.