Posted by: Arlin Friesen (goose_friesen@hotmail.com )
Organization:Kamloops Mazda
Date posted: Sun Nov 22 23:41:58 EST 1998
Subject: Pay Plans
Message:
I am a Sales Manager. Can anyone sugest a performance based pay plan that will motivate our sales team. I am a believer in you get what you pay for and I want to reward my team with a agressive rewarding pay plan that will motivate and make them strive to be #1.

Subject: Pay Plan Incentives that Motivate
Reply Posted by: Randy Brooks (broo@localaccess.com )
Organization: Lincoln Mercury of Olympia
Date Posted: Fri Dec 11 0:50:50 EST 1998
Message:
I will speak to pay plans first, then SPIFs second. Pay plans should be a known quantity as far as I'm concerned. For instance our store pays XX% for used and XX% for new of the final gross. We also have previously received additional incentives for new sales, which typically were 0 for the first car, XX for the second, XXX for the 3rd, XX for the 4th, XX for the 5th and XXX for the sixth. This plan gives the salesman a plan he can bank on with confidence. He can goal set if I sell X I get Y. But whatever you do, don't keep changing the payplan. Don't do one thing one month and another the next, use SPIFs for that. Otherwise your steady team players will start wondering just why they are sticking with you if you keep Mickey Mousing around with their living.
SPIFs, here in the US everything seems to have tax consequences now. When I was selling 10 years ago it was a lot more fun. They would just give us money without any record or nothing. SPIFS I can remember was the time they gave us a $100 gold coin for doing something special, the time they paid us $150 in silver dollars and we had to figure out how to carry it, we paid out 2/3 of it on the way home since it was just fun money! SPIFs need to be eye catching, something unusual to catch the eye and mind of the soul. It is also vital to make SPIFs an immediate reward for doing something right. There is no worse way to do these SPIFs then to talk it up and then delay giving the reward. You will get a reputation as a "rubber SPIF" writer and will not get the inspired selling you want.
A simple non cash SPIF that would work would be to cadge up a supply of candy bars and everytime you catch a sales man doing something you really like you reward him immediately on the spot by tossing him a candy bar. Keep the positive reinforcements going all the time.
Probably the worst part of the car business I hear about from salesmen on other car lots is their inability to cope with the daily acid bath of caustic criticism. If you can hold your tongue ask yourself what could I possibly say that would improve his performance without destroying his self confidence?
I once had a manager that trusted us to do his liner ads for him. Two weeks later he got called on the carpet for our advertising that had mysteriously mushroomed from the liner ads authorized into a two page double-truck display ad. Rather than blowing his stack he complemented us on our choice of layout and reminded us to get back to doing the liners only. With a grin and a comment of praise we were back in line; only better this time because we did it the way he wanted after that. Its the little things like that made me be salesman of the Northwest for him soon after that. I would have done it without the pay just to please him. Lucky he never figured that out!

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