[Ethirtynine]

I think anything over $25/hr is comfortable. But wow there are so many guys here that make $50-$120/hr. Amazing

[gscone]

Originally Posted by Ethirtynine

I think anything over $25/hr is comfortable. But wow there are so many guys here that make $50-$120/hr. Amazing

Perhaps in your neck of the woods, but around here, that does notgo too far..

[CnoteMD]

Not that I want to become a car salesman, but this article from Edmunds may make you reconsider such a change in career.

Confessions of a car salesman

[ScBlacksunshine]

Originally Posted by CnoteMD

Not that I want to become a car salesman, but this article from Edmunds may make you reconsider such a change in career.

Confessions of a car salesman

That's a great read Made me realize you pretty much have to sell your soul in exchange of money

[shimshimhada]

Originally Posted by ScBlacksunshine

That's a great read Made me realize you pretty much have to sell your soul in exchange of money

I'd do it. I have souls to spare!

[stressdoc]

I just want to know how I can get a job taking pictures of oranges...

[shimshimhada]

I've been asking that question for years.

[Rally guy]

I've thought about this route several times - even appplying at a Mazda dealership in my early 20's. But I decided to keep my passions and my career separate - beacuse I didn't want to soil my passion with the ineveitable BS that business always entails - no matter what you do. As soon as $$$ get involved - everyone's approach changes, sometimes a little - sometimes a lot!

I think the best route might be to work for BMW in some IT capacity. Steer clear of the rabble, dumb-ass buying public - but get closer to the cars. Make buddies with the motorsports guys or the marketing dept - get out to all the unveilings, track days, promos days etc.

Selling cars would suck at all but the very best marques - even at BMW, I suspect. I was told that - as a gear head driver - I was a rarity for my sales guy - who was also one of the very few in Canada who was also a gear head.

True keeners are just too rare - I worry you'd be driven made by "regular" folks asking about how to mount baby seats and prevent stains on the leather and how to get dog hair out of the carpets.

Frankly - watching most buyer's total ambivelance to the machinery I love would drive me mad. For example - when I was looking at 330's, I sat in one to hear the Logic 7 system. Another buyer was there too - and he wanted to hear the system as well. We sat in the car, he dialed in a classical FM station and he listened at a very low volume for about 20 seconds, delclared he could discern no difference from the base system, got out the car and told the rep, "Don't check that option for me".

This was a good call - since he clearly wasn't ever going to put the system through its paces - but he also clearly had ZERO appreciation for quality HiFi and wouldn't know a good system from a bad. Again - totally fine - but NOT an enthusiast, gear head, audiophile keener who drinks in the brilliant engineering of the car. These guys are the norm it seems. I would be stangling them in frustration by week four!

Just somethign further to consider.

RK

[RedStripe]

For the IT consultants that mentioned the $80+ per hour, that basically means you are contracted out right? How many hours can you get in a year? Is a 6 figure pre-tax annual income possible? Does that mean you are constatly looking for work/projects to fill out your "pipeline"? Also, I'm guessing if you are contracted out, there are no medical or retirement benefits? Thanks.

[gscone]

Originally Posted by RedStripe

For the IT consultants that mentioned the $80+ per hour, that basically means you are contracted out right? How many hours can you get in a year? Is a 6 figure pre-tax annual income possible? Does that mean you are constatly looking for work/projects to fill out your "pipeline"? Also, I'm guessing if you are contracted out, there are no medical or retirement benefits? Thanks.

1099 here, buddy. In regards to constantly looking for work, it really depends. The big if depends on skillsets, demand, etc. I get my medical benefits thru mu wife's employer, so it works out great.

[RedStripe]

From yesterday's Journal, looks to have a lot of the info originally asked.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1144...us_marketplace


Car Dealers Recruit
Saleswomen at the Mall

By JENNIFER SARANOW
April 12, 2006; Page B1

A rule of thumb at car dealerships has been that for every four salesmen hired, one will stick. One of the nation's biggest dealership companies is trying to improve the odds -- by hiring more women.

Starting this summer, recruiters for Florida and Texas dealerships owned by Asbury Automotive Group, Inc. plan to spend afternoons at the local mall, looking for outgoing, helpful women selling clothes at the Gap or appliances at Sears. The recruiters plan to make a discreet approach, pass along a business card and ask the saleswomen if they would consider selling cars.


Kaylene Cohen (left) of Plaza Motors near St. Louis. Women influence 81% of new-car purchases.
The hours at car dealerships are just as long as at retail stores, but the pay can be double or more, with sales-floor compensation, including wages, commissions and bonuses, running as high as $80,000 a year.

If the mall recruiting program works, Asbury plans to roll it out at about 70 of its 94 dealerships in the South, parts of California and elsewhere.

Asbury's plan comes as women are playing a bigger role in car purchases, influencing 81% of new-vehicle purchases last year, compared with 65% a decade earlier and less than half in 1985, according to CNW Marketing Research Inc. Meanwhile, several surveys have found many women would prefer to buy a car from another woman.

Some evidence suggests women may even be better at selling cars than men. Saleswomen are less likely than their male counterparts to ignore female customers or to ask them if their boyfriend or husband is helping finance the purchase, according to a 2005 market study conducted by CNW using "mystery shoppers."

And CNW has found 9.5% of men actually preferred to buy a car from a woman, compared with 8.9% who preferred a man (81.6% had no preference). Both men and women, however, prefer a man working behind the parts counter and servicing their vehicles.

That some of his female mall recruits will have no experience with cars doesn't present much of a problem for Ken Jackson, a human-resources vice president at Asbury, based in New York. The company tells new sales recruits to be honest with customers: Instead of answering a question with wrong information, they are supposed to admit they don't know and refer the customer to a manager.

"We would like somebody that has sales initiative, somebody that is money-motivated, that has good communication skills," Mr. Jackson says. "You can teach them the product and you can train them on the mechanics of selling the product." New hires get one to two weeks of training and also may go through manufacturers' online certification and off-site training programs.

At Asbury, about 11% of the sales force is female. Mr. Jackson says he'd like to increase the figure to at least 50%. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, only about 10% of the sales staff at the average franchised dealer was female in a 2005 survey, up from 8% in 2004. In contrast, about half of U.S. retail-industry employees in 2005 were women, including 74% of those working in clothing stores, 64% in department stores and 43% in furniture stores, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Women who do work in car sales or who own dealerships often come from families in the auto business. Only about 8% of car dealerships last year were owned by women, CNW says. Yet these dealerships averaged about 75 sales a month, compared with about 72 sales a month at dealerships owned by men.


Recruiting material aimed at attracting women to sales at a Florida dealership.
Recruiting for sales at the mall fits into the industry's broader effort to find more attractive sales and management candidates, and reduce turnover. Sales-employee turnover at the typical new-car franchise dealer reached 51% in 2004, up from 44% in 2003, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. That's a problem in an era of thinning profit margins, when retaining customers for service and repeat sales matters more than it used to. Asbury also has established a career path into management for sales employees.

Asbury initiated a formal mall recruiting program after learning that some dealerships were already making the tactic pay off. At Coggin Nissan on Atlantic, an Asbury dealership in Jacksonville, Fla., Jacquelyn Myers Williams, a 53-year-old sales consultant, sold shoes at a local Dillard's department store before switching to car sales. She was recruited three years ago by one of her best shoe customers, a salesman who worked at the dealership. He persuaded her she would make more money selling cars.

"He was persistent," Ms. Myers Williams recalls. During her best month selling shoes, she says she sold about $35,000 of shoes, earning about $1,700 in commissions -- about equal to the sales commission for one car. She says she is an average performer, selling from 10 to 17 cars a month.

She says she knew "absolutely nothing" about cars before she took the job. But she went through training and started each work day by getting into a car, reading the owner's manual and taking it for a spin. "Selling in a department store with women -- that's a struggle," Ms. Myers Williams says. She recalls telling her new colleagues, "I hope you don't think you are going to intimidate me because you are men."

Kaylene Cohen, 48 years old and manager for preowned Lexuses at Asbury's Plaza Motors near St. Louis, says her co-workers thought she was a blond bimbo when she started in car sales eight years ago, because she had previously managed a Gap and lacked auto-sales experience. But she liked cars. She says the dealership paid for her to attend a training program where she learned about engines and manufacturing. Now, she says, she believes her co-workers respect her. "They know I'm a hard worker and a good salesperson, so I've kind of earned my way."

Actively recruiting women is acceptable under U.S. employment law if the businesses aren't getting adequate numbers of female applicants, says Neil Bernstein, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The practice would become questionable, however, if a dealership also was refusing to hire qualified men or putting a quota on the number of men hired. "The mere fact dealerships are trying to expand their horizon and attract women...is OK," he says.

Liza Borches, the owner of a Virginia car dealership, Volvo of Charlottesville, says she has made recruiting women for sales a priority. Women tend to be more organized than men and do a better job of building their own client base, she says. "The biggest key is simply finding nontraditional ways of recruiting [them]," she says.

Retaining saleswomen can be even more of a challenge than finding them. A locker-room mentality prevails at many dealerships. Asbury says it puts its employees through behavioral and harassment training. Mr. Jackson says the company warns women who are job candidates that they will be in a male-dominated environment. "You don't want anybody to feel they are walking into a complete blue sky," he says. "That would be the quickest way to have someone leave."

Write to Jennifer Saranow at jennifer.saranow@wsj.com

[brian32e]

Manhattan IT guys -- do you have to live in Manhattan or could you make that same hourly rate working remotely from anywhere? Maybe you can move to somewhere cheaper like...well...anywhere else

back on topic...I think if I ever became wealthy enough that I didn't have to work anymore I wouldn't mind selling BMWs for a living. It always disappointed me when the people selling them didn't know as much about the car and the brand as I did. They should be more enthusiastic about BMW than I am because in theory they're trying to sell me (even though we all know that most E90post members here were pretty much sold before we got there )

[ska///235i]

How much does a Pimp make an hour?

[brian32e]

Originally Posted by ska

How much does a Pimp make an hour?

I think it scales by how many ho's he has, and of course their skill set.

[ALPINE6SPD]

Im a CA in N.J. I used to be an engineer and HATED it so I went into car sales and the hours are nuts 8:30-9 Mo 9-5 Tu OFF W 9-9 Th 9-9 Fr and 8:30-6 Sa but I love it and would not want another job. Lets say I am on pace to make between 80-100k this year. It is not easy to make that though. You have to work your tail off and come in your day off a lot the time. I think its worth it though as I love coming to work (as sick as that sounds).

[gscone]

Originally Posted by ALPINE6SPD

Im a CA in N.J. I used to be an engineer and HATED it so I went into car sales and the hours are nuts 8:30-9 Mo 9-5 Tu OFF W 9-9 Th 9-9 Fr and 8:30-6 Sa but I love it and would not want another job. Lets say I am on pace to make between 80-100k this year. It is not easy to make that though. You have to work your tail off and come in your day off a lot the time. I think its worth it though as I love coming to work (as sick as that sounds).

For me personally, the # of hours you are working are ridiculous, expecially if you are only going to rake in $80-100K. How much does that work out hourly? What kinda engineer were you?

[ALPINE6SPD]

Originally Posted by gscone

For me personally, the # of hours you are working are ridiculous, expecially if you are only going to rake in $80-100K. How much does that work out hourly? What kinda engineer were you?

I was a civil engineer and hated it. I did it for about 2.5 years and was making about 55k. It is a lot of hours but I love it and its only 6 miles from my house. Starting next year I do get a 300 a month car allowance and a special lease through BMW so that isnt taking into account either. I basically get an x3 or 325xi for nothing or I can upgrade and pay the difference. I have only been here 1 year and 8 months so I dont have a big following yet. After 3 years all my lease customers have to come back and that is when you make real $$$ because your also taking new customers at the same time. I am happy with the job and pay and I know 2 years from now I will be making even more money.

[gscone]

Originally Posted by ALPINE6SPD

I was a civil engineer and hated it. I did it for about 2.5 years and was making about 55k. It is a lot of hours but I love it and its only 6 miles from my house. Starting next year I do get a 300 a month car allowance and a special lease through BMW so that isnt taking into account either. I basically get an x3 or 325xi for nothing or I can upgrade and pay the difference. I have only been here 1 year and 8 months so I dont have a big following yet. After 3 years all my lease customers have to come back and that is when you make real $$$ because your also taking new customers at the same time. I am happy with the job and pay and I know 2 years from now I will be making even more money.

Good Luck!

[Hej]

Originally Posted by Ethirtynine

I think anything over $25/hr is comfortable. But wow there are so many guys here that make $50-$120/hr. Amazing

I'm more or less of the feeling that you need to make that much to afford a $40k car.

[DLJJ3399]

In the book "Blink" there's a very good section on car salesmen. Being in sales myself, you can make a lot of money if you're good at your trade and really put the customers needs first.

I've thought about selling cars, but decided in the end to stick with selling air... That's what I'm good at and everyone needs it right? Plus it pays serious $$$$$

[MoreCowbell]

As for some of the questions that have come up...

-It's easier to get gigs paying over 80/hour in the NYC area because we have more financial firms here than anywhere else...
-I work in my clients offices, in there space
-I should average about $85/h this year, and I expect that i'll have work for 46 weeks, billing about 45 hours per week. Normally i'd work 48 works, including taking off bank holidays, but i'm getting married and i'm taking 2 and half weeks off for that.
-My projects are very long term, can for a few years, so it's not like I have ti find work every month or so
-I'd LOVE to work as a car salesman, but I can't live the lifestyle I want to live if thats the path I chose. There is no right or wrong answer, everything is a trade off.

[ALPINE6SPD]

Originally Posted by gluck75

As for some of the questions that have come up...

-It's easier to get gigs paying over 80/hour in the NYC area because we have more financial firms here than anywhere else...
-I work in my clients offices, in there space
-I should average about $85/h this year, and I expect that i'll have work for 46 weeks, billing about 45 hours per week. Normally i'd work 48 works, including taking off bank holidays, but i'm getting married and i'm taking 2 and half weeks off for that.
-My projects are very long term, can for a few years, so it's not like I have ti find work every month or so
-I'd LOVE to work as a car salesman, but I can't live the lifestyle I want to live if thats the path I chose. There is no right or wrong answer, everything is a trade off.

Very well said

Its a tough lifestyle selling cars but I like it so much it makes it worth it.