The Thomas J

I have a friend who works with Toyota. He is the finance manager for his dealership & also works as a salesmen as well. Apparently he has his ow client base he has been at this for 20 years or so.

He makes a pretty good living. On average between $75 & $100 grand a year. He was very happy around Christmas because he was going to get close to $125,000 for the year due to super storm Sandy. Many people lost their cars.

He explained the dynamic of a dealership at least from Toyota's point of view. Bottom line is that they (the dealerships) make money.

I have a sales background myself, Something I never really enjoyed doing but was good at it & that was real estate. I followed in my Father's footsteps for a while & being in sales ina tough racket. You get rejected a lot, you need to be able to take it on the chin & carry on. It can be very defeating. But nothing feels as good as the day you are sitting at a closing table & you see a deal that you put together close. Especially if it's a deal you worked both sides of (buyer & seller). I had deals close that took on avg. of 105 days from offer to closing. A lot diffrent than selling cars, but very profitable if you are able to charge a decent commission.

In any event. When I bought my pre-owned e class almost 2 months ago I was told by the sales person that there wasn't much money to be made in the deal. Which leads me to believe they made between $500 & $1500 on the sale, before the $300 dealer doc fee.

Most salesmen & Sales managers will have you believe that they are pratically going broke on every car they sell. It's all part of the pitch.

boardboy330

The salesman that sold me the E320 makes $45K a year. Cost of living is pretty much nothing here (a NICE home costs round $100-150K)

The sales manager...who really did most of the work in my sale makes $70K.

jritch

Unfortunately they are right. I work for Mercedes now and i'm making 100 k my first year our best car salesman makes well over 300 k

socalsounds

Best first-post of all time. Really.

Mowens082

Does anyone know if mercedes salesmen receive dealer demos, or does the mercedes employee leasing program apply to salemen as well?

Plutoe

WGAF and what is the point of all this HS!!

allenjdmb

it has little or no bearing on what you'll pay....but just FYI, demos are pretty much a thing of the past. If your store does offer them, you usually pay for them by the pay period. And yes, employee leases are available, but you don't qualify for them right out of the box.