'Let's see how that works out for you': Car dealer caps salespeople's commission, sales team bands together to make them regret it

Author image for Remy Millisky
Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
Dec 13, 2023 5:00 PM EST

Management at one car dealership messed with the wrong sales team. In trying to save themselves money, these managers soured their whole team's attitudes toward their jobs. 

If you've ever heard a great salesperson sell something, you know it's a true skill. Some people are just born with the ability to effortlessly talk someone into buying their product. They can make you go from not wanting a fancy car, to taking out your wallet and buying something way pricier than you intended. In the moment, their pitches sound so enticing! By the time you're signing your paperwork, it's too late to back out of that random add-on that seemed so important a half hour ago. 

Natural talent seems to play a big role in sales jobs---you have to prove that you can lull customers into buying anything. The only way to prove this to your employer is to start raking in those sweet commissions on every sale you make. It seems like common sense to hire great sales people, and let them soar to their highest ambitions. The sales people are happy, and management is happy. 

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  • Being a salesperson at a car dealership is so lucrative that it's become a stereotype. When you picture a car salesperson, you imagine a wealthy business professional with some fancy cars of their own and an even fancier house. That's probably why this sales team was completely shocked and angered when their management started making changes. 

    Speaking of managers who don't care about their workers, check out these mildly infuriating moments, like one person whose Christmas bonus was “a $20 off coupon for a frozen turkey.” 

  • 01
    'You're not doing any extra work, so you shouldn't get extra money' 8
    via Jason Goodman on Unsplash
  • 02
    You're capping commissions on our most in-demand vehicles because "You're not doing any extra work, so you shouldn't get extra money"? Fine. Let's see how that works out for you.
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 03
    I realize that this story could absolutely be current, but it's not. Another thread reminded me of it, and I think it absolutely fits here, so here goes. Back in 2014, I was selling cars. Ford, specifically. For all those who aren't car buffs, both the Mustang and F-150 were getting ground-up redesigns for 2015, and Ford had just announced that there would be no Shelby Mustangs or Raptor F-150's for 2015. Instantly, we were fielding several calls a day about these vehicles, and almost overnight,
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 04
    Our GM loved both vehicles, and traded for them whenever he could because he loved chatting about them with buyers, so we had 21 Raptors and 6 Shelby's still on the lot when I sold a ruby red Raptor extended cab at $10k over sticker the last week of the month. Both are CRAZY numbers for the <200 new cars we sold/mo. With the trade, I was due about $4200 in commission, but my check was about $1700 light.
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 05
    Come the first Saturday morning meeting after payday, we were told that commissions on such vehicles would be capped at $2500, retro to last month, per a previously ignored provision in our pay plan. There was much grumbling, but management stood firm, citing how incredibly easy Raptor/Shelby deals were. They weren't wrong about that. There was no such thing as a test drive until the deal was done. You could absolutely drive the car before you bought it, but only after we had a signed buyer's or
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 06
    Cue malicious compliance. I talked to several other salespeople, who to a man were 1, and we colluded. I whipped up a little excel macro/widget that would take the invoice price/holdback, add in pack and whatnot, and spit out a sales price that would produce an exactly $2500 commission. I sent it to every salesperson we had, and everyone used it. It only took 3 signed buyer's orders with seemingly arbitrary numbers for the desk to figure out what we were doing and to call another meeting.
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 07
    That meeting was basically management yelling at us, and the entire sales staff calmly saying, "remove the cap, or you'll never see another signed buyer's order that exceeds it. you." The cap was lifted 3 days later.
    via u/mypostingname13
  • 08
    ma33a I had a friend who worked in a office supply store that sold the full fit out for offices and schools (tables, chairs, whiteboards etc). He was given a cap to his commissions so he used to just work up until he hit it and then stop. Now some work would naturally fall in his lap just from repeat customers and walk ins, so he started saving up sales until the next month. By that I mean he would deliberately hold off on completing a customers order
    via u/ma33a
  • 09
    until the next month so the commission wouldn't be wasted. Used to take him a bit over a fortnight to hit his cap. He could have easily made the company hundreds of thousands more in sales, but he didn't see the point. As he hit his cap each month his matrix scores were always high so he looked like a dream team player.
    via u/ma33a
  • 10
    Bluebird-True I've never understood capping commissions like that. So dumb. I had a friend back in the day who's boss got 1 that the top salespeople were earning more than he did, so he capped commissions, so they left and started their own business.
    via u/Bluebird-True
  • 11
    Coffee Town Steve When management does that, you tell them that you want it in writing that when the market cycles downward, and demand drops, they'll protect your pay on the downside. It's really the exact same logic: If management wants to pay sales reps less than they've earned when it's really easy to sell, then they should agree to pay them more than they've earned when the selling gets tough.
    via u/Coffee Town Steve
  • 12
    technos I used to work with a guy that turned down business because his assistants, the folks that did most of the work on any deal, wouldn't make anything extra. Bob was our best sales critter. What he could do in January took most people six months, and we had people who couldn't meet Bob's January numbers even given an entire year. It's not that the other salespeople were bad. Even the weakest one made at least a million a year for the company.
    via u/technos
  • 13
    Anyway, the company announces that they've got a new, better bonus structure! 'Associates' and 'Assistants' would now make more money! They're gonna get an extra fractional percentage of any deal! But they would now be capped at $10K a quarter. Bob didn't like that. Bob got zero deals signed that month.
    via u/technos
  • 14
    The new rules meant the deals he'd already had in the pipeline exceeded the amount needed to get his people paid, so why look for more? When the company reversed the cap, Bob suddenly had $30 million bucks in deals, and his people made $40K.
    via u/technos
  • 15
    adamcordo I think the siest part is the retroactive nature. You want to cap my commission, I'm not happy. But you change the rules after the fact, get You know who does that_..._._? Little kids who are sore losers.
    via u/adamcordo
  • 16
    Genetics Guy So, I worked for a commission sales company when I was in college, basically business to business PC sales. I was young and stupid so didn't realize how burned I was getting. I was told they had a commission cap per month (it was like max $4000 commission, if I remember). Note, this was on top of my hourly pay of $9/hr. It was so stupid that I would purposefully try to spread deals out if I was going to go over cap to put the sale in the next month and I would lie to
    via u/Genetics Guy
  • 17
    customers that it was going to take an extra 5 days to process or something... I remember one month I had a great sale to a nursing school that agreed to buy tablets for all students, and I hit my commission cap and exceeded it on that sale (this was like a $100,000 revenue sale). I wasn't even halfway through the month. So, I put in the hours to get my hours, but I literally didn't sell another thing the rest of the month, didn't try to, didn't go out of my way. I even had my manager call me an
    via u/Genetics Guy
  • 18
    me why my production was done and I told him I just had some misses and some bad luck. I was lying. Why would I work just as hard and not get my commission? It's when I realized how stupid commission caps were and made me realize how idiotic the company I was working for was. Commission caps are some of the dumbest things in the world.
    via u/Genetics Guy

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management manager car payday cars sales malicious compliance bosses malicious-compliance-reddit Horrible Bosses payment payback malicious compliance reddit money
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