A look at 22 equipment sellers' results.

A look at 22 equipment sellers' results

WE WERE asking a lot. Our For Dealers Only survey for December requested that the participating dealer go to his records and write down the following:

1. How much volume each of his sales personnel produced in 1984. 2. How much total income (salary and commissions) the sales person received. 3. How much of his time was spent selling, as opposed to other duties. 4. The same data for the first nine months of 1985.

Well, we're grateful to the dozen dealers who did just that. From some of them, the numbers came in down to the penny. When you get a response that slim, you know that it may not have statistical validity, but because these dealers made this extra effort, we want to share our findings about their 22 sales persons.

Warning: This is no national average. It's an account of how much sales volume and personal income were produced by 22 sales people in 1984 and by 20 of these same people in the first nine months of 1985.

In 1984, they turned in a sales volume totaling $18.88 million, which works out to an average of $858,000 each. But individual volumes actually ranged all over the map. The biggest producer turned in a volume of $1.64 million. The smallest: $88,000 in eight months, adjusted to $132,000 if he had done a full year.

Incomes. The sales effort resulted in a total personal income of $552,800, which averages out to $25,100 for each of the 22 sales persons.

But the incomes, like the volumes, jumped around. Best was $44,500; second-best was $44,000 for the one who did that volume of $1.64 million. Lowest income: $12,500.

Relatively similar sales volumes didn't always produce similar incomes. It became clear, after we studied the figures, that many of these sales persons were handling lawn and garden equipment of other lines which could, in today's market, produce more margin from a limited volume and pay them a reasonable income.

And then we divided each seller's income by the sales volume he produced. Generally, the lower the volume total was, the higher the percentage that went to the seller's income. The 1984 average was 2.9 per cent, but the range was from 1.6 to 11.9 per cent.

When we figured averages by the month, each sales person did about $71,500 in volume and had $2,100 in income.

To 1985. Moving to the first nine months of 1985, we saw that further softening of the farm equipment industry was reflected in what happened with this group of sales persons.

Now down to 20, the group moved $11.83 million in equipment and had income of $358,000. That worked out to $591,000 per sales person, with a nine-month income of $17,900, or sales per person per month of $65,700 and monthly income of just under $2,000.

Income as a per cent of sales volume went up a shade in the first nine months of 1985, to 3.0. The ranges were not as pronounced as those experienced in 1984, but they were substantial, running from 1.4 to 9.5 percent.

It's getting tougher for a dealer to pay a reasonable income to his sales people. Some of the 10 salesmen who finished 1984 in the million-dollar circle appeared unlikely to come close to their performance levels in 1985.

Time spent. We asked the responding dealers to indicate how much of the salesman's time was spent selling. We didn't have the space to define if "selling' was actual time involved in contact with sales prospects or if it was to include all the sales-relevant actions performed by the individual. In the typical farm-industrial-lawn-garden equipment dealership many sales persons are charged with related duties.

Note: One of the top sales persons in the survey, the one who made the most money in 1984, was listed as spending 100 per cent of his time that year in the selling effort. In 1985, he was apparently moved to other duties and was involved in selling only 30 per cent of the time. His income, at least from selling, was more than halved, and so was his volume.

The average percentage of available time spent selling, according to the FDO survey, was 85 per cent in 1984 and 83 per cent in 1985; the slight difference being accounted for by one person's reported shift.

Remember, we warned you about the statistical significance of this!

Table: 22 Retail Sales Persons: Their Volume and Income

Table: How 22 Salesmen Were Doing, 1984-85