Low commission base. $160 for every car sold. The company started it at $150 in 1983.. A $10 raise in 2011 and the company made big announcement like this was a huge raise. A 7% raise. If you use the Labor Department calculator you would see that the commission now should be $225 per car. If you make President's Club, you get $180 per car. WOW! You also go on a 2 day trip to Vegas. One day flying and then one day reward dinner. Of course, you do NOT have to worry about jetlag.
You have to attend 1 hour training on Sunday morning (if your store is open on Sunday) before store opens...but you are not paid. Training (after initial training) is considered covered by your compensation (commission if you sell a car.
Sales Managers are process driven. They do NOT help you sell cars. They intimidate consultants with reports and numbers that are worthless. They have you do busy work thinking this will help you sell cars instead of working with reps and TRAINING them.
Managers get bonus pay if the store makes the daily sales budget. If the store is close for the daily budget, the managers are on top of you to sell a car. If they are not close to budget, they do not care if you sell a car because they will not get their daily bonus.
The managers do not know how to motivate. They can not tell you, "GREAT job" without adding , "but, this is how you could have done this better".
IN the 1 and half years with company, I saw the quality of the cars go down tremendously. The cars would come on the lot from the reconditioning center filthy...old french fries under seats, spills in cupholders. Cars would have mechanical issues that should have been caught during the 125 point inspection...unless a blind man did the inspection. I once had a truck fail state inspection because it did NOT have a muffler. The management would tell you to "sell through it".
When it snows, the consultants are told to go out and clean cars without being paid. When it was shown to them 3 months later that the company policy is to pay a standard $12.00 for such cleanup, management stated "I did not know that". This was a LGM who was with the company for 4 years. Lots of snow storms in maryland in the last 4 years. Company makes money on your backs.
Consultants present appraisals offers to customers. This is a money maker for the company. They low ball the offers and then blame consultants if we could not convince customer to sell car when appraisal offer was 25% below Kelly Blue Book.
Carmax mission statement is "Sell quality cars, at reasonable rates with exceptional customer service". The new mission statement should be just have the word "NOT " in front of the above statement.
Last, selling used cars that are priced only $3-5k less than new cars is tough enough, especially when finance rates for used cars could be 5-12% for good credit customers who could get 1.9% at new dealerships.
