From my seat, our industry's inability to attract new talent is a product of our generations-old sales employment model and is a bit of a "canary in the coal mine" signal.
Dealer Principals (DP) outside the box ask "how much of my business financial performance comes from "my organization"? Then, they'll want to compare this against how much ADDITIONAL business does the commissioned sales staff generate (over a non-commissioned sales staff).
Example:
If you have 10 reps and the avg pay per sales rep is $45k, How will 15 Customer Service & Product Specialist Rep (aka "Brand Evangelist") at $30k compare financially?
Additionally, what of the "Customer LifeTime Value" (CLV)? Does the traditional sales commission model help/hurt the your brand experience (which will be seen in improving CLV dollars)? Does the traditional commission model help/hurt referral sales to family, neighbors, co-workers and friends? Will a sales team of "Brand Evangelists" create customers that are also "Brand Evangelists" (aka Nordstroms)?
Be on the lookout for dealers conducting a WAR study.
WTF is WAR? WAR is a major league baseball term that stands for "Wins Above Replacement"*.
"The WAR value recorded for a player is claimed to reflect the number of additional wins their team has amassed relative to the number of expected team wins if that player was substituted by a replacement level player": a player that may be brought to the team for minimal cost and effort".
WAR is simply a replacement player study.
Surely some of the 20,000 dealers over the USA are running a WAR test now (comparing commissioned reps to Customer/Product Specialists) IMO, Look for these performance insights to come from One price stores.
*
Wins Above Replacement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Customer lifetime value - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia