Sales Reps Come and Go?

In 24 years I have worked for 6 different dealerships and I would have answered that question differently for each one. The one common denominator is that in every case, no one but the salesrep and God knew how the salesrep spent their time. Some people thrive in that environment, most do not.

At the last dealer I worked, it was exactly like Jim said. I even asked the HR director one time "Do we just not hire people without outside sales experience?" Her response was "Let's face it, if they don't already know how to sell, they sure aren't going to learn it here".

My current employer is rather unique in my opinion. They offer comprehensive training and for new reps they do not send them out into the world to succeed or fail with no supervision. New reps have guides and targets such as:

X number of phone calls this morning
X number of cold calls this afternoon
X number of check-ins with current customers

Hitting your quota two months in a row, you drop off this program and go do whatever you want. Not hitting your quota 2 months in a row, you are back on it.

Sure we still have reps that come and go, but I'd say 75% of our sales force has been with the company 2 years or more, and half of those have been here more than 5 years.