| RV Dealer A Case Study from the Max Impact Family |
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RV Sales are tough these days
Unless you can clone your top salespeople
A recreational vehicle dealer with a long history of steady growth and success had positioned itself to
take advantage of the explosive growth of the RV market over the past three years. The dealer’s primary
challenge: identifying salespeople likely to excel in their three stores. The company’s high visibility and
reputation for excellence makes it an employer of choice in its markets. The company has a good applicant
flow and it can afford to be selective.
An analysis of the company’s sales data, however, shows it suffers from the pervasive 80-20 rule of sales:
their top producers are outselling their bottom producers by over 500 percent!
At the same time, turnover is unacceptably high in the sales force, with many new salespeople failing within
six months of hire. In an industry where a dealer may spend over $1,000.00 just to provide the opportunity
for a salesperson to spend time with a qualified buyer, the lost opportunity cost at this failure rate is enormous.
Participants
To begin the procedure of improving their selection process, a differential study of top and bottom producers was conducted. Salespeople were selected and grouped for
inclusion based on total gross profit production during the past calendar year.
The process
Each person selected completed two assessments: the Profile Sales Indicator (PSI) and the Profile XT (PXT). Two patterns were constructed for each assessment, one
using the top three producers, and another for the bottom three. The chart on page three shows the resulting patterns, each plotted on a single chart.
Inspecting the charts, something immediately becomes apparent. The two groups share many similar characteristics. They are nearly identical on the Thinking Style scales.
They are similar on the Assertiveness, Manageability, Accommodation, Independence, and Objective Judgment scales. Both groups include the Enterprising and Mechanical
interests in their top three selections.
Their differences, however, are apparent in the remainder of the scales. Most striking is the difference in their patterns on the Energy scales on both measures, and the
Decisiveness scale on the PXT (red arrows in the charts on page two). The most successful salespeople have very high Energy scales (in the upper 16 percent of the
working population), and there is no overlap between the groups. There is a similarly distinct separation between the groups on the Decisiveness scale, with top performers
averaging a 10 on decisiveness!
Somewhat less of a contrast, but still a clearly differentiating trend, is visible on the dimensions of Sociability, Attitude, and Occupational Interests
Match Scores (to the Top Performer group) were generated for members of both groups on both measures. On the PSI, there was a clear break in the match distribution
between those over and those under 80 percent. Average gross profit produced by those over 80 percent was 255 percent of those under 80 percent match.
On the PXT, average match scores of the top half of the participants was 89 percent. Average match for the bottom half was 78 percent. The top half again produced over
two-and-a-half times the bottom half’s output.
The future
As the dealership goes forward, these assessments and patterns will become part of the selection process for sales positions. The potential payoffs are enormous. If, by
using the assessments in a selection funnel model, the company can select and retain 30 percent more top producers among their new hires, the consequence will be a 732
percent return on their investment — all dollars going straight to bottom-line profit. If they can eliminate their bottom producers, replacing them with middle and top
producers equally, gross profit will rise by 21 percent! The annual return on investment would be well over 2,000 percent.
Because turnover may be the result of many factors independent of production (integrity, for example), use of these two measures together with an honesty-integrity
prescreener is recommended in the complete selection funnel. If someone has low integrity, or poor work ethic, it is probably not important how well they match the PSI
and PXT patterns—they will not last long here.
Contact us to learn how to duplicate this success story in your organization.
Unless you can clone your top salespeople
A recreational vehicle dealer with a long history of steady growth and success had positioned itself to
take advantage of the explosive growth of the RV market over the past three years. The dealer’s primary
challenge: identifying salespeople likely to excel in their three stores. The company’s high visibility and
reputation for excellence makes it an employer of choice in its markets. The company has a good applicant
flow and it can afford to be selective.
An analysis of the company’s sales data, however, shows it suffers from the pervasive 80-20 rule of sales:
their top producers are outselling their bottom producers by over 500 percent!
At the same time, turnover is unacceptably high in the sales force, with many new salespeople failing within
six months of hire. In an industry where a dealer may spend over $1,000.00 just to provide the opportunity
for a salesperson to spend time with a qualified buyer, the lost opportunity cost at this failure rate is enormous.
Participants
To begin the procedure of improving their selection process, a differential study of top and bottom producers was conducted. Salespeople were selected and grouped for
inclusion based on total gross profit production during the past calendar year.
The process
Each person selected completed two assessments: the Profile Sales Indicator (PSI) and the Profile XT (PXT). Two patterns were constructed for each assessment, one
using the top three producers, and another for the bottom three. The chart on page three shows the resulting patterns, each plotted on a single chart.
Inspecting the charts, something immediately becomes apparent. The two groups share many similar characteristics. They are nearly identical on the Thinking Style scales.
They are similar on the Assertiveness, Manageability, Accommodation, Independence, and Objective Judgment scales. Both groups include the Enterprising and Mechanical
interests in their top three selections.
Their differences, however, are apparent in the remainder of the scales. Most striking is the difference in their patterns on the Energy scales on both measures, and the
Decisiveness scale on the PXT (red arrows in the charts on page two). The most successful salespeople have very high Energy scales (in the upper 16 percent of the
working population), and there is no overlap between the groups. There is a similarly distinct separation between the groups on the Decisiveness scale, with top performers
averaging a 10 on decisiveness!
Somewhat less of a contrast, but still a clearly differentiating trend, is visible on the dimensions of Sociability, Attitude, and Occupational Interests
Match Scores (to the Top Performer group) were generated for members of both groups on both measures. On the PSI, there was a clear break in the match distribution
between those over and those under 80 percent. Average gross profit produced by those over 80 percent was 255 percent of those under 80 percent match.
On the PXT, average match scores of the top half of the participants was 89 percent. Average match for the bottom half was 78 percent. The top half again produced over
two-and-a-half times the bottom half’s output.
The future
As the dealership goes forward, these assessments and patterns will become part of the selection process for sales positions. The potential payoffs are enormous. If, by
using the assessments in a selection funnel model, the company can select and retain 30 percent more top producers among their new hires, the consequence will be a 732
percent return on their investment — all dollars going straight to bottom-line profit. If they can eliminate their bottom producers, replacing them with middle and top
producers equally, gross profit will rise by 21 percent! The annual return on investment would be well over 2,000 percent.
Because turnover may be the result of many factors independent of production (integrity, for example), use of these two measures together with an honesty-integrity
prescreener is recommended in the complete selection funnel. If someone has low integrity, or poor work ethic, it is probably not important how well they match the PSI
and PXT patterns—they will not last long here.
Contact us to learn how to duplicate this success story in your organization.
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