We are looking at a mobile home park deal where we have to bring a dedicated salesperson for selling mobile homes for some years. We will get licensed as a dealership and hire a dedicated salesperson. Can anyone share compensation structure for dedicated mobile home sales person?
Some operators recommended to pay commissions only without base salary. Training will have to be provided and homes will be available to sell year around. We are considering going with this option, but it would be good to hear what worked for other operators/dealers
I operate a large dedicated dealership and salespeople receive a salary of $24k per year plus commissions on profit in the range of 7%-21% based on rolling average accumulated gross profit. I have salespeople making six figures but the difference is we are a “for profit” sales operation. Many (most?) parks sell the homes for invoice or near invoice+costs so there is not a profit to speak of, it’s merely an avenue to fill the objective of filling spaces. Therefore a commission and salary would run you at a loss (where my gross profit per home covers that cost).
If you don’t offer a small salary, you won’t get many takers. Typically a park manager will receive a salary for his/her duties and then you will offer a commission of say $250-$500 per home sale to that manager. This is lucrative enough to motivate them but inexpensive enough to you to not break the bank, and your first months rent and deposit theoretically would cover that cost.
Thanks for the response. Like you said our first priority for park owners is to fill the lots so the home sales could be a loss leader. Fortunately, We do see that the demand is pretty good in the market so we will can have some markup.
I am still debating on providing base salary vs making it commission only. Thanks for your advise on providing base salary. Since we plan to sell many homes, we need dedicated a salesperson and the compensation will have to attractive to good sales people.
Where have you found good mobile home salespeople?
Finding good salespeople can be difficult. 2 basic schools of though exist:
Nature; a natural born people person that can easily lead people to an objective. Self motivated.
Nurture; any person that can be trained with training programs and nurturing.
You want #1, which is a natural born sales person. I’ve had very smart people work for me that simply could not take any amount of training and translate that into a successful sale career.
You can place an ad on career builder but I’ve found those to be less than stellar applicants. Recruiting works best. Look for them where ever you go and consider referrals to be the highest quality prospects. When you here someone say, “hey my brother in law would be great at that”, get the number and call him/her that may be your sales person. When you get a waitress that has a great outgoing personality, ask her if she would be interested.
Many other things go into it. They have to be honest, dependable, etc., so you will have to vett them for all that as well.