A sales agent earning upwards of 10,000 euros monthly last year,an income that compares to top executive pay, now has to settle for300-400 euros, considering they are no longer selling 40-50 cars amonth but ten at best.
"There were some sales agents of premium cars that earned up to10,000 euros per month, given that they collected over 1,000 eurosper car in commission," said Viorel Niculescu, head of the LandRover and Jaguar ATT dealer and former head of Romcar, the importerof Ford on the domestic market.
Porsche Inter Auto dealers had their bonus system resized thisyear, to adjust it to the low sales volume.
"We had sales agents that would constantly make 3-4,000 eurosper month in the past years, though rarely more than that. Now morethan 50% of the agents are earning only their several hundred-eurobase salary," said Alin Tapalaga, head of Porsche Inter Auto (PIA),the biggest player on the domestic market. Tapalaga said that thehighest incomes were made by those selling premium cars such asAudi, or mass-produced cars like Volkswagen, rather than by thoseselling niche brands such as Seat.
In comparison, Alexandrina Gatej, former CEO of Unilever SouthCentral Europe and current head of the PresidentialAdministration's Domestic and International Business EnvironmentDepartment, earned 18,000 euros per month in salary in 2008,according to her asset statement.
An over 10,000-euro income could be reached even by thoseselling volume cars such as Ford, Skoda and Volkswagen lastyear.
An agent selling 50 Skodas last year would generate anapproximately 750,000-euro turnover for the dealer, while theprofit margin stood at around 150,000 euros according to ZF'scalculations (20% of the sale price). A 10,000-euro income for anagent made exclusively from commissions accounted for 7% of thedealer's profit.
For instance, the Mercedes-Benz dealer in Autoklass Center inBucharest posted 3.7 million euros in net profit in 2007, that is12,800 euros per employee if taking into account the 290employees.
"The agent's margin has gone down a lot; even so, I am happy Istill have a job," said a sales advisor working for a Mercedes-Benzdealer in Bucharest.
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