A senior sales executive in a car showroom of Guwahati is always reliant on commissions from sales to boost his or her income rather than on the salary which forms a smaller portion of the total earnings. That is the norm.
“I used to sell 4 cars at least in a month. Now I don’t know. Even if my employers continue to pay us our salaries, the same is very less; it is the commission from sales where our real earnings lay,” said Deep Bora (name changed) a sales executive of a Maruti showroom.
The uncertainty currently hovering around the sales people of all sectors, especially the automobile industry, is somewhat frightening.
The lockdown has hit the automobile sector really hard; it has scored a duck over the last 30 days and the sales people are in dire straits – no sales, no deliveries, no customers to talk to and no allocated targets to meet.
Speaking to G Plus, a Maruti showroom executive in Guwahati said, “We are totally unsure whether we would be able to sustain our jobs in the coming months.”
Further, he added that his showroom owners may perhaps pay his salary on the basis of COVID-19 protocols as requested by the government but he wonders for how long as the pandemic seems likely to continue for a long time.
“Our sales mainly depend on the businessmen of Guwahati as they are the ones who have the interest and keenness to change their cars often. However, due to the lockdown and because of the economic slowdown all business activities and establishments thereof have come to a halt,” he added.
Clearly in Guwahati, with the situation at hand, people would prefer to continue using their old vehicles until a semblance of certainty and normalcy returns rather than purchase new vehicles. And so, car sales look unlikely to pick up in the immediate future.
The sales executive further added that they used to sell a lot of cars in normal days and the commission-based earnings spurred them to work harder. Now they are stuck at home and making cold calls is not helping them at all.
Ranjan Bhuyan, (name changed) a salesman from a Hyundai showroom said, “We are getting our salary and the company has even started online booking facilities but this is very minimal.”
“Our earnings are commission-based and more the number of cars we sell the more the commission. But now, if we do not make any kind of sales in the coming months I have no clue how we will survive in this pandemic,” he added.
All the showrooms have a hierarchy structure in which each and every designated person has different targets to achieve. With the lockdown everyone is feeling handicapped in making sales.
Most of the showrooms in Guwahati have started practicing the Centre’s directive for social distancing. Clearly, sales will see a massive further dip in the coming months.