The first sales presentation we went to was at the Marriott on Kaui'i in Lihu'e. in 1999 The salesman was extremely good. Very professional.
I have little doubt that he was earning close to $200,000 per year.
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As mentioned above, in any commissioned, high-ticket sales environment (not just timeshares) there will be handful of top performers that create a vastly disproportionate number of sales. The top 20% of producers will often generate two-thirds to three-quarters of the sales. (And even within this group the elite producers might account for half of the sales in that upper echelon.) And they will be well-compensated. After that there will be a larger group, maybe 40% of the sales force) that contributes almost all of the remaining sales. The top people in that group will do OK; the lower portion of that group will be hanging on.
The remaining 40% or so contribute little to sales and have a very high turnover rate. These people make almost no sales, earn minimum wage if they're lucky, and are soon gone. Most sales offices expect that churn; that turnover provides a steady stream of new employees, and a good sales manager picks out unpolished talents in that high turnover pool and mentors those people into effective members of the productive sales force.
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As one mentor mentioned to me one time, if you can sell you have the best job security you can possibly have. No matter how difficult the economic environment, a sales person who can bring in business will always have a job. If a company is so stupid as to lay off productive sales staff during a downturn, that's not a company you should be working for anyway, and there will always be another, better company that will find room for a person who can bring in business.