High commissions are the lifeblood of a sales career, but they’re not always easy to come by.

When management tried to cap commissions on top-seller vehicles, the salespeople found a clever way to ensure they still took home what they deserved.

Read on for the full story!

You’re capping commissions on our most in-demand vehicles because “You’re not doing any extra work, so you shouldn’t get extra money”? Fine. Let’s see how that works out for you.

Back in 2014, I was selling cars. Ford, specifically.

For all those who aren’t car buffs, both the Mustang and F-150 were getting ground-up redesigns for 2015, and Ford had just announced that there would be no Shelby Mustangs or Raptor F-150s for 2015.

This was actually quite good for this particular dealership.

Instantly, we were fielding several calls a day about these vehicles, and almost overnight, the inventory we had came with a $10-20k “market adjustment,” due to demand.

Our GM loved both vehicles and traded for them whenever he could because he loved chatting about them with buyers.

This shortage was going to make them big money.

So, we had 21 Raptors and 6 Shelbys still on the lot when I sold a ruby red Raptor extended cab at $10k over sticker the last week of the month.

Both are CRAZY numbers for the <200 new cars we sold per month.

The salesman had dollar signs in his eyes too, but something was amiss.

With the trade, I was due about $4200 in commission, but my check was about $1700 light.

It turns out, management had a bright new idea.

Come the first Saturday morning meeting after payday, we were told that commissions on such vehicles would be capped at $2500, retro to last month, per a previously ignored provision in our pay plan.

There was much grumbling, but management stood firm, citing how incredibly easy Raptor/Shelby deals were.

They weren’t wrong about that.

The cars were easier than normal to sell.

There was no such thing as a test drive until the deal was done.

You could absolutely drive the car before you bought it, but only after we had a signed buyer’s order, credit app, and the deal had been submitted and approved.

They were generally in and out in under 45 minutes, if not half an hour.

But the salespeople still didn’t find it fair at all.

But still, the dealership gets free money and doesn’t want to share?

Cue malicious compliance.

I talked to several other salespeople, who to a man were ticked, and we colluded.

So like true salespeople, they found a way to manipulate the truth.

I whipped up a little excel macro/widget that would take the invoice price/holdback, add in pack and whatnot, and spit out a sales price that would produce an exactly $2500 commission.

I sent it to every salesperson we had, and everyone used it.

The bosses took notice immediately.

It only took 3 signed buyer’s orders with seemingly arbitrary numbers for the desk to figure out what we were doing and to call another meeting.

That meeting was basically management yelling at us, and the entire sales staff calmly saying, “Remove the cap, or you’ll never see another signed buyer’s order that exceeds it. Forget you.”

Turns out, this was all it took to get them to change their minds!

The cap was lifted 3 days later.

Even when the rules are stacked against you, a little ingenuity can go a long way.

What did Reddit think?

This commenter has some big ideas on how management can be fair to their salespeople.

A commenter in the same industry seems to think they have a compensation system that works well.

The salespeople got their way, but not all day-to-day customers are jumping for joy.

Hopefully the dealership learned a valuable lesson in not limiting success.

Leave it to a salesperson to negotiate their way to the bank!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.