In almost any dealership, you will soon hear, “The top salesperson is being fed.” This belief can come at a high cost to both individuals and teams. Sales personnel who buy into this myth can experience lost commissions due to decreased effort and engagement. Turnover can rise as employees become dissatisfied, escalating recruitment and training expenses. Furthermore, the morale on the sales floor suffers, creating a toxic work environment that impedes personal and team growth.
I’ve spent over 25 years in sales, including more than a decade in the automotive business. In my experience, believing that sales success is only achieved through favoritism is one of the most damaging distractions. While it can happen, it’s much less common than people think, and believing otherwise hurts performance, morale, and careers.
Excuses Can Lead to More Problems
Believing that success is unfairly allocated leads to a dangerous mindset. Feelings of frustration and anxiety often creep in, causing a chain reaction that can erode work ethic and diminish accountability. These emotions fester and transform into resignation and resentment, replacing effort and drive. Instead of seeking improvement, people simply ask, “Why not me?” This emotional spiral significantly impacts productivity and morale. Envy in competitive environments often leads people to check out and pull back. In sales, where momentum and mindset matter most, this drop in engagement quickly shows up in the numbers.
While in college, I worked on straight commission selling men’s shoes at a mall in New Jersey. There was a veteran salesperson in his mid-fifties, married with kids, who quietly outperformed most of the department. The rumors never stopped.
“He gets fed.”
“They give him the best hours.”
“Management favors him.”
On our busiest day of the year, Father’s Day, I saw the truth. He wasn’t being fed, he was working. While others left for smoke breaks or long lunches, he stayed on the floor, followed up, managed inventory, and closed sales.
By day’s end, when I matched his numbers, I was suddenly accused of being fed. It became clear that complaints about favoritism often emerge when someone outworks the rest. That kind of thinking is a distraction that limits growth. Ask yourself this; when was the last time someone accused you of being ‘fed’ because you outworked everyone else? This moment of reflection pushes us to challenge our own mindsets and fuels growth.
Success Comes from Hard Work
Opportunities often go to those who consistently follow up, keep leads active, return calls, and maintain a strong store reputation. Managers don’t reward laziness. They reward reliability. To assess where you stand, ask yourself, did I follow up? Did I respond fast? Did I represent the brand well? Gauging these aspects can help identify your reliability gap and guide your efforts towards improvement.
When a sales manager relies on someone repeatedly, it’s usually not favoritism, it’s trust. Every salesperson goes through slow periods. When that happens, the answer isn’t to compare yourself to others. It’s to get back to the basics and focus.
Does favoritism ever happen? Yes, but rarely. When it does, handle it professionally rather than relying on emotion. Someone once told me, “You want to get rich? Go to work.” In this business, nobody feeds you. You feed yourself. The key takeaway is simple, letting envy distract you only sabotages your own potential. The fastest way to kill your career isn’t a lack of skill; it’s losing focus to jealousy. The ones waiting to be fed rarely make it. The ones who go to work create their own success.
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