Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been

Question

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been able to keep up with the sales quotas required by our state headquarters. In fact, the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last six months. In order to satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people.

The regional manager’s argument assumes which of the following?

(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied without replacing the current salespeople.
(B) The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training.
(C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership.
(D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales.
(E) The profitability of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.

EMPOWER  gmat    CR Question Pack 2

Question 62: Car Dealership Sales

48 Hour Answer & Explanation Window  
 Earn KUDOS!  Have your explanations evaluated to help boost your learning. Post your reasoning why the answer you chose is correct, and why the other 4 options are incorrect within 48 hours of this post.

Scroll Down For Official Explanation

◀ Question 61 
 ▶ Question 63 
 ⏏ CR Library Pack 2 Home

rohithramesh · Answer

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been able to keep up with the sales quotas required by our state headquarters. In fact, the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last six months. In order to satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people.

Main point of the para: 
In order to increase sales of a type of car we need to either hire more salespersons or replace the existing salespersons.

An assumption is 
>A missing link or information which is not stated in the main argument.

>An Assumption is necessary for the argument and will also strengthen the argument because it fills in the gaps.

Back to our main point: 
Hire more salespersons or replace existing salespersons for increased sales.

(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied without replacing the current salespeople.

It says sales quota can be satisfied without replacing salespersons .
This weakens part of the argument which says replacing salespersons will help sales.

Eliminate A.

(B) The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training.

Tempting choice. This choice gives support that an option other than replace/hiring salespersons will not work. This choice strengthens the argument. 
 Not sure ,Hold on to it.

(C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership.

This says that the phenomena of decreased sales is limited only to the regional manager's dealership and not for all dealerships. This is also important. Why?

If other dealerships across the state were also experiencing decline in sales for that type of car then maybe salespersons are not the reason for this decline.Makes sense. 
 Hold on to it.

(D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales.
 Sound's like wishful thinking. Will eventually experience decrease in sales.. okay but how? There is no report or evidence to take this seriously. 
 Eliminate D

(E) The profitability of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.
 Who cares about the profitability we are concerned only with Increasing sales not improving profitability. Irrelevant. 
 Eliminate E.

Final choices  
 
B and C

To be honest I am stumped between these two.I would love the official explanation for why B/C is right or wrong.

Choice B  is not as direct or critical than  Choice C  for making the argument more compelling.

Choice C is critical/necessary for this argument hence I would pick that as the argument's assumption.
 C is the answer. 
   Posted from my mobile device

Sumi1010 · Answer

Premise  : The number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople  has declined  in the last six months.
 Conclusion  : In order to satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people.

Prethink  : 
Why have the salespeople not been able to keep up with the sales quotas? Because they are able to sell fewer cars. 
How will hiring more salespeople or replacing some of existing ones with new people help? 
We expect that more salespeople or replaced ones will sell better than the current ones. 
This is a  supportive assumption . 
We also have a  defensive assumption  that current salespeople will not be able to boost the declined sales to meet the requirement.
 
Let's look at the choices now.
(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied  without replacing  the current salespeople.
 This further implies that the quotas can be satisfied either by the current salesperson only or by hiring more salesperson. This goes against the conclusion that  equally emphasises  on the need of either hiring more salespeople or replacing some of our existing ones. 
(B) The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training.
 This is what we considered  defensive assumption in  pre thinking. Correct. 
(C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership.
 If there is a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership, the hiring or replacing the salespeople will not help. This goes against the conclusion. 
(D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales.
 We have no idea or reason to assume that other salespeople too will follow the track of those whose sales have declined. 
(E) The  profitability  of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.
 The argument is about meeting the sales quota and not the profitability.

IMO  B

winterschool · Answer

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been able to keep up with the sales quotas required by our state headquarters. In fact, the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last six months. In order to satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people.

The regional manager’s argument assumes which of the following?

(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied without replacing the current salespeople.  Incorrect

conflict with argument

(B)  The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training.   Correct

so need to replace or new sales people

(C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership.  Incorrect

conflict with argument, because of decreased state sales quotas

(D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales.  Incorrect

this is a prediction, cant be an assumption

(E) The profitability of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.  Incorrect

sales profitability is irrelevant

Quantum2022 · Answer

Tricky one between B and C but I chose B in the end. It's closer to the core of the argument.

The conclusion states that sales have declined and to counter this either new salespersons have to be hired or existing ones replaced. I think the author is taking for granted that the success is likely; that there is no way the existing salespersons can improve sales.

C felt like a bit of a warp. If car sales are down across the board then hiring others will not make a difference. It's not necessary to assume for the conclusion to hold.

Posted from my mobile device

EMPOWERgmatVerbal · Answer

Official Explanation:

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been able to keep up with the sales quotas required by our state headquarters. In fact, the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last six months. In order to satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people.

The regional manager’s argument assumes which of the following?

(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied without replacing the current salespeople. 
 (B) The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training. 
 (C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership. 
 (D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales. 
 (E) The profitability of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.

Question Type:   Assumption
  Boil It Down:   The only way to satisfy the sales quotas is to either hire more salespeople or replace some of our existing ones with new people because our cars sold by all of our current salespeople has declined in the last six months.
  Goal:    Find the most logical assumption by bridging the gap between conclusion and evidence.

Analysis:  
This is a necessary assumption question. This means that we are given evidence, and we are given a conclusion, and somewhere in between the author makes an assumption. We need to bridge the gap to find the assumption. Right now we have:

Evidence:  the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last 6 months.
 Assumption:  ???
 Conclusion:  To satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some existing salespeople with new people.

When we are trying to figure out the assumption of a prompt, we need to bridge the gap between the conclusion and evidence. Right now, this conclusion should raise questions in your head. If every single salesperson is declining, will hiring more salespeople or replacing the old ones help? What if there is some outside force causing sales to go down; like a global pandemic for example. Hiring more salespeople wouldn’t help that at all. However, because this is a necessary assumption question there are many possible right answers. We should make a prediction. In our assumption, we should make a prediction that makes the prompt more likely to be true:

Evidence:  the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last 6 months.
 Assumption:  There are enough potential customers that, if we hired new or better salespeople, would purchase enough cars to meet our quota.
 Conclusion:  To satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some existing salespeople with new people.

Remember all we are doing at this step is making a prediction. Our answer does not have to be exactly what we predict; rather, a prediction is to help us understand what an answer should/could look like. It gets our mind going in the right direction. If we can make a prediction that means we fully understand the conclusion and the evidence. Without knowing the conclusion and evidence in a necessary assumption question, it is very difficult to answer the question correctly. With this in mind, let’s look at the answers

(A) The state sales quotas can be satisfied without replacing the current salespeople.
 This answer choice is the exact opposite of what we want. Our conclusion is very strong: the only way to meet our quotas is to hire more or better salespeople. This answer would only be correct if it said, “the state sales quotas cannot be met without replacing at least some current salespersons.” If the quotas can be met with our current salespeople, why do we need to hire more or better ones?

(B) The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales numbers with additional training.
 This is the correct answer. It helps make our answer more likely to be correct. Let’s plug it in to see:

Evidence:  the number of cars sold by nearly all of our current salespeople has declined in the last 6 months.
 Assumption:  The current salespeople cannot substantially increase their sales with more training.
 Conclusion:  To satisfy the state quotas, we’ll need to either hire more salespeople or replace some existing salespeople with new people.

This makes our answer more likely to be correct because it gets rid of a possible alternative. Now that we know that training won’t help at all, it seems more likely we must get rid of our current staff. Remember that a necessary assumption does not have to prove the conclusion, only make it more likely.

(C) There has not been a statewide decrease in sales of the type of cars sold at the regional manager’s dealership.
 This is a tricky answer choice, but when you apply it to our evidence and conclusion it doesn’t seem to help, does it? This answer choice talks about a statewide decrease in sales, but how does this help prove our argument that we will need more or better salespeople? What if there was simply a massive decrease in our specific regions sales of this car, that was unique to the region but not to the state. Would hiring more or better salespeople help then? We are focused on the region itself, not the state.

(D) The current salespeople whose sales have not declined in the last six months will eventually experience a decrease in their sales.
 Assuming this is true, it does not help our argument. Even if the best performing salespeople decline, it doesn’t help prove that we need more or better salespeople. What if the lowest performers improved significantly? Could they have improved enough to compensate for the new decrease and still meet quotas? We can’t know for sure, so this answer choice is wrong.

(E) The profitability of the sales made at the regional manager’s dealership have not increased or remained current during the last six months.
 This is a classic logical reasoning wrong answer choice. We are talking about sales, the answer talks about profits. In real life, sales and profits are typically related one way or another, but for the logical reasoning we can’t assume that for sure. So what if profits are remaining the same? We are focused on the number of sales, not the amount of profits. Maybe their sales have decreased precisely because they chose to charge higher prices, giving them a bigger profit margin, at the cost of less sales. Regardless, it doesn’t help us prove that we need more or better salespeople to meet the quotas.

NOTE: 
Something which should always be repeated during necessary assumption questions is that there are many possible correct answers. Sometimes it is hard to tell which answer choice makes the conclusion more likely to be correct. In that case, eliminating answers is just as much a skill as choosing the correct one. Some answer choices should be immediately eliminated from contention right off the bat. This is an invaluable skill. Even if you have to guess on some questions, eliminating 2 wrong answer choices and making a 1/3 educated guess is much better odds than eliminating nothing at all. In fact, even the best standardized test takers will eventually come to a question where they say, “Hmmm, I’m not sure why this is the right answer, but it must be because I’m confident the other 4 are wrong.” Eliminating wrong answers is certainly a skill.

Don’t study for the GMAT. Train for it.

VerbalBot · Answer

Hello from the GMAT Club VerbalBot!

Thanks to another GMAT Club member, I have just discovered this valuable topic, yet it had no discussion for over a year. I am now bumping it up - doing my job. I think you may find it valuable (esp those replies with Kudos).

Want to see all other topics I dig out? Follow me (click follow button on profile). You will receive a summary of all topics I bump in your profile area as well as via email.

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards

GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

Regional manager of car dealership: Our salespeople have not been

Prep Toolkit

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards