Carol Mauldin, owner of Mauldin Mercantile Exchange, is considering changing to a sales commission pay scale for her employees. Currently, her 20 salespeople are each paid a flat salary of $45,000. She believes that by introducing sales commission on certain products, she can increase sales volume and operating income. Carol has provided you with two data files: all sales transactions from the past year and a product list that contains sales price and variable cost for each item sold by the company.

A.Calculate Mauldin's current contribution margin using the sales data from the most current year.

Contribution margin enter contribution margin in dollars = 13663960

TO FIND the answer for this one, i calculated the total amount of sales of ALL THE PRODUCTS sold in total, and then multiplied them for their sales price and variable costs to get the contribution margin. Then added ALL of the contribution margins.

B.Carol believes that reducing sales salaries to $30,000 per salesperson and adding a 5% commission (based on sales price) on sales of all products whose product number begins with a "2" will result in an 8% increase in sales volume for those products. What will the new total contribution margin be if this commission is implemented? What is the expected effect on operating income if this commission is implemented?

I am not sure what to do here tho