At the end of the year, Wilson's Department Store awards free merchandise to its top salespeople. When presented with the fact that that the number of salespeople receiving these awards has declined markedly over the past fifteen years, the newly appointed president of the company responded, " In that case, since our award criterion is present is membership in the top third of our sales force, we can also say that the number of salespeople passed over for these awards has similarly declined.

Which one of the following is an assumption that would allow the company president's conclusion to be properly drawn?

(A) Policies at Wilson's with regard to hiring salespeople have not become more lax over the past fifteen years.

(B) The number of salespeople at Wilson's has increased over the past fifteeen years.

(C) The criterion used by Wilson's for selecting its award recipients has remained the same for the past fifteen years. -
D) The average total sales figures for Wilson's salespeople have been declining for fifteen years.
E) Wilson's calculates its salespeople's sales figures in the same way as it did fifteen years ago