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"Only looking? You're going to take that for an answer?" Foam
was beginning to form at the corners of the sales manager's mouth. "What the
hell kind of salesman are you? Of course they're looking! They're all only
looking until they buy. You want them to go across the street and buy a car over
there? Because they have real salesmen over there. Now go back out there and
sell those people a car. And don't let them leave until they buy or until you
turn them over to your closer."
So that's why the car salespeople stick like glue to customers. Their fear of
their managers is greater than their fear of offending the customers.
Many salespeople find that humor is a good way to overcome objections. If a
customer says they're "only looking," the salesperson might answer, "Last time I
was only looking I wound up married." If a customer objects to being hurried
into buying the car, the salesperson might say, "The only pressure on this lot
is in the tires." These prepackaged lines were exchanged between car salesmen in
the slow times with the feeling that the right joke at the right moment could be
the ticket to a sale.
Of course, a good joke in the salesman's opinion might be considered the
ultimate cornball line by the customer. In one case a veteran salesman bragged
to me that he sold a car to a woman by telling her, "You know, you look great in
this car. The color matches the color of your eyes." Oddly enough, that very
night I was talking to a woman who told me she had once had a car salesman tell
her that the car matched the color of her eyes. Her reaction to this? "Oh
please!"
Car salesmen and women seem to exist in their own world. What they think is cool
is viewed by the public as tacky and obvious. For example, why do they insist on
wearing white shirts and silk ties? Or what about gold watches, rings and
chains? Who wears that stuff anymore? Don't they realize they are turning
themselves into walking cliches? The only answer I came up with was that, as a
salesman, I spent all my time with other salesmen. They were my friends. Believe
it or not, I tried to fit in, to belong. So I began to develop an interest in
gold ties, white shirts and dress shoes. I even grew a goatee because a lot of
the guys had beards. And I put gel on my hair and combed it straight back.
During the first week as a car salesman I used to come home and describe the
scene at the dealership to my wife. I told her how we were instructed to follow
cars as they pulled onto the lot and stand beside the car until the customer
stepped out. She was incredulous.
"Do they think that's going to make people want to buy a car?" she always asked.
"If it was me I'd just keep driving. I'd want time to pick the car myself. To
relax and sit in the car and not be pressured." I could only answer that the
system was not set up for educated people who thought for themselves, it wasn't
to help customers make informed decisions. The system was designed to catch
people off guard, to score a quick sale, to exploit people who were weak or
uninformed. Those were our buyers.
Let me say that the dealership I worked at was notoriously high-volume,
high-pressure. Even so, there were some salespeople there who were relaxed and
friendly and treated customers with respect. I also know that there are many
good dealerships across the country that are concerned with their long-term
reputation. But as a whole, the dealership where I worked encouraged the
salespeople to use pressure to speed up a deal, to get a customer to accept high
payments, to get the customer to buy a car they really didn't want.
I had been working for several days by now. My manager had trained me on the
basics and then told me to watch the other salespeople interacting with
customers. Finally, he let me "meet and greet" customers and then turn them over
to another team member. Now, it was time for me to actually start selling cars.
So I went outside and began waiting for ups.
The dealership where I worked had "an open floor." This meant that any salesman
could wait on any available customer. However, if there were 10 salesmen waiting
for ups and one car drove in, how did we decide who would help them? In some
cases, the salespeople "called" the ups. They would scan the traffic passing by
the dealership. If a car turned into the lot, someone said, "Green Toyota!" And
this gave him the right to wait on that customer. When you shook hands with the
customer you were, in a sense, claiming your territory.
Since I was still a "green pea" the other salesmen tried to push me to wait on
undesirable ups — the undesirable customers who the salesmen thought wouldn't or
couldn't qualify to buy a car. My manager had, at one point, described the
different races and nationalities and what they were like as customers. It would
be too inflammatory to repeat what he said here. But the gist of it was that the
people of such-and-such nationality were "lie downs" (people who buy without
negotiating), while the people of another race were "roaches" (they had bad
credit), and people from that country were "mooches" (they tried to buy the car
for invoice price).
I'll repeat what Michael, my ASM, told me about Caucasians . He said white
people never come into the dealership. "They're all on the Internet trying to
find out what our invoice price is. We never even get a shot at them. I hate it.
I mean, would they go (to a mall) and say, 'What's your invoice price on that
beautiful suit?' No. So why are they doing it here?"
I was already beginning to see the impact of the Internet because of something
that happened during my first few days there. I was sent to the service
department to talk to customers waiting for their cars to be fixed. Salespeople
feel this is a good source of leads to buy new cars. Say a customer has just
gotten nailed with a $2,000 quote for a transmission. Now's the time to move in
and pitch the virtues of a new car.
There were typically a dozen or more people waiting for their cars to be
serviced. They would either watch TV or read while they drank coffee and Cokes
from the vending machines. I handed out my business card and chatted with a few
people. One young guy was killing time by goofing around with his Palm Top
computer. He was outfitted in designer jeans and a T-shirt, so I wasn't
surprised to hear that he had just bought the radical new SUV our dealership
sold. Michael had told me these vehicles were selling for over sticker prices,
so I asked Mr. Palm Top how he made out.
"I got an awesome deal," he said.
"How awesome?"
"Three hundred below invoice," he smugly answered.
I asked how he did it. He said he checked prices on the Internet. He then called
the fleet manager and made the deal over the phone.
I had a schizophrenic reaction to this. Part of me admired the fact that he had
outfoxed the dealer. But the car salesman side of me was angry that I never "got
a shot at him." It seemed like just a matter of time before people who, in the
past, walked onto our car lot, would be on the Internet making deals.
The salesmen are only vaguely aware of this developing trend. I was standing on
the curb next to George and we saw one of these high-demand SUVs ready for
delivery.
"Another damn Internet sale," George said. "Why don't they turn that car over to
us? We'd get a grand over sticker. Instead they're selling it at invoice. Does
that make sense?" As the days passed I noticed more and more cars marked "carsdirect.com."
And as I approached people on the car lot they often informed me that they were
here to see the fleet manager. More Internet customers.
Back to that first couple I greeted on the car lot. I don't remember much about
them other than the look of fear on their faces. They didn't buy a car from me.
In fact, I didn't have a real good prospect for another two days. I had plenty
of people who were just looking. Or said they would be back. Or said they had a
doctor's appointment. Or had to pick up their kids at school. These were typical
excuses they had for escaping. But the salesmen told me to disregard all these
stories that customers gave me. As they put it, "Buyers are liars."
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