Another Black Eye?

WHAT IS IT ABOUT CAR SALESMEN that makes us want to run the other way? Not all of them are bad or ineffective or rancid smelling. Some are quite good, like the guy we worked with the other day. And some are horrific, like the “business manager” who we were passed along to.
        And, to be true to the aims of this blog, there are things we can learn — for sales executives and presenters alike — from both types.

The Good Salesman

When you look at as many cars as we did, you encounter a lot of sales people. Most fall into the tell-me-what-you-want-and-I’ll-tell-you-what-I-know school. It’s functional, and they’re usually pleasant, but they rarely inspire trust, which leaves you even more wary about the process and whether or not you’ll really get a fair deal.
        Then we walked into one particular dealer. A pleasant, young guy comes up to us — a bit more casually dressed, actually, but this IS Boulder and, hey, he’s just another sales guy, right? And we say that we want to test three specific models — all a bit different in “profile”, as opposed to big SUV v. small SUV or big sedan v. midsized sedan. We’d thrown similar requests at other sales guys and they’d just go fetch the required keys.
        BUT THIS GUY smiled at us and said, “What do you want to do with it?”
        As in, “What’s your goal?” or “What’s your pain?” or “What are you trying to achieve?” And suddenly, we had a dialog with this guy that went beyond “Seen a lot of cars?” or “Lived here long?” or “She's a beaut!”
        One question, perfectly timed and genuinely delivered, and we suddenly felt we had a guy we could trust. Funny how those snap judgements work, eh?

And we eventualy bought a car from this guy. Not without some give-and-take at negotiation time, but we never felt like we were being manipulated. THEN, he turned us over to the business manager ...

The Evil Salesman

I thought I’d seen just about every shameless trick in the Devious Guys Sales Handbook, but this guy showed us some new ones. While his title is “Business Manager”, meaning he gets the less than enviable task of pushing a lot of paper around, he also doesn’t have to walk the lot and try to convince people to buy from him. He gets hot prospects delivered to his desk throughout the day. What better job is there than that?
        What does he sell? All those high-margin, post-sale add-ons like extended warranties and theft riders and clear coat protections and so on. Things that could have some value, but are probably not needed or are covered in other ways.
        In our case, the list he pushed in front of us — if we’d signed up for everything — would have added $2500 to our costs! (Sound familiar?)

Here’s what made this guy so DEVIOUS. He was talking and joking and fiddling with his computer throughout the long, long process of filling out paperwork and gathering our signatures on countless forms (more than on our mortgage, or so it felt).
        The whole time, he had music playing on his computer, which was about six inches away from me. Actually, the music was NOT ON when we first sat down, but it quickly came on once he turned to his keyboard. It struck me as odd at the time, but it didn’t immediately put me on my guard.
        20 minutes later, he finally gets to the moment I knew (and dreaded) was coming — the hard-sell for the post-sale bits. He shoves two pieces of paper in front of us and shuffles them back and forth, trying to explain how one thing fits with another and why the numbers are so compelling for buying this stuff.
       So picture the scene: It’s late, we’ve been in car-search mode for hours, I’m still battling nausea from the way my wife was driving the sportier test cars, we’ve been stuck in this guy’s office forever, his paper-shuffling is adding to my eye strain, AND THE MUSIC IS SO FRICKIN' LOUD I’M ABOUT TO LOSE AN EAR DRUM!

Yes, he had cranked up the music to the “Pain” setting. His ploy was suddenly so obvious, and I immediately did two things: 1) I asked him to shut off the music; 2) I told him we didn’t need any of the post-sale items.
        What was so devious about the music? At the volume he’d cranked it up to, our ability to concentrate on the numbers was extremely compromised. And if you’re confused, and you’ve been sitting there for a long time, and you just want to get out to your shiny new car and escape, and this guy is smoothly explaining why it makes your good investment even better — well, a lot of people would say “Okay” just to get out of there.
        In a further confirmation of how shameless this guy was, when I went back the next day to give him the title on the car we traded in, he practically snarled at me; there was definitely none of the “best buddies” manner he’d shown the night before. It reminded me of the time-share sales guys we suffered through in Cabo years ago. (Boy, there’s material for a future post . . .)

So what can we learn?

From the GOOD salesman: be genuine; have a conversation with people; find out what matters to them, not just what features they want.

From the EVIL salesman: don’t manipulate people, just be honest and open. This guy obviously saw us as a one-time opportunity, and cared only about getting that cushy sale. Not good for repeat business, but he clearly didn’t care.

I do like the car, though. :-)

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