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Confessions of a Car Salesman Part VII
Part 7: No-Haggle Selling When I was hired at the no-haggle dealership, I was told I would be doing some phone work to build up leads. "Phone work" is a euphemism for calling people at dinnertime and harassing them. I realized I had become one of those people that I despise — a telemarketer. Still, to complete this experience, I attacked it with enthusiasm.
The leads we were given were names and numbers of people who had bought cars several years ago (and presumably would be ready for a new one) or people who had recently brought their cars in for service. We were given about 20 names a day, and those people who seemed like hot prospects were then called more frequently. Other people who had responded coolly were called again in six months. All our calls were logged into a computer database.
We were given a script to follow when making our calls. To me the dialogue sounded stilted and ridiculous. But I made a point of following it word for word. For example, after we had identified ourselves, we had to ask, "Am I interrupting anything important?" This seemed like a poor strategy to me. I felt they would tell us if we were interrupting anything. Or we could tell from their tone of voice if they were busy.
Assuming we hadn't interrupted something important, we then explained why we were calling: "We have a shortage of quality used cars on our lot right now and my manager would like to offer to buy your car at above market value. We would like to invite you to come down here for a free appraisal. Is the afternoon or the evening better for you?"
The beauty of this system, the BDC manager told me, was that "they're expecting you to sell them something. But you're not! You're offering to buy their car!"
Of course, all you're really doing is offering to take their car as a trade-in. Because, when you are appraising their car, it will begin to occur to them that — if they sell their car — they will need another one. So they begin looking around our car lot and before you know it, you have a sale and a trade-in deal. Nice idea. But it never worked for me.
Another ploy was to call someone who had once bought a car from our dealership and leave a brief mysterious message such as, "Mr. Jones, I have some information about your 1996 (fill in make and model of car) and I need to contact you as soon as possible. Please call me at — ." This method nearly always brought a return call from a customer with visions of recall information or maybe even police trouble. When they found out that we merely wanted to "buy" their car, they were often quite annoyed.
Still, I was surprised at how receptive most people were to talking with me on a cold call. They were more open than I am to people who call me at dinnertime or while I'm not "doing anything important." I was even more surprised at the loyalty customers showed toward this car manufacturer. Apparently this "no haggle, no hassle" style of selling created a feeling of good will that lasted throughout the entire ownership of the car. And it was an American car at that! I was filled with patriotic pride thinking how these cars might someday be as popular as the hot-selling Japanese models.
But still, I hadn't sold a car at this dealership. I had attended class, talked on the phone and even taken a few ups on the lot. But no one was buying. When I looked restless, the assistant sales manager, a heavy blond woman, said: "Please don't quit! I know it's slow, but wait till the weekend. You'll sell a car this weekend."
"Wait till the weekend," was a popular refrain in the car business. Everything revolved around those two days when ups were supposed to stream onto the lot. One of my other sales managers told me, "On the weekends, we have so many ups, we call it the tuna run."
"Tuna run?" I asked.
"You know — so many fish it's hard to pull them all into the boat. You'll see."
The tuna run never materialized at my old job. I was anxious to see if it would come true at my new job. I made sure I arrived early Saturday morning because, I was told, salespeople took ups in the order in which they arrived for work.
At noon I was still waiting for my first up. I decided I better eat something before the tuna started running. I began walking toward my car when Al called me back, "Dude, where're you goin'?"
"McDonald's. You want something?"
"Dude, dude. You can't leave. You miss an up, that would be like a $300 burger."
Al was very persuasive. We ordered a pizza to be delivered. When it came it had the wrong topping and Al didn't have enough money for the extra charge. He was going to send it back. I made up the difference and we sat down to eat in the break room. I never saw food disappear so fast. He hunched over the pizza, I heard muffled grunting noises and it was gone. He belched a few times and headed back outside to look for ups.
One thing I discovered was that car salesmen are easy marks for anyone selling things. That's because they are always hanging around — they're a captive audience. And some of them are flush from a recent sale. At the first dealership, I was in a sales cubicle one day when a guy stuck his head around the corner. "Silk ties, 10 bucks," he said, and disappeared.
Outside I found a cluster of salesmen gathering around the open trunk of a shiny black BMW. In the trunk were boxes packed with ties in protective plastic sleeves. I picked out two ties and gave him a twenty. The tie guy (as he was called) fingered the tie I was wearing and then compared it with the two I had selected. He nodded approvingly. "You've, like, got this pattern thing going. Cool."
After the tie guy visited the dealership, the salesmen would congregate in the bathroom trying on their new purchases, complimenting each other. Gold ties were the most popular. They went nicely with the watches, rings and chains the salesmen wore.
Besides the tie guy we also had the sandwich lady and an older guy who sold golf balls he had found in water hazards. The balls were neatly arranged in egg cartons in the trunk of his car. "Three bucks a dozen. Mix and match," he told me. "Lotta Titleists there." Then he dropped his voice confidentially, as if he was giving me a special deal. "Got a Callaway three iron in the backseat. Ten bucks." I imagined an irate golfer giving it a heave into a water hazard. Little did he imagine that it would be resurrected in this way.
Then there was the chicken man. You never saw the chicken man so much as smelled him. He seemed to appear on weekend nights when it got busy. You would smell fried chicken and see a figure out of the corner of your eye carrying a cardboard box on his shoulder. Then the word would spread: "The chicken man's here!"
I went into the F&I office one night and found a sales manager hunched over a chicken dinner with his tie thrown back over his shoulder to protect it from grease splatter. He was eating with great purpose, making harf, harf, harf noises.
"Is it as good as it smells?" I asked.
"No. But I was starved," he said, throwing the bones in a trash can. He wiped his mouth, picked up his contracts and moved back into the hallway to a waiting customer.
It was almost 2 o'clock that Saturday afternoon when I got my first up. I saw a man wandering among the new cars. This was the first real up I had gotten since I took my sales seminar. As I walked toward him I began rehearsing all the things I had learned.
His name was Ron and he told me his car was in the service department. He wasn't going to buy a car today but since he had a few minutes to kill he wanted to see the new family sedans we offered. The top of the line model came with a V6 engine that had been highly praised.
I took Ron to the lowest level family sedan on the lot. We had been told in the seminar that it was "easier to sell up, than down." This meant that you always started the customer at the least expensive model and let them bump themselves to the more expensive models. The reasoning was that, once they had sat on leather and felt the power of a V6, how could you get them excited about driving around in cloth and plastic, powered by a whiney little four-banger?
The strategy worked. Ron told me he liked the roominess of the car and the way it handled, but he wanted power. No problem, I told him. Then, as if the thought just occurred to me, I said, "Tell you what, while we're on the test drive, I'll have your car appraised. Then, if you decide you want to buy, I can give you an idea of what your payments will be."
He agreed, although he told me he would pay cash rather than finance or lease the car. I got all the information on his trade-in and gave it to the assistant sales manager. She began feeding the information into her computer, then pounded on the keyboard in frustration.
"Damn thing's locked up," she said. "I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way. She pulled out a small reference book and added the cost of options and the mileage allowance. She gave me a trade-in value of $4,200.
"Great news," I told Ron, who had been waiting in the showroom. Salesmen always return to their customers with what they call "great news." I told him: "We can give you $4,200 for your trade-in. Believe me, that's high. You'd never get that anywhere else."
Actually, $4,200 really did seem like a lot. But I wondered if that was just in relation to the ridiculously low figures we gave for trade-ins at the first dealership I had worked at. Ron seemed encouraged by this figure so I decided to give him a little sales pitch about leasing I had cobbled together from bits and pieces of presentations I had heard, or overheard, from other salesmen.
Leasing is very popular these days. One of the benefits, from the salesman's point of view, is that it is so complicated that the customer sits transfixed during negotiations, unable to defend themselves. Usually, the salesman hits the customer with incredibly high monthly payments on a purchase plan. Then, as if the idea just popped into their mind, the salesman will say, "You know, there might be another way to get the payments down... Have you folks ever considered leasing?"
Personally, I think leasing can be a good way to go. For one thing, leasing allows people to drive more expensive cars. But you have to be careful. Some dealers base leases on 110 percent of the vehicle's sticker price. This is called a "full pop lease" and it's what most dealerships aim for. Also, it's easy to disguise the interest rate in a lease because it is expressed as a decimal multiplier instead of a more recognizable percentage rate. For example, a 9 percent interest rate becomes .00375.
At the first dealership I worked at, a veteran sales manager rounded up all of us green peas and taught us how to present it to Mr. Customer. He said to tell customers: "In three years, you can turn your old car back in and get one that has the latest technological inventions. And what do you think cars will be able do in three years? Who knows? Fly in the air! Go across the water! Go under the water? Who knows?"
I didn't give Ron that speech. But I did tell him that if he paid only the drive off fees (about $650) and gave us his trade-in as a down payment, he would have a $257 monthly payment for 39 months. I pointed out that we offered interest rates of 4.9 percent.
"Why take your money out of a mutual fund at 16 percent when you can use our money at 4.9 percent?" I asked him. "Then, at the end of the lease, if you love the car, you can buy it at about half its current value."
I looked up and saw the assistant sales manager frantically waving me into her office. I left Ron to ponder the advantages of leasing and stepped back into the sales manager's office.
"You didn't give him the price on his trade-in did you?" she asked.
"Of course I did. Why?"
"Damn. The computer just came back up. We're offering him about a grand more than what it's worth." She thought it over. "Look. We have to stand by our offer. But tell him it's good for today only. And if I were him, I'd jump on it, big time."
I walked back out into the showroom and rejoined Ron. "You're going to like this," I said (using a variation of the "great news!" opener). I explained what had happened, then added, "You can tell all your friends how you outfoxed the car salesman."
He chuckled. If you could get people laughing it got them on your side.
Still, there was a problem. Of course, there was always a problem in every deal. Ron's problem was simple and very common: he had to talk to his wife first. He kept calling her on his cell phone. But she was out with the kids. He confided in me: they had agreed his wife would be the next one to buy a new car. He was worried that she might be upset with his purchase.
By now I had been with Ron for about two hours. It had gone from being a hot, sunny afternoon to a cool, windy evening. Ron was hungry and so was I. But after all this, I didn't want to turn him into a "be-back."
Ron had given up trying to reach his wife. He was about to go home and talk it over with her when his cell phone rang. It was his wife. I moved outside to give him some space. It might sound corny but I began visualizing that I had made the sale. This is a popular technique with salespeople. It just means that you picture the outcome you want before it happens. I pictured shaking hands with Ron and saw him signing the contracts. But life isn't that simple. When Ron was done talking to his wife his answer wasn't yes or no. He merely said, "She's coming down."
A few minutes later a van pulled up and Ron's wife stepped out. Before she could speak I said, "I'm the pushy salesman who's been holding your husband hostage all afternoon."
She laughed. And I knew I had a sale. They leased the car for three years. I even sold them a service contract.
After Ron and his wife signed the contracts, I led them outside. They transferred all the crap from their old heap to their gleaming new car — cupholders, maps, cassette tapes, Kleenex, flashlights, etc. After they drove away, I pulled their trade-in to the back of the lot. The thing was a real beast. The interior had a moist, funky smell. At this very moment, I thought, Ron was driving home, inhaling new car smell. I enjoyed imagining how happy he must be.
Back inside the dealership everyone was hurrying to lock up and go home. The F&I manager came over and said, "You did a phenomenal job with that guy. I'm going to break my rule and speak to you before you've been here for six months."
So, did Ron get a good deal? Well, he drove in behind the wheel of an old heap. He paid only $650 out of pocket (drive-off fees on his lease) and he drove out in a more powerful, more reliable, safer, top-of-the line car.
Was the no-haggle method of selling better? From the salesman's point of view, it allowed me to focus on what the customer really needed. Also, the good will I built up on the test drive was preserved during the deal-making process. The only problem I could see with no-haggle selling was with my commission — I made about $350 on the deal. Not bad for four hours of work. But, as it turned out, it was the only car I sold that week.
Confessions of a Car Salesman Part VI
Part 6: Learning From the Pros I first started working as an undercover car salesman I was e-mailing my editors every day with accounts of car lot life. But as I settled into the job, my e-mails tailed off. There just wasn't much room in my schedule for writing. For example, one night I had a deal that didn't wrap up until 1 a.m. I had to be at work the next day at 9 a.m.
I must have let several days go by without writing my editors because I received an e-mail from my boss asking: "Have you gone native on us?" Maybe they thought I was making so much money, or enjoying life on the lot so much that I was going to change my profession. Not a chance. Sales isn't in my blood. I didn't like "tap dancing on rain drops," as one salesman described the sales pitch.
However, I had agreed to work at one more dealership — a no-haggle car lot — before I ended this undercover project. Before I could do that, though, I needed to leave my present job where I had worked for about a month and sold five cars. And I needed to find a way to make a graceful exit. Little did I know the unexpected form it would take.
One Friday morning I was trying to sell a pickup truck to a college student. During a break in the dealing I phoned home to get my messages. I heard my brother's voice on the message machine calling from the East Coast. He said he had sad news. My brother-in-law had died the previous night. It was completely unexpected and it left me in a state of shock.
I stumbled outside and told my sales manager what had happened. He said to take as much time as I needed and he would hold my job open for me. Later that week, I phoned him from the East to say I would not be returning.
When I got back from the funeral I began looking for a new job at a no-haggle dealership that sold American cars. This would make an interesting contrast to a high-pressure dealership that sold Japanese-made cars. I called several places until I found one where they were actively looking for salespeople. They asked me to come in for an interview.
It was a small dealership on a busy street filled with storefront businesses and strip malls. The used cars were parked along the front row facing the street with signs in their windshields listing the year, model and price. The new cars were parked farther back in two short rows and there were another 40 new cars on the back lot. Inside the showroom, two new cars were on display, surrounded by desks for the "sales consultants" — as the salespeople were called here. I noticed that, unlike at the previous dealership, about half of the salespeople were women. The uniform here was a polo shirt with the car manufacturer's logo on it.
My interview was with the sales manager, a laid-back guy in his mid-30s named Kevin. When I arrived he was in his office off the showroom floor. Evidently, there was no sales tower here. Kevin reviewed my application and recognized the name of the dealership at which I had previously sold cars. He whistled.
"How long did you work there?"
"A month."
"You lasted that long, huh?" he laughed. Then he added, "Why did you leave?"
"I got tired of lying."
"Right. When you work here you won't have to lie —." But then he stopped, reconsidering what he had said. "Actually, it depends on your definition of lying. But the point is we won't ask you to do anything that conflicts with your core beliefs."
He explained that the way they handled the trade-in is a judgment call for the sales consultant. Say the used car manager appraises the car at $4,500. The sales consultant could then tell the customer that we would give them $4,000 for their trade — thus adding $500 profit to the deal.
But in general, Kevin told me, things were as straightforward as they appeared.
"We don't hit people with stupid high numbers," he said. "We don't pack payments. We tell people we're no haggle, no hassle and we stick to that. It's a good place to work."
He offered me the job starting immediately. But first, he wanted me to attend a four-day sales seminar. I resisted because there had been so much training at my previous job. What I wanted was more of a chance to sell cars. Eventually, though, I agreed to go because I thought it might add a new dimension to the experience.
I attended the seminar with two other salesmen starting at my new dealership. They were both in their early 20s. One was a surfer dude named Al who had long brown hair combed straight back and a big tattoo on his upper arm. He blinked constantly — an affectation either left over from his surfing days, or caused by all the chemicals he'd poured into his bloodstream. The other salesman was Jeff, a sincere guy who was a gearhead.
There were a total of about 15 salespeople in the seminar. The others were from a variety of dealerships selling many makes and models of U.S.- and foreign-built cars. The class was taught by a tall, handsome man named Roy, who had sold cars for 17 years and wore an exquisite suit and silk tie. He told us that when he first started selling cars he was terrible at it. But then he decided to imitate the successful salesmen on his lot. Eventually he made a bundle using the skills he would teach us here. I had to wonder just how big a bundle he made if he was teaching seminars like these.
We then went around the class and introduced ourselves. I was struck by how the other salesmen described themselves in ways that revealed extremely low self-images. Most of them were divorced or refugees from other unsuccessful careers. Others were downright bitter and hostile. One salesman, 50-ish with a pink, bald head and white fringe of hair said, "I'm the kind of three-time loser that hasn't kept a job, a wife or kids for more than three years."
I prepared to listen attentively during this seminar since, after my first job, I had questions about how to sell cars more effectively. One thing that baffled me, for example, was how to get people into the sales office after the test drive. In some cases, the customer loved the car, they felt comfortable with me, but they wouldn't take that big step through the dealership door.
In one case, I had a husband and wife interested in a crew cab pickup. It was obvious the husband wanted to "buy today." The wife didn't. After the test drive I held the door open so they could walk into the dealership. He stepped in. She stayed outside. They had a little spat right there. The wife won and I lost the sale.
It didn't bother me that I didn't sell the truck. I wasn't there to sell cars as much as to understand the process. I felt bad about pressuring this couple when it was obvious it was causing conflict between them. But it came at a time when I hadn't sold a car for a few days and my boss was beginning to give me heat.
The names of slackers such as myself were put on a white board in the sales tower labeled, "Three-Day No Sale." This meant you had to meet with your manager to figure out why you were in a slump. Usually they told you the problem was that you weren't taking enough customers on test drives (called "demos"). The general manager of our dealership was fond of saying that if we demo-ed three cars without selling one, he would give us a "come-to-Jesus talk." This was like being read the riot act. You had to come to Jesus — to give everything to the dealership — or you'd be fired. Then, he added, if you demo-ed another car and the customer left without buying, you'd follow them home (because you'd be "blown out"). He reinforced his point with another of his favorite expressions: "You'll do it my way, or hit the highway."
Roy, the instructor at the seminar, was like the GM at my first dealership. He was filled with trite phrases and platitudes about sales. The difference was, Roy taught a total system for sales, called "Needs Satisfaction Selling." You found out what the customer's needs were and then you presented the car in such a way as to meet their needs. This meant you needed to know the car's features so well you could present it in a number of different ways. If the customer wanted safety you had to talk about ABS, airbags and crumple zones. If the buyer wanted performance you talked about the V6 engine, the silky-smooth tranny and the platinum-tipped spark plugs.
The selling system was built around a progression of questions we were told to memorize. That night I took these questions home and my 9-year-old, who loves role-playing, helped me practice using them.
I'd shake my son's hand and say, "Welcome to the dealership! And your name is?"
"Freddie."
"Good to meet you Freddie. Are you familiar with our product line here?"
"Uh uh," he'd say, trying to be serious like an adult.
"Fine. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? That way I can better understand which cars on our lot to show you."
"OK!"
"Freddie, let me ask you, what are you driving now?"
"A BMX bike."
"OK. And what do you like about that bike?"
"Goes real fast."
"So Freddie, what you're saying is performance is important to you. Is that right?"
"I guess."
"Well, we have a model over here with a V6 engine that puts out 210 horsepower. Follow me."
He always followed me when I turned and walked toward the imaginary cars. I wished all the customers were like Freddie.
The next day in the seminar I was called up in front of the class to role play with the teacher. With 14 other salesmen watching, and snickering, and hooting, it was difficult to remember all the lines I had memorized. But I began to appreciate the way the questions helped identify and address the customer's needs. I thought back to all the haphazard sales pitches I had given at my first dealership. And I was glad I'd have another shot at selling cars in my new job.
During a break in the seminar I stood outside with my two buddies from my new dealership. Al, the surfer dude, told me his dream was to work at a Mercedes dealership. His father had once owned a Mercedes and he knew everything about every model ever made.
"Test me, dude," he said to me, blinking rapidly. "Dude, I'm serious. Test me. I know everything."
The other guy, Jeff started testing him and, sure enough, he did know everything. He could talk forever about how the taillights had changed from one year to the next, how they had added chrome or flashing to such and such a model. Jeff, on the other hand, knew everything about the motors they put in the cars.
Back in the seminar we learned about how to present "feature-benefits." It wasn't enough just to say this car had, for instance, an antilock braking system. You had to point out the feature — ABS — and then link a benefit to their needs — in this case, safety.
The teacher then took out a $20 bill and taped it to the easel he had been making notes on. He told us all to stand up. He then went around the class and named a benefit, and we had to name a corresponding feature. The last man standing (actually, our group included one saleswoman) got the twenty.
As we stood up, I whispered to Jeff, "You're going to win this thing, man."
"I wish."
"You will," I said. "You're like an encyclopedia."
"Economy," the teacher said, pointing at a standing salesman.
"Fuel-injected four-cylinder engine," the salesman said.
"Safety," the teacher said, pointing at another salesman.
"Dual front airbags," the salesman responded.
In the beginning, it was easy. But one of the rules was that you couldn't repeat any features that had already been mentioned. So we began to run out of benefits for our features.
Finally, there were only three of us standing: me, Jeff and the salesman who described himself as a loser.
"Performance," the teacher said, pointing at me.
"Twin-cam engine," I said.
"Aaaaant!" the teacher said, imitating a buzzer. "Sit down. Someone already said that."
I didn't hear anyone say that. I was disqualified on a technicality!
Jeff and the guy battled it out and Jeff finally won. I had identified Jeff as a winner and the other salesman had accurately described himself as a loser.
Jeff went to the head of the class and got his twenty. As he sat down, he said to me, "Good thing I won. I didn't even have gas money to get home."
An assignment for our class was to go to a dealership and critique a salesman or woman who waited on us. We weren't supposed to tell them this was for a class or that we were car salesmen. We were merely supposed to evaluate their performance in relationship to what we had learned. I chose a German car dealership along a street near my home. As I walked inside, it occurred to me that this was getting complicated. I was an undercover car salesman for Edmunds.com, sent to a dealership, which sent me to a seminar, which sent me to another dealership as an undercover shopping evaluator. I guess that made me a triple agent. Very good lines.
At the seminar we had been taught how to meet and greet, how to shake hands, how to evaluate needs and even how to overcome objections about discounts and pricing. The woman who waited on me at the German car dealership never shook my hand. I had to ask her for her business card. And when I raised a question about the car's performance she snapped, "Well you obviously haven't been reading Motor Trend. It was their top pick in all categories." I left the dealership feeling vastly superior.
We all graduated from the seminar a few days later and received cheesy little diplomas. The other salesmen were psyched up to go out and sell about 10 cars that very day. I went back to my no-haggle dealership and was eager to use my new sales skills. But there wasn't a customer in sight. So I hung around and shot the breeze with the other sales consultants.
In the car business, there's a lot of down time. All you have to do is drive past a car lot in the middle of the week. What do you see? Six or seven sales guys hanging around out front, sipping coffee, puffing on cigarettes, and watching the traffic flowing past, hoping someone will turn in. If a customer appears, they park their coffee cups behind the bushes and pop a breath mint. During the slow times, the conversation turns to dealerships where the other salespeople used to work. On this day, a saleswoman asked me about the place I had just worked.
"Was it as bad as that TV news station made it out to be?" she asked me.
"What do you mean?"
"Didn't you see the piece they did on it?" she said. "They went in there with a hidden camera and caught them packing payments and doing the old bait and switch."
I was amazed. "Are you sure?"
"Yeah. It's been running all week."
When I got home I logged onto the news station's Web site. Sure enough, the expose targeted the dealership I had previously worked at, along with several others across the city. Judging from the dates, they did their "investigation" just after I quit. I skimmed the article, looking for the names of Michael, my assistant sales manager, and the members of my team. As my eyes flew over the text, I realized I was hoping I wouldn't find their names. Why did I feel loyalty to them? When I reached the end I saw that they had escaped. But the hidden camera had caught a guy I knew vaguely.
The TV news investigation seemed pathetically shallow to me. A reporter went in posing as a customer to see what kind of service she would get. Six hours later they came out with the earth-shattering news that the salesmen were guilty of pressuring customers (you're kidding!). They also accused the dealership of overcharging the customer (stop the presses!).
It gave me renewed respect for my Edmunds.com editors who had made the commitment to send me into this world for several months. But with my deeper level of understanding, the morality of the issue began to blur. I don't think I'll ever be able to make sweeping generalizations like I once did, by declaring, "Car salesmen are scum!" I knew a lot of salesmen whose skills I admired. Besides that, it's a tough life. The hours stink and you live or die by your ability to sell dreams and move cars. So for the TV reporters to crucify the salesperson was a farce. The system was corrupt from the top down. This was proved when the TV reporter went to the head of the dealership. He said he was going to launch a thorough investigation into his dealership's practices — as if all this went on without his knowledge. And yet, he had been present in every Friday morning sales meeting, whipping the salesmen into a frenzy, urging them to go for "pounders" — a deal with a $1,000 commission for the salesman.
It was a pretty good bet that we would never be investigated here at the no-haggle dealership. We didn't pressure people, we didn't pack payments or steal trade-ins. The only problem was, we didn't have customers. I found myself wondering whether this phase of the undercover project was going to be a bust. If there's no dirt, what is there to talk about? But that was before the weekend arrived and we actually got some ups. And it was before they sent me into the phone room to drum up business with a technique that didn't exactly fit the company's customer-friendly image.
Confessions of a Car Salesman Part V
Part 5: A Tale of Two Deals In the new car sales tower there was a huge white board listing the names of all the salespeople on the lot. Every time you sold a car they colored in a blue box next to the name of the salesperson. The best salesman on the lot had a row of 15 boxes stretching out beside his name. I had no boxes next to my name. I felt inadequate.
I had been working for almost a week without selling my first car. I had greeted a lot of customers but I still didn't have a single sale to my name. I gazed jealously at the long rows of boxes next to the names of the other salesmen and wondered when I would make my first sale. Then, one morning, I got a "live one."
I had been standing on the curb out in front of the dealership looking for ups. It was funny because, when you looked away, and then back, customers seemed to magically appear. That's because they sometimes snuck through the bushes. There were hedges bordering the car lot so we couldn't see people approaching from the street. Often, a shopper might be at the dealership next door. They decided to continue shopping by walking down the street. That's why they came through the bushes.
By the time I reached this customer he was already inspecting a top-of-the-line minivan. I introduced myself and he told me his name was Randy Park. He was a young Asian man with grease under his fingernails. Later, he told me he was a mechanic. At first, Mr. Park was very guarded. But as we walked to the back lot to look for more minivans, he relaxed and opened up a bit.
We found two minivans that were very close to what he wanted but he told me that he didn't like the color of the interior. He wanted beige with a beige interior. I told him that we had yet another lot which visitors were not allowed to go to. He could wait in the dealership while I checked inventory. He seemed to know the game, that once inside we would work him to make a deal. Still, reluctantly, he followed me inside and sat down in a sales cubicle. I had my first customer, "in the box."
I took some basic information about him. He wanted to pay cash for the minivan and trade in a 10-year-old Acura with 160,000 miles on it.
Michael, my ASM (assistant sales manager) came in to meet Mr. Park and he began searching the inventory for a minivan to match his tastes. Finally, we located a minivan that matched the description and we went outside to look at it.
"It doesn't have running boards," Mr. Park said.
"We'll put them on," Michael quickly said.
Mr. Park inspected the minivan carefully, but he refused to test-drive it, saying his brother had the same vehicle and he had driven it many times. He also said he wanted a number of things added to the minivan such as the aforementioned running boards, fog lights and a rubber scratch guard for the rear bumper. Michael kept saying it would be no problem to add those things once the deal was set.
At this point things got sticky. Michael had to go into a meeting so another salesman from my team, Juan, was brought in to help me with the deal. I stood to the side in the cubicle and let Juan handle the customer. Just as Michael had described, Juan filled in the four-square worksheet with the stock number of the vehicle and the sticker price, $28,318. Mr. Park saw this and began to get excited, saying he would pay only $24,000 for the minivan. Juan ignored this early overture, picked up the phone and dialed the new car sales tower.
"I have a Mr. Park with me," Juan told the sales manager. "Don't call the police but he's trying to steal our car." (Another example of car salesman "humor.")
Juan gave the desk all the extras that Mr. Park wanted added to the minivan. He then wrote some numbers in the boxes and hung up the phone. He told Mr. Park that we needed a $6,000 down payment and his monthly payments would be $523.
"I told you, I will pay cash for this car," Mr. Park said. "But I want your best price. What is your best price to buy the minivan?"
Juan recalculated the prices and told Mr. Park he could have this beautiful new minivan for only $27,500 plus the cost of the extras. Mr. Park demanded to know how much he would get for his trade-in vehicle. Juan told him we would give him $2,500. This sent Mr. Park into a frenzy. He kept insisting the car was worth at least $6,000.
Juan and Mr. Park went back and forth for about 10 minutes. Then, abruptly, Juan stood up and left. I sat down and tried to make small talk with Mr. Park. This was difficult since I could see that he was upset about the way he was being treated. Juan returned a few minutes later with the four-square sheet on which the sales manager had written, in blue magic marker: "Great deal! $27,150 for our minivan, $2,500 for your trade."
When this was presented to Mr. Park, he became agitated, insisting the trade was worth at least $5,000. Once again, it looked like Juan had gone as far as he could with Mr. Park. He left and came back with a closer who introduced himself as Big Stu. At first, Stu was jovial. He pointed at the list of extras Mr. Park was requesting and asked, "Is there a kitchen sink in here too?" Later, he began referring to the extras as, "Home Depot."
Big Stu was clearly searching for a way — any way — to get a commitment from Mr. Park. At one point he pointed at me and said, "And this guy here has never sold a car before. If you buy this car he gets to pop his cherry."
Unexpectedly, Stu suddenly raised his trade-in value to $4,000. He also said our minivan could sell for $26,500. Mr. Park accepted this offer and initialed the sale sheet. He then said he had to go home and get his wife so he could return and complete the credit application and take delivery of his new vehicle.
I walked Mr. Park out to his car and shook hands with him before he left. I noticed that whenever I shook hands with him he offered me his left hand. All other salesmen he shook hands with right-handed or American-style. I wondered if there was some cultural significance to this. Perhaps he was telling me he trusted me.
Of course, I began thinking that I had made my first sale — or "popped my cherry." Mr. Park's new minivan was still parked in front of the dealership, so I went out to move it back into its space. It turned out the battery was dead. The minivan had been sitting there so long with doors and windows open that it drained the battery. If Mr. Park had insisted on a test drive it wouldn't have started. I went into the tower, and told Big Stu we needed a porter to jump-start the car. He leaned over the counter and screamed in my face, "That's not my f---ing job! Call the porter yourself!"
Eventually, a porter with a "jump box" started the minivan. I let it idle for a half-hour, then put it away. Several hours passed, and I began to feel my first sale slipping away. Suddenly, I was paged. When I got to the receptionist's desk, I found Mr. Park with his wife and baby waiting for me. He looked very excited and happy. Again, he shook hands with me with his left hand. I showed him the minivan and insisted that we take a test drive. When we returned we all went back into a sales cubicle.
Somehow, the earlier sales sheet had gotten "lost" and the numbers they had agreed on were "forgotten." The price of the minivan and all the extras shot back up and the price of his trade-in took a serious dive. For the next two hours Mr. Park was hammered by every closer in the dealership. I got to watch a variety of styles: impatience, cajoling, begging, threats. Through all this his wife sat by his side clutching their little baby. Mr. Park began complaining that he had a headache and his manner became increasingly angry. At one point he ominously muttered, "Don't screw with me."
I couldn't exactly figure out what had happened to the deal. Yes, he had been offered $4,000 for his trade. I knew that for sure. And I seemed to recall that he had been offered the minivan, including the extras, for as low as $26,500. Those extras had not been written into the contract or they had been conveniently forgotten. They reemerged at the end and completely blew the deal. Finally, Michael picked up the papers and walked out of the cubicle muttering, "You're wasting our time."
Mr. Park asked me several times whether or not I had heard the earlier offer of $4,000 for his trade. I wouldn't commit to this since I knew that I would be fired if it ever came back on me. When I last saw the Park family, they were heading across the street to another dealership.
Moments later Michael appeared and said, "Sorry about your deal, but those people are completely impossible." Actually, he didn't say "those people." He named an Asian country where, he had earlier told me, the people were all "grinders." Ironically, in my attempts to make conversation with Mr. Park I had learned that he wasn't from that country at all. He was from a neighboring country which wasn't on Michael's list of primo grinders. So here was my boss, adhering to stereotypes — but doing it incorrectly. That struck me as the worst of both worlds.
All week Michael had been telling me about the Friday morning sales meeting. Each time it came up he would say, "Make sure you're on time."
"What happens if I'm not?" I asked.
"You don't want to find out."
Friday morning rolled around and I made sure I was there in plenty of time. The meetings were held in the lunchroom upstairs and the only way to reach this room was to climb a flight of outside stairs. All the salesmen were gathered at the bottom of the stairs, milling around smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. Some of the guys were in street clothes, black leather jackets or wearing baseball caps turned backwards. That was because they were working the late shift. They had come in just for the meeting and then would go home and come back again later. Those few lucky salespeople who were off on Friday were required to come to the meeting. If they didn't they wouldn't be allowed to work that weekend.
The rules of the dealership are enforced by threatening to send the offender home. Since we all worked on straight commission, to be sent home meant you eliminated your chances of making any money. The concept of being sent home always reminded me of being in grade school. "If you do that again, we're going to send you home and call your mother."
One day I was standing "on the point" with my hands in my pockets. The point is the entrance to the dealership where cars pulled in from the street. Another salesman came up to me and said, "You're not on my team, but you're from Boston so I'll tell you. If the owner of the dealership sees you standing there playing pocket pool, he goes ballistic. I got sent home one day for doing that." Apparently the owner felt we looked idle and inattentive if we had our hands in our pockets.
Salespeople also got fired at the drop of a hat. This was known as, "getting blown off." I came into work one morning and heard the guys talking about how another salesman got fired the night before. He had done something to a customer that the GM (general manager) didn't like. The salesman was called into the tower and he stumbled out moments later in a state of shock. He said to the other salesmen, "I don't believe it, he just blew me off." The GM saw the fired salesman talking to the other guys and charged out on the lot, screaming, "Get away from them! I don't want you talking to anyone!"
So the salesmen were very careful to show up for the Friday morning sales meetings on time. I was wondering what was going to happen in the meeting when the door at the top of the stairs burst open and loud, pounding music poured out. The general manager appeared and yelled, "All right guys, get in here!"
We all ran up the stairs, high-fiving the sales managers as we went like we were taking the field in an all-star game. As we gathered in the room, we were all clapping to the music that was booming from a stereo set up in the corner. It was as loud as a rock concert and was playing that music they use at ball parks: "We will, we will, ROCK YOU!"
The music died and one of the sales managers, a short guy in his forties, with wavy black hair, ran out in front of us pumping his fists and screaming, "Killer, killer, KILLER WEEKEND!!!"
We all cheered.
"What are you going to do this weekend?" he yelled.
"Sell cars!" we yelled back at him.
For 45 minutes we listened to motivational speeches from the managers. Then the GM appeared and told us about the various bonuses. If you sold three cars you got $250, four cars and you got $350, five cars and you got $500. And then he added, "If the dealership sells 60 cars, all the bonuses double. Sell five cars you get a grand. It's that simple." More ballpark music followed this and we left the room shaking hands and giving more high fives. We were pumped. We ran outside to sell cars. There was only one problem.
Where were the customers?
I had been warned that Fridays were bad because you have all the salespeople on the lot and no customers until late in the afternoon. But still, there was a lot going on. They had set up an inflatable bouncing room for kids, a petting zoo, and a grill preparing free hot dogs and hamburgers under a tent set up to one side of the showroom. The smell of cooking burgers began drifting across the lot. Soon there was a long line of salesman waiting for the free chow.
But that wasn't all. In the lobby, a table was set up and "free gifts" (are gifts ever anything but free?) were on display. If you came in and test-drove a car, you got either a key case or a portable camera. I don't think I need to tell you about the quality of these items. The gifts were handed out by young women with bored expressions and tight tops.
Moving back outside I saw two people roaming the lot dressed in animal suits. One was a brown fuzzy bear and the other was a floppy-eared rabbit. Later I talked to the women inside the suits and they complained about how hot the costumes were and how little kids kept poking them to see if they were real.
It wasn't until the next week that I finally "popped my cherry." It was about 8:30 p.m. and a couple came through the bushes again. Coincidentally they were also interested in the minivan — the exact model that Mr. Park had wanted to buy. Apparently they had been at the dealership next door and just decided to stroll over to see what we had.
A truck was parked on the lot shining searchlights into the air to attract buyers. A diesel generator was cranked up to provide power. As I approached this couple, it was very hard to hear what they said because of the roar of the generator. But the body language of the tall, heavy-set man in his 30s, was hostile. His wife was shy. I told them we had more minivans in the back, and invited them to come with me to look at them. As we walked together I was able to shake their hands and get some general information about them.
They found a few minivans that they liked but had questions about inventory — did we have any other minivans still available? This was a good chance to bring them inside. It was also cold out and they were tired from shopping.
Inside, they sat down as I filled out a guest sheet with basic information. They were surprisingly willing to provide their phone number, address and the amount they would put as a down payment.
I brought Michael, my assistant sales manager, into the office and he met the couple. I noticed that he always began by praising the car the customer was considering, as if they had made a wise decision. He would say something like: "So you're interested in the minivan. Did you know that's our best-selling vehicle here? Everyone loves it. It can hold seven people, but it drives like a car. You can't go wrong with it. And the prices here are the best in the area." Later, I would learn how this was called raising the customer's excitement level. If they were excited about the car, they wouldn't be rational when it came to making a deal.
Naturally, the couple began asking about the price of different models. Michael pointed to me and said, "He'll take you back out to the lot. Find one or two minivans you like. Get the stock numbers and we'll get specific about payments. How's that sound?"
We went back outside, and located a minivan that was buried deep in a row of trucks. The couple made their choice based on color and sticker price. We went back inside, and Michael quoted them a monthly payment of about $550. The man balked at these figures saying he had been given lower numbers by another dealership. Michael countered by saying it was difficult to compare two vehicles with different options.
"I just had an idea," he said. "There may be a rebate on this vehicle we could use to bring the payment down. I'll go see if it's still in effect." He disappeared into the sales tower.
Whenever someone failed to accept the "first pencil" (the high numbers they begin with) Michael would always have "an idea" or "remember" a rebate or special interest rate program. This avoided the head-to-head confrontation. It also promoted the sense that we were working in the customer's best interest.
When Michael left to go to talk to "the desk" (the sales managers) I sat down with the couple and made small talk. I noticed that the man had his cellular phone out and was punching the keys. I asked if he was playing computer games. He smiled and said, "I'm playing a game called 'calculator.'" I realized he was running the numbers Michael suggested. It struck me that this might be a good way to check numbers at a dealership. If a customer whips out a calculator it could really tick off the salesman. But we're getting used to seeing cellular phones in everybody's hands.
Michael went back and forth with the guy several times, but they seemed to be settling on monthly payments of $475. Finally, Michael held out his hand and said, "Do we have a deal?" They shook hands.
If the minivan was selling for a sticker price of about $24,000 with options and tax, a 60-month loan at 9 percent interest would be $475 a month. However, I later checked Edmunds.com True Market Value prices and saw that this van should have been discounted about $1,700 from the sticker price. Then, monthly payments at 9 percent would have been $430 a month. Over the life of the loan this was a $2,520 difference.
The long paperwork process began. They ran a credit report and the couple had a good score. Still, they needed to sign the contracts in the finance and insurance room, or "F&I."
The dealership was closed now, and most of the salesmen and customers had left. But I had been warned that we would stay as long as it took to get the deal done. After about a half an hour, one of the sales managers told me to move the couple into the "fish room." This meant I was to put them into a waiting room built around a large aquarium. Apparently, it was thought that gazing at fish relaxes people.
Later, Michael told me that on weekends he doesn't like people to go into the fish room. "I've had a couple of deals blow out of the fish room. They start talking to each other, comparing deals and payments, next thing you know one of them is pissed off and they leave. I like to stay with the customer the whole time."
Luckily, my customers were the only ones in the fish room. I took the minivan to the service department and told a porter to wash and detail it. Then I took it down the street and bought a full tank of gas. It's funny because, here is a customer who has just spent about $24,000 on a new minivan. But when you tell them you're buying them a free tank of gas they get all excited.
Back inside the dealership, I checked on the couple in F&I. Apparently, they were having difficulty approving the $3,500 down payment on their American Express card. It was after midnight and the approval office was closed. By now this poor couple was slumped in their chairs utterly drained. Michael pulled me aside and said, "If their credit card doesn't go through you're going to have to follow them to their house and get a check." Eventually, the charge was approved and the people were allowed to buy their new minivan. We gave them a short demonstration of all the features and they drove off into the night.
By now it was 1 a.m., but I still wasn't done. The desk manager told me I had to put up "the blocker" — a vehicle parked across the entrance to prevent the new cars from being stolen. This was part of the nightly ritual called "lock and block." You check to make sure all the vehicles are locked, and then you move a car to block the entrance.
I put the blocker in place, and told Michael I was leaving. He shook my hand. "Congratulations on your first sale," he said.
I asked him how we did on the deal.
"The problem was, he made me bargain against the other dealership. But we sold the car for sticker. That's the good part. There'll be $300 or $400 in it for you."
Actually, when I got my voucher, I made a $501 commission on a payable gross of $1,689 — almost the $1,700 discount that Edmunds.com advised. Our commissions were paid twice a month. But we received vouchers within a day or two showing how much we had to look forward to. The vouchers were yellow carbon copy slips from the dealership's books. The salesmen kept the vouchers in their wallets and took them out to show each other like scalps.
A friend came up to me on the lot one day and said in a confidential voice, "Want to see a bomber?" He unfolded the voucher and showed me the yellow slip: $1,274. "Is that unreal or what? What a bomber." If his commission was $1,274 (30 percent of the dealership's profit) the dealership made $4,242. That's a lot of profit to make on a $25,000 car — about 16 percent.
From my commission check it was clear that the minivan couple could have made a better deal and saved several thousand dollars. So where did they go wrong? Well, first of all, they negotiated as monthly payment buyers, rather than bargaining on the purchase price of the vehicle. When you agree to be a "monthly payment buyer" several variables are introduced that are harder to keep track of: the term of the loan can be extended up to 72 months (six years!) without your awareness and the interest rate can be raised. When you bargain on purchase price, it is a cleaner, simpler way of negotiating.
After my minivan customers left that night, I went back into the new car tower to check out. I looked up at the enormous white board on the wall that listed the salesmen on the lot. The sales manager was coloring in a blue box next to my name. My first sale. I was finally on the scoreboard.
Confessions of a Car Salesman Part IV
Part 4: Life on the Lot When I took this assignment as an undercover car salesman I knew I was agreeing to join the enemy. Everyone knows that the car salesman or woman is the enemy. He or she is the person we have to do battle with if we want a new car. I had always been on the customer's side of the desk. Now I was crossing enemy lines. But I didn't feel like the enemy until the first time I greeted a customer on the lot.
Here's how it happened. I saw a young couple get out of their car and wander uncertainly toward a row of compacts. They were there to buy a car. I wanted to sell them a car. I walked toward them with the best of intentions.
As I reached the couple I gave them a cheerful, "Good afternoon!"
They turned and, in an instant, I saw the fear on their faces. Fear of me!
Let me quickly add that I'm not the type of person who normally elicits fear from the people around me. I've been called shy, reserved and quiet — all euphemisms for meek, mousy and at times practically invisible. But here I was with my white shirt and tie, my employee's badge hanging from my belt. I had become the enemy. And they were afraid of me.
What were they afraid of? The short answer is, they were afraid they would buy a car. The long answer is that they were afraid they would fall in love with one of these cars, lose their sense of reason and pay too much for it. They were afraid they would be cheated, ripped-off, pressured, hoodwinked, swindled, jacked around, suckered or fleeced. And, as they saw me approaching, all these fears showed on their faces as they blurted out, "We're only looking!"
During my short stint as a car salesman I saw this look of fear from customers many times. It ranged from a mild apprehension to abject terror. Sometimes customers would actually become hostile. I'd cheerfully say, "How can I help you?" And they would lash out with, "Can't you leave me alone for one second? I just want to look! On my own! OK? On my own!"
What the customer didn't realize was that the poor car salesman or woman was not really the enemy. The real enemy was the manager sitting in the sales tower cracking the whip. Suppose for a moment a customer told us they were "only looking," and we said, "fine, take your time," and went back into the sales tower. Now we find ourselves looking up into the steely eyes of the sales manager.
"That's your customer out there," the manager would say.
"But they said they're only looking," I would answer.
"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."
