I'm now a former member of the automobile sales industry. Happily, I've moved on to the dollar store retail game. Quick, tell me which is likely to make more money: selling one 50,000 vehicle or selling 50,000 one dollar items?
Things you should now about the car sales industry:
- The vast majority of car salesmen (who don't have demos) drive vehicles $5,000 and under. Myself, I drive a truck I bought for 3,000 that runs like a top. One of my last sales the people were going to be paying 640 bucks a month for 5 years
- The markup on the big 3 imports (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) runs about 4.5% or so.
- The items sold to you in the business/finance office have huge markup (pro packs, life and dis, etc etc) and those items are negotiable
- Car dealers fear people who can do the Principle x Rate x Time formula
- Try and pick a vehicle that you are going to keep for a decent length of time, thanks to the nature of the industry, if financing you are assurd to be "upside down" in your machine for several years
At some point, I'm going to add up the selling price on everything I sold and give you some interesting stat's from teh saleman point of view.
If I had to buy a vehicle, it'd be a Murano (possibly FX, but price value is better on murano) car would be a Maxima.
Best part about working at a car dealership is getting to drive the trade in vehicles. Old beaters, high milers, low milers, every make you can think of. Rusty old s-10 trucks, $60,000 Lincolns, and so on. Fun times.
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Sunday, April 02, 2006
Long Awaited Entry
Yes, I'm back and blogging. I realized I was lying in bed and was mentally thinking about things (work) and noted that I was speaking to myself in a narrative type of voice, I thought "shit, I better go make a blog entry." So after one quick 3rd place finish in a for money tourny on poker stars here I am.
Professionalism has passed the car sales industry by, and it's clear that the old school (owners mostly, some old time sales managers) exist to keep things the way they are as they are profitable. Not one thing will change till ownership changes it's mindset and the way they deal with people.
How to explain where I'm at.
It can by summed up by this: How many times a day do you get called "weak", or "weak peice of shit" by your boss?
Year to date I'm second in sales for our dealership. This means that I'm right around 30 cars year to date and have a whole pack of people slightly behind me. The things that have made me successful are being called into question by a changing dealership. The dealership has always felt focused, make no mistake we are there to sell you a car. What's changing is the structure of the dealerships organization chart, we now have a general sales manger(GSM), basically, he's the one that fucks you while you think and he thinks he's a nice guy. He has two assistant sales managers whose sole purpose is to watch over us sales people: harassing us to phone you as much as they possibly can and to meet each one of our "ups" (walks ups on the lot) and see what they can do about not letting you leave and us selling you a car. Sound high pressure, you bet your ass it is and I'm not happy. I'm more than content to spend an hour with some nice person and give them a brochure and a hand shake and thank them for coming in. Maybe I get their phone number, maybe not. I'm comfortable with it, I get people back in droves and have gone in after an off weekend to have the GSM say that I had a small army looking for me on the weekend. Statistically, I know that 33% is the dream mark of a closing ratio. Mine runs at about 18%. So I know that 80% of my time is wasted with no hope of a sale. I can't tell which is a waste of time (for the most part) so I spend time with everyone as though they are buyers. I'm happy with my success, I'm happy with how I feel when allowed to "do my thing" with people. I'm not high pressure, I'm polite and people seem to like me and dealing with me.
This is all changing and quite quickly. With our new terrorist assistant sales managers(ASM) there job is to dive into my log book and ask me what's up with this phone up or walk up, why haven't you phoned them today and so forth. This system, by the way, is about to be changed into a computerized system that's tied to the phone that will generate a log of people to call and track if you actually phone them or not. ASM's will be on your ass watching what you do non-stop. I said at the top that ownership's mentality has to change...ya, well it does, they have the mentality that you should "Phone em till they tell you to fuck off" with the phone and your log book. Now with the computer they have a way to 100% enforce it. Great stuff eh? Harrass you until you buy or die. Wonderful industry.
The phone is a constant battle for me. The higher ups mentality is to get info not give it over teh phone. So in their opinion, answering questions such as "how many km's on the vehicle?" and "what color is it?" are near death. I get beat up on these sorts of things quite often by the GSM and undoubtedly soon by ASM's. Did I mention that they record the calls just to have them handy so they can diagnose what you are doing wrong. The General Manager, a portly fellow who works maybe 6 hours a day on a busy day while wearing $300 jeans, tells us at the sales meeting to always go to the appointment. Knock them off the game plan and always set an appointment. Example
Customer "How many KM's does that Sunfire you are advertising"
GM thinks saying will work "I've got three of them in stock, when can you come by and see them"
Customer "What color is that 00 monte carlo"
GM: "I've got lots of colors available in that type of car, what color are you looking for or, better yet, when can you come by to see them?"
Baffling isn't it. And this man is strangely very wealthy.
We are having some issues at work about turning customers over so an assistant sales manager can beat on them. Myself, and other members of my crew have a pretty similar philosophy and mentality when dealing with customers and we are really struggling with this "no customer can leave without a talk over or turn over". Ya right. It's unfathomable in this day and age that people are put under such pressure and subjected to such bullshit. No wonder car salesmen are held in such undesireable regard.
Not to be outdone, customers (yes you!) have this belief that it's alright to treat car salesmen like garbage, not keeping appointments, not telling you the truth, buying a car from you, then driving to the next Nissan dealer to buy the same car at the same price (this happened last week). If ownership doesn't respect customers (and sales staff for that matter) how will customers respect car salesmen. Simply put, it ain't gonna happen.
So what does a guy do? Think high end import stuff is any better to work at? (BMW, Mercedes, Infiniti?) maybe, but it seems sorta doubtful there too.
I've decided to leave the industry, dust off my B.Com and head either back to the professional world or start my own business. Chat at ya again sometime.
Come buy your car from me soon if you are interested cause it won't be long.
Oh, by the way, if your interested this article is a long but great read:
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/page001.html
Professionalism has passed the car sales industry by, and it's clear that the old school (owners mostly, some old time sales managers) exist to keep things the way they are as they are profitable. Not one thing will change till ownership changes it's mindset and the way they deal with people.
How to explain where I'm at.
It can by summed up by this: How many times a day do you get called "weak", or "weak peice of shit" by your boss?
Year to date I'm second in sales for our dealership. This means that I'm right around 30 cars year to date and have a whole pack of people slightly behind me. The things that have made me successful are being called into question by a changing dealership. The dealership has always felt focused, make no mistake we are there to sell you a car. What's changing is the structure of the dealerships organization chart, we now have a general sales manger(GSM), basically, he's the one that fucks you while you think and he thinks he's a nice guy. He has two assistant sales managers whose sole purpose is to watch over us sales people: harassing us to phone you as much as they possibly can and to meet each one of our "ups" (walks ups on the lot) and see what they can do about not letting you leave and us selling you a car. Sound high pressure, you bet your ass it is and I'm not happy. I'm more than content to spend an hour with some nice person and give them a brochure and a hand shake and thank them for coming in. Maybe I get their phone number, maybe not. I'm comfortable with it, I get people back in droves and have gone in after an off weekend to have the GSM say that I had a small army looking for me on the weekend. Statistically, I know that 33% is the dream mark of a closing ratio. Mine runs at about 18%. So I know that 80% of my time is wasted with no hope of a sale. I can't tell which is a waste of time (for the most part) so I spend time with everyone as though they are buyers. I'm happy with my success, I'm happy with how I feel when allowed to "do my thing" with people. I'm not high pressure, I'm polite and people seem to like me and dealing with me.
This is all changing and quite quickly. With our new terrorist assistant sales managers(ASM) there job is to dive into my log book and ask me what's up with this phone up or walk up, why haven't you phoned them today and so forth. This system, by the way, is about to be changed into a computerized system that's tied to the phone that will generate a log of people to call and track if you actually phone them or not. ASM's will be on your ass watching what you do non-stop. I said at the top that ownership's mentality has to change...ya, well it does, they have the mentality that you should "Phone em till they tell you to fuck off" with the phone and your log book. Now with the computer they have a way to 100% enforce it. Great stuff eh? Harrass you until you buy or die. Wonderful industry.
The phone is a constant battle for me. The higher ups mentality is to get info not give it over teh phone. So in their opinion, answering questions such as "how many km's on the vehicle?" and "what color is it?" are near death. I get beat up on these sorts of things quite often by the GSM and undoubtedly soon by ASM's. Did I mention that they record the calls just to have them handy so they can diagnose what you are doing wrong. The General Manager, a portly fellow who works maybe 6 hours a day on a busy day while wearing $300 jeans, tells us at the sales meeting to always go to the appointment. Knock them off the game plan and always set an appointment. Example
Customer "How many KM's does that Sunfire you are advertising"
GM thinks saying will work "I've got three of them in stock, when can you come by and see them"
Customer "What color is that 00 monte carlo"
GM: "I've got lots of colors available in that type of car, what color are you looking for or, better yet, when can you come by to see them?"
Baffling isn't it. And this man is strangely very wealthy.
We are having some issues at work about turning customers over so an assistant sales manager can beat on them. Myself, and other members of my crew have a pretty similar philosophy and mentality when dealing with customers and we are really struggling with this "no customer can leave without a talk over or turn over". Ya right. It's unfathomable in this day and age that people are put under such pressure and subjected to such bullshit. No wonder car salesmen are held in such undesireable regard.
Not to be outdone, customers (yes you!) have this belief that it's alright to treat car salesmen like garbage, not keeping appointments, not telling you the truth, buying a car from you, then driving to the next Nissan dealer to buy the same car at the same price (this happened last week). If ownership doesn't respect customers (and sales staff for that matter) how will customers respect car salesmen. Simply put, it ain't gonna happen.
So what does a guy do? Think high end import stuff is any better to work at? (BMW, Mercedes, Infiniti?) maybe, but it seems sorta doubtful there too.
I've decided to leave the industry, dust off my B.Com and head either back to the professional world or start my own business. Chat at ya again sometime.
Come buy your car from me soon if you are interested cause it won't be long.
Oh, by the way, if your interested this article is a long but great read:
http://www.edmunds.com/advice/buying/articles/42962/page001.html
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