Monday, January 08, 2007

Awoke once again

Time to blow the dust off of this thing. Lots of hits still coming car salesman related. Average income seems to be a popular search term along with car salesman closing ratio.

My income would have been mid 40's for the first year. I expected to be around 70k for the second year.

My closing ratio including junk ups, waste of time phone calls was miniscule as the advertising the dealership pushed generated lots of leads, but most of them were a waste of time in my opinion. On numbers that I tracked it was about 19-20%. The holy grail is 33%.

Nearly a year since I've left the game I still think about it lots. The other salesmen were friends and you spent alot of time with them. I went back not so long ago, due to the high turnover nature of the industry only 4 of the old sales people were there out of 14 currently employed. It was crazy to see so many bodies on the floor. With that many I probably would have starved over the winter.

In moments I've thought about going back but only to dealerships/products that don't haggle on price. I was very good at making friends out of customers, very bad at making $$$$. Lexus possibly if I was to go back. Still it's likely that I'd try to stay in the retail world, it's fast paced and fun.

Got a new link from http://www.buyingadvice.com/whatdoesittake-tobea-carsalesman.html. The author takes note that the dealership was turning high pressure. I should clarify that I wasn't high pressure and was able to withstand the general sales managers pushes to make me high pressure as he was overloaded with work to do and wasn't able to effectively micro manage me. Blowing my own horn a bit, I'm smarter than the average car salesman and so as long as I was getting sales I was pretty much left alone. Just avoid the bad habits and he didn't worry too much about me. After the dealership restructured with two assistant sales managers who's job was to keep better track of what you were doing things were changing. I was not comfortable and was happy that a new opporunity came along. For instance, we were once going through my log book (just as the new computer tracking system was being introduced) and the boss actually harassed me about not phoning a certain customer in my book. I thought that the person would not appreciate the call during work hours (it was a lawyer) and that if this person wanted to come back they would regardless of phone call or not. It was a guess on my part. The assistant sales manager gave me a little cheap shot about not doing my job and phoned himself. The customer practically shit his pants on thr ASM and said that he would talk to Bemused only and wasn't very happy to be interrupted with this "Crap" as he put it. I only smiled my best Mona Lisa like smile (male version of course).

Speaking of which, the dollar store (yes, only items for $1) rolled along quite nicely at xmas. It's tons and tons and tons of work though. I know mentally that nothing in life is easy, it's just a matter of dollars vs. effort I suppose. does it make sense to work this hard for that amount? Stay tuned.

I had hoped the Denver Bronco's would make the playoffs, but it wasn't to be. Now I'm just watching as a fan of the sport and have no real hope on any one team. I will say that I enjoyed Tiki Barber and think that it's a shame he's packed it in. Brandon Jacobs if he can be a everydown back is scary.

I'm in good strength shape for the upcomign ball hockey season. I'm slowly adding cardio to the mix. Bowflex ultimate was a good investment. Calves are teh area I've noticed the biggest improvment.

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