Sales Lessons from Buying a Car

Over the past month, I’ve been in the market for a new vehicle. I spent 5 hours today in a Honda dealership and walked away with one. It’s always interesting to watch the tactics of salespeople in different industries. Car sales people are particularly infamous.

Here are some observations on sales lessons from buying a car:

• When I arrived, there were 5 attendants ready to pounce on me, with one designated as the next batter-up. However, since I had done some homework using truecar.com, I was shuttled into a separate section of the dealership with salespeople that handle internet-derived leads. It was clear that people entering the dealership from internet pricing were walking away with better deals than those that just showed up curious. The dealership was even arranged in such a way that the internet lead division (of 7 salespeople) had no offices and were all in their own corner, while the traditional salespeople had nice cubicles/offices for quiet conversations and were positioned closer to the entryway. It is in the interest of the dealership to keep the internet leads away from the non-internet leads, so the former don’t spoil the later.
• Here’s a powerful question they used to kickstart a conversation, “What is your budget?”
• In unrushed moments, like during the test drive, the car salesperson would share information that made this particular opportunity on this particular day to be particularly special, in an attempt to persuade to buy today.
• In rushed moments, like while at the desk in the dealership with a bunch of other end-of-month buyers in line, it was a no nonsense, do-what-needs-to-be-done-but-nothing-more hustling atmosphere. The salespeople were optimizing for throughput of closed deals, not for the development of deep relationships with each customer.
• During the toughest moments of the final negotiation on price (and I’m tough right back at them), they remained composed, did not budge on the places that mattered most to them, and looked for other sweeteners to throw in to keep me interested.
• During a dispute over the details of a previous oral agreement, rather than claim confusion as to our original conversation they instead admitted that I recollected the conversation correctly and looked for other ways to achieve the same results that mattered to them. Lying does not pay off.
• Constantly looked for ways to position the price as a really low-monthly payment, even though I was not interested in anything other than the total take-home price.

What lessons have you learned from car salespeople?

Related articles

• Why Salespeople Fail – Part 1
• How to Get the Best Price on a Car
• 12 Most Important Things to Know Before Buying a Car
• Why Salespeople fail – part 3
• What You Should Remember When Car Shopping