Buying Tips

Confessions of a Car Salesman

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.

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