If I had to make a living as a car salesman, I'd starve.
I tried it once, in a Plimpton-like research journalistic project designed to uncover the tricks of the car salesperson's trade.
I learned many things, but first among them, I learned that I am not good at selling cars. In fact, I am truly hopeless. Good thing I never want to be Willy Loman.
It is tough work selling cars. For starters, most dealers have their sales force working primarily or entirely on commission.
Sure, the commissions can be healthy, running to as much as 25-to-50 per cent of the gross profit on a new vehicle.
But according to various studies, only about one-third of the people who wander into a showroom wind up buying a car from a dealer. One in three? Knowing what I know now, I'd always get the other two. And if you don't sell, you don't eat.
Of course, most dealers quickly ease out poor sellers who don't quit on their own. Jim Pattison, whose Jim Pattison Group owns 19 dealerships in Canada, says many people just are not cut out for sales. Those who seem to be, often can't fathom when to ask for a sale.
"They talk themselves right past the point when they should ask for the sale," he says. "Then it's too late."
If I ever got to the point of asking, I didn't recognize it. No good.
For most of the last 20-odd years, car salespeople have not done well in studies that ask consumers to grade occupations on their honesty and ethical standards. Journalists, lawyers and even politicians almost always finish higher than car salespeople.
Here is a number to consider. Last year, the 2007 Better Business Bureau/Gallup Trust in Business Index reported that only 16 per cent of survey respondents had a "great deal of trust" or "quite a lot of trust" in auto dealers.
To combat that, car dealers in Canada and the United States are spending a growing proportion of their profits on training and employee retention, not to mention innovative new ways to attract and command customers.
Pattison says the key is a total commitment to customer satisfaction. That means not only making the sales experience pleasant, but also the after-sale, too.
It also means keeping up with what is important to today's customer.
Pattison says his newest store, Jim Pattison Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Surrey, B.C., is loaded with customer amenities, including a lounge and beverage area, Internet facilities and customer workstations.
It is also designed to be as "green" as possible in terms of energy efficiency and in other environmental ways.
Pattison is not alone. Dealers now recycle used oil and filters and some also recycle the water used to wash cars. Some dealerships are offsetting greenhouse gas emissions of the vehicles they sell by paying to plant thousands of trees.
To cut high employee turnover, especially among salespeople, some dealerships are adjusting compensation and even paying dealership general managers bonuses to reduce turnover. That strategy cuts training costs and boosts productivity.
Dealers are also experimenting with new pricing strategies. Some dealers, faced with more knowledgeable customers who find pricing information on the Web, are working hard to minimize or even eliminate haggling. According to auto price experts Kelley Blue Book, 65 per cent of car buyers say they'd rather not haggle. As for women, 72 per cent feel that way.
Still, negotiation is part of buying a new vehicle and may never be eliminated entirely; as long as there are trade-ins, there will be haggling. But much is being done to minimize and even eliminate the sore spots in the process.
In my experience, most buyers seemed committed to negotiating, feeling that a fixed price would not likely be in their best interest.
More importantly, the more successful salespeople I met said likeability is the most important skill in this business.
No one is going to buy anything from you if they don't like you, I was told over and over. (Obviously Dale Carnegie was right!).
So find some common ground between you and the customer and get on it before you try to move the hardware, I was told.
I am not ever going to try selling cars for a real living, but it can't be a bad thing to be more likeable.
