Advertisement minus Direct Sales Effort

Advertisement minus Direct Sales Effort

In the mid-1990s, when I was "between" jobs, I was deeply in debt and unable to pay my bills. For the better part of a year, I worked as a car salesman while I was unemployed. I can guess what you're thinking now. Why? My response is, "Hmmm." Anyhow, it occurred, and it ended up being a great educational opportunity. My brief but intentional career as a car salesman was marked by several unpleasant events. Please don't think that you've stumbled onto an article about auto sales. Here, we define salesmanship and what it is not.

So, I worked in the auto industry, where I was essentially schooled in the incorrect methods of being a successful salesman. Buying a car may be a stressful ordeal for anyone involved. An example workday in the auto industry would look like this: In the thick of summer in Florida, you get up and put on a shirt and tie for the day. It's close to 100 degrees and muggy. 

While driving to work, you keep asking yourself, "Why?" since you know that soon enough, you will have to face something terrible. You go to the office and have to be ready for the morning "torture meeting," which always boils down to, "We are awful salespeople, and we need to sell automobiles." Really? Do you need to sell automobiles for us? Ok. Now that we've all been beaten up by the meeting, we're ready to put our newfound knowledge of salesmanship into practice.

In the auto industry, a customer who walks onto a dealership lot to look at cars is called an "up." We wait outside like vultures for an "up" so that we may swoop in and use our extremely terrible salesperson charm. The time has come for you to interact with the client. To begin, let me introduce myself. My name is Dave (smile). The client then says, "We were simply looking." Obviously, they're just window-shopping. Not after I'm finished with you. You may have already packed your bags and left by the time we're done with you.

Because I don't want to get shouted at by the authorities, I'm going to follow the "we're just looking" individuals as they tour the parking lot. My potential clients do not want me anywhere near them right now. To be sure, there's a solid reason for that. As unpleasant as a trip to the dentist may be, shopping for and/or purchasing a car is worse. That hurts.

I've started asking the good people on the team a lot of questions in an effort to build rapport and find out more about them so that I may better tailor my pitch to them. Since this is how the auto industry has always been taught, it's just OK. Now the issue right off the bat is that the majority of clients in those days were dinosaurs. They saw purchasing a vehicle as akin to donning combat gear and marching off to war. I wouldn't choose to earn money that way, but that's what it was.

So tell me, what exactly have you gained from this? You can't escape the ignorance of those around you. In the first place, clients arrive on the lot imagining that their "trade-in" is worth a small amount. and, surprisingly, it isn't. In regards to their "trade-in," they did not conduct any independent investigation. To add insult to injury, they can't even define their own needs. They have no interest in spending money on an automobile they cannot afford. One more time, they failed to complete their homework.

Now we have a new issue. To succeed as a salesman, you need to find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition and draw customers to you without coming off as unpleasant or overbearing. Unfortunately, I was one of the many salesmen on the lot who did nothing but sit around and wait for prospects to approach them. Since I was in the same boat as you, I couldn't tell you.

Here comes the sales manager, believing he knows everything, and insisting that if we just bludgeoned them into buying the automobile, they would buy it. You know, the idea behind most sales strategies in the auto industry, for instance, is that if the customer leaves without purchasing, they will never purchase from that dealership again. 

Maybe you're right, though. However, we must not overlook this. If you want sales to go smoothly, you have to let salespeople do their jobs, which include providing potential consumers with all the information they need to make an educated purchase. And even if they don't buy right now, maybe they'll remember how helpful you were as a salesperson and the fantastic ideas you had to help them make a decision. They will remember you even after they've been to every other place in the world. The "in your face" strategy is ineffective at the present time.

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