Car Salesman Dropped Me Like A Hot Potato
Discussion
PositronicRay said:
Your all reading this wrong, read the 1st post.
Fleet manager took enquiry, passed on to (retail?) salesperson. Sounds like they don't know what to do with the lead.
Should go back to original contact to discuss.
I used to mistrust leads passed on to me, if any good why pass it over?
If that is how it has been - ie, the fleet manager passed it over to the salesman, then you'd have to read between the lines that the salesman has twigged he has no sniff of getting a sale and has qualified them out.Fleet manager took enquiry, passed on to (retail?) salesperson. Sounds like they don't know what to do with the lead.
Should go back to original contact to discuss.
I used to mistrust leads passed on to me, if any good why pass it over?
Interesting the O/P has neither come back to comment OR to comment on my proposition that if they really are ready to buy from THAT dealer RIGHT NOW they call the salesmans bluff, escalate within the organisation as to why, when they're ready to buy RIGHT NOW from THAT dealer the salesman isnt interested? I'd say you'd have a car at your door within an hour if you did that.
IF thats the scenario then the win is the salesman gets his butt kicked by his manager and the O/P gets to be smug, the downside is if it isnt the case and he doesnt buy the car - or cant buy from that dealer - then he looks a bit stoopid.
Edited by daemon on Saturday 25th March 14:03
HTP99 said:
Yes it is my job but if I know that I can't match an Internet quote, or I can't get a car for them; whether we aren't the prefered supplier or there just isn't the stock, then I'm not going to waste time on something that isn't going anywhere.
If you can't match the internet quote isn't that where the salesmanship comes in? Add value and give them a reason to disregard the quote they've had. Not everyone with an internet quote is looking to have it matches. I popped into my local dealer last week with an internet quote. They can't match it, but they are within a few hundred quid and frankly if we order a car* it'll be from them as the proximity, relationship and excellent way they've dealt with us thus far is worth paying a bit extra for.
These people offering 'internet quotes' are, at the end of the day, other franchised dealers. They are not box shifters like Amazon so it's not quite the same thing as being upset you can't buy a hifi from your local indy for the same money as Amazon will deliver it for. They are all ordering from the same manufacturer..
[quote=buyer&seller]
Heavy commercial sales are almost all driven from proactive activity, even existing customers can't be relied on to phone up for an order. You need to know their replacement cycles and keep tickling them along staying close to any issues they may have. Your competitors will be doing exactly the same, popping in for coffee, listening to them moan about your product/service etc with glee. Take your eye off the ball and you lose. At a guess I'd say inbound enquiries account for <5% of all heavy commerical sales.truck71 said:
About 90 per annum when I was doing the job, a retail customer being a smaller operator. I think the distinction you're making is this was B to B rather than B to C sales? If so the basics are exactly the same- good truck sales people make good car sales people. Doesn't happen the other way round so much as they rely on the leads walking in the door, haven't been schooled in the value of relationship building with the barrier to entry being much lower. Not all of this is the fault of the individual though.
In your own parlance they may be be retail customers but they aren't and I suspect the initial enquiry from the majority of these customers can from them contacting you, not the other way around. I once worked with a truck salesman who came to sell cars and he was useless, maybe a one off but you can't tar everyone with the same brush. DonkeyApple said:
truck71 said:
Who are suppplied by? A dealer somewhere.
You don't win every deal but if you sweat every opportunity you'll do more business than if you don't.
I'm afraid you're taking the big ticket/low volume way of thinking and trying to apply it to low ticket sales. You don't win every deal but if you sweat every opportunity you'll do more business than if you don't.
When your staff are selling small ticket goods to the general public then the most essential skill they require is efficient filtering out of prospects so as to allocate their limited time most efficiently. What that means is that a few genuine buyers may fall into the wrong bucket but you aren't paying a basic to someone for them to just spend their day pissing into the wind.
These threads always seem to have the customer undertone of 'Do you not know who I am!?' and the answer is typically the same 'You are a walk in who has got yourself catagorised as a tyre kicker.'
The categorisation may not have been correct on that specific occasion but it's an essential process that low end, retail facing salesman must carry out so as to have any chance of paying to sit in their chair.
The best salesmen will be those who can filter out the tyre kickers most efficiently but even they will get it wrong on occasion.
Another thing worth adding to the discussion is dealer standards and manufacturer representation. Dealers will be expected to represent their manufacturer consistently and positively even with those who don't buy. Long gone are the days of hiding feedback- how many threads do we see about poor service (perceived or otherwise) and the internet is awash with complainers. You can't afford to have your business tarnished because comments are so visible.
Manufacturers will mystery shop dealers and the OP's scenario could well be one they adopt, the call to the DP following a poor experience is not a pleasant one. A good dealer will initiate their own mystery shop to highlight weaknesses in their business to ensure they don't get negative experiences from the manufacturer. Why is this important? Manufacturer bonus's are increasingly becoming conditional not just on hitting volume targets but also customer experience criteria etc.
To summarise, the game is moving on and the old ways won't cut it anymore. My tuppence worth on a bright Sunday morning!
Fox- said:
HTP99 said:
Yes it is my job but if I know that I can't match an Internet quote, or I can't get a car for them; whether we aren't the prefered supplier or there just isn't the stock, then I'm not going to waste time on something that isn't going anywhere.
If you can't match the internet quote isn't that where the salesmanship comes in? Add value and give them a reason to disregard the quote they've had. Not everyone with an internet quote is looking to have it matches. I popped into my local dealer last week with an internet quote. They can't match it, but they are within a few hundred quid and frankly if we order a car* it'll be from them as the proximity, relationship and excellent way they've dealt with us thus far is worth paying a bit extra for.
These people offering 'internet quotes' are, at the end of the day, other franchised dealers. They are not box shifters like Amazon so it's not quite the same thing as being upset you can't buy a hifi from your local indy for the same money as Amazon will deliver it for. They are all ordering from the same manufacturer..
truck71 said:
DonkeyApple said:
truck71 said:
Who are suppplied by? A dealer somewhere.
You don't win every deal but if you sweat every opportunity you'll do more business than if you don't.
I'm afraid you're taking the big ticket/low volume way of thinking and trying to apply it to low ticket sales. You don't win every deal but if you sweat every opportunity you'll do more business than if you don't.
When your staff are selling small ticket goods to the general public then the most essential skill they require is efficient filtering out of prospects so as to allocate their limited time most efficiently. What that means is that a few genuine buyers may fall into the wrong bucket but you aren't paying a basic to someone for them to just spend their day pissing into the wind.
These threads always seem to have the customer undertone of 'Do you not know who I am!?' and the answer is typically the same 'You are a walk in who has got yourself catagorised as a tyre kicker.'
The categorisation may not have been correct on that specific occasion but it's an essential process that low end, retail facing salesman must carry out so as to have any chance of paying to sit in their chair.
The best salesmen will be those who can filter out the tyre kickers most efficiently but even they will get it wrong on occasion.
Another thing worth adding to the discussion is dealer standards and manufacturer representation. Dealers will be expected to represent their manufacturer consistently and positively even with those who don't buy. Long gone are the days of hiding feedback- how many threads do we see about poor service (perceived or otherwise) and the internet is awash with complainers. You can't afford to have your business tarnished because comments are so visible.
Manufacturers will mystery shop dealers and the OP's scenario could well be one they adopt, the call to the DP following a poor experience is not a pleasant one. A good dealer will initiate their own mystery shop to highlight weaknesses in their business to ensure they don't get negative experiences from the manufacturer. Why is this important? Manufacturer bonus's are increasingly becoming conditional not just on hitting volume targets but also customer experience criteria etc.
To summarise, the game is moving on and the old ways won't cut it anymore. My tuppence worth on a bright Sunday morning!
If you start running a team of salesmen who you make chase every small ticket prospect then you will need a much larger team in the first instance and their individual productivity will collapse. And you will go bankrupt.
Your experience is with big ticket sales where you want your employee to keep on top of every prospect and seek out the secondary opportunities and create transactions. That's why such salesmen earn multiples more than basic retail and why there are much fewer of them and it's a proper long term career. With low ticket retail sales the absolutely essential priority of your sales team is to filter the tyre kickers as efficiently as possible as losing a few real sales in exchange for weeding out the rubbish has, does and always will be more profitable than having your team spend their time fondling the balls of non customers.
DonkeyApple said:
The game isn't moving on. Every industry always spouts that BS but they aren't genetically reprogramming humans. The mechanics of selling never changes because while the environment and product and expectations will evolve over time the underlying human beings involved in the transactions do not.
If you start running a team of salesmen who you make chase every small ticket prospect then you will need a much larger team in the first instance and their individual productivity will collapse. And you will go bankrupt.
Your experience is with big ticket sales where you want your employee to keep on top of every prospect and seek out the secondary opportunities and create transactions. That's why such salesmen earn multiples more than basic retail and why there are much fewer of them and it's a proper long term career. With low ticket retail sales the absolutely essential priority of your sales team is to filter the tyre kickers as efficiently as possible as losing a few real sales in exchange for weeding out the rubbish has, does and always will be more profitable than having your team spend their time fondling the balls of non customers.
Sorry, but the game is moving on. There are so many different aquisition methods now for customers that dealers have to work harder to stay afloat. Human beings do change and are- who would have thought about having the confidence to order an £Xk asset over the internet ten years ago? Or to not buy at all, just lease and have it turn up at your door! They are better informed and won't stand for the same old tosh. If you start running a team of salesmen who you make chase every small ticket prospect then you will need a much larger team in the first instance and their individual productivity will collapse. And you will go bankrupt.
Your experience is with big ticket sales where you want your employee to keep on top of every prospect and seek out the secondary opportunities and create transactions. That's why such salesmen earn multiples more than basic retail and why there are much fewer of them and it's a proper long term career. With low ticket retail sales the absolutely essential priority of your sales team is to filter the tyre kickers as efficiently as possible as losing a few real sales in exchange for weeding out the rubbish has, does and always will be more profitable than having your team spend their time fondling the balls of non customers.
A retail sales exec is not stretched (other than a Saturday and or end of quarter handover periods) and needs to work smarter/ harder with proper time management making the most of every opportunity. They also have access to ever more effective technology and CRM systems allowing them to cover far more ground than ever before which needs to be used effectively (I agree that it currently isn't seen as a stable career which is part of the problem).
Show me a dealer beating customers from the door with a sh!tty stick and I'd agree with you, most aren't.
You're just describing what we call "a busy fool" My customers spend up to £30 million a year with me and we still need to qualify as we have multiple contact points and some will waste your time.
I'm constantly reminding the sales team to prioritise, otherwise you get in a right mess.
I'm constantly reminding the sales team to prioritise, otherwise you get in a right mess.
Given the increasing size of modern cars this is going to be an increasing issue.
The reality is that the standard 30 min test drive isn't always sufficient.
Are we suggesting that the way forward is to lie to/mislead the salesman to pass the qualification test.
It's better that the customer is upfront about the garage situation as here.
Given that the customer here is so close to the dealer - it's worth taking the risk of letting him having the car for a test drive.
Yes it may not get a sale BUT no sale is ever guranteed. I mean the customer might be looking at other cars. If your looking at BMW, Merc and Audi then TWO salesmen will get NO sale even though the customer was genuine
The reality is that the standard 30 min test drive isn't always sufficient.
Are we suggesting that the way forward is to lie to/mislead the salesman to pass the qualification test.
It's better that the customer is upfront about the garage situation as here.
Given that the customer here is so close to the dealer - it's worth taking the risk of letting him having the car for a test drive.
Yes it may not get a sale BUT no sale is ever guranteed. I mean the customer might be looking at other cars. If your looking at BMW, Merc and Audi then TWO salesmen will get NO sale even though the customer was genuine
Wills2 said:
You're just describing what we call "a busy fool" My customers spend up to £30 million a year with me and we still need to qualify as we have multiple contact points and some will waste your time.
I'm constantly reminding the sales team to prioritise, otherwise you get in a right mess.
100%I'm constantly reminding the sales team to prioritise, otherwise you get in a right mess.
The best sales people who PRODUCE RESULTS know exactly who to deal with and who to drop.
When things are quiet you might persevere with a weak enquiry, otherwise it is costing you money to deal with them, effort v reward doesnt stack up
truck71 said:
Heavy commercial sales are almost all driven from proactive activity, even existing customers can't be relied on to phone up for an order. You need to know their replacement cycles and keep tickling them along staying close to any issues they may have. Your competitors will be doing exactly the same, popping in for coffee, listening to them moan about your product/service etc with glee. Take your eye off the ball and you lose. At a guess I'd say inbound enquiries account for <5% of all heavy commerical sales.
There's no point comparing commercial vehicle sales with cars as they are a totally different purchase. People/companies buy a truck/van/commercial/plant because they need one and there's little if any emotion involved, completely different to most people buying a car. You come across in a similar way to many car sales trainers I have experienced, who have never really done the job but talk a really good story about a Utopian car sales environment which doesn't actually exist.
truck71 said:
DonkeyApple said:
The game isn't moving on. Every industry always spouts that BS but they aren't genetically reprogramming humans. The mechanics of selling never changes because while the environment and product and expectations will evolve over time the underlying human beings involved in the transactions do not.
If you start running a team of salesmen who you make chase every small ticket prospect then you will need a much larger team in the first instance and their individual productivity will collapse. And you will go bankrupt.
Your experience is with big ticket sales where you want your employee to keep on top of every prospect and seek out the secondary opportunities and create transactions. That's why such salesmen earn multiples more than basic retail and why there are much fewer of them and it's a proper long term career. With low ticket retail sales the absolutely essential priority of your sales team is to filter the tyre kickers as efficiently as possible as losing a few real sales in exchange for weeding out the rubbish has, does and always will be more profitable than having your team spend their time fondling the balls of non customers.
Sorry, but the game is moving on. There are so many different aquisition methods now for customers that dealers have to work harder to stay afloat. Human beings do change and are- who would have thought about having the confidence to order an £Xk asset over the internet ten years ago? Or to not buy at all, just lease and have it turn up at your door! They are better informed and won't stand for the same old tosh. If you start running a team of salesmen who you make chase every small ticket prospect then you will need a much larger team in the first instance and their individual productivity will collapse. And you will go bankrupt.
Your experience is with big ticket sales where you want your employee to keep on top of every prospect and seek out the secondary opportunities and create transactions. That's why such salesmen earn multiples more than basic retail and why there are much fewer of them and it's a proper long term career. With low ticket retail sales the absolutely essential priority of your sales team is to filter the tyre kickers as efficiently as possible as losing a few real sales in exchange for weeding out the rubbish has, does and always will be more profitable than having your team spend their time fondling the balls of non customers.
A retail sales exec is not stretched (other than a Saturday and or end of quarter handover periods) and needs to work smarter/ harder with proper time management making the most of every opportunity. They also have access to ever more effective technology and CRM systems allowing them to cover far more ground than ever before which needs to be used effectively (I agree that it currently isn't seen as a stable career which is part of the problem).
Show me a dealer beating customers from the door with a sh!tty stick and I'd agree with you, most aren't.
Margins are thin on volume cars and whilst you might have the impression that new cars dont sell and salesmen sit around twiddling their thumbs all day that is NOT the reality. Granted they may have some down time / quiet times where they could pursue someone like your describing they should but the reality is, when its a low margin item you could have closed three deals in the time it could maybe take you to otherwise pander to one person who probably isnt going to buy anyway.
Its a numbers game - at month end you'll live or die on how many you've sold, not how nice you were to someone you spent a morning with and turned out to be a tyre kicker.
A friend of mine sells a prestige brand - they get the time to pander to people - take the car to their home or place of work, lend them a car for the weekend, etc, etc because the margin is there. Not so with volume stuff.
The only thing you learn from a pistonheads car salesmen thread after the resident salesmen have chimed in, is; if you want to get anywhere; lie you're arse off to them to pass their rigorous "qualifying" criteria. otherwise if you say one minor thing that irks them, you're branded a tyrekicking timewaster not worthy of their time, even if you are genuinely ready to buy from them.
truck71 said:
A retail sales exec is not stretched (other than a Saturday and or end of quarter handover periods) and needs to work smarter/ harder with proper time management making the most of every opportunity.
Agreed. Periods like the last 10 days of March maybe?The biggest month of the year and broadly speaking, your make or break point for the whole rest of the year, where you're either ahead of your numbers, or chasing for the next 9 months - which we're currently in and most are utterly frazzled following a period since the New Year with no annual leave permitted to be taken in 2 of those three months, working rota days off and extra Sundays just to secure your quarter and thus your year early etc.
Event weekends such as we have in mid Feb and early March, test drives of even 15 minutes around the block aren't available, we explain to people if they want a great deal, now is a good time, so sit down and let's talk, but if they want the full nine yards, they'll need to reappoint at a time when we can allocate sufficient time to give them that experience. Given the choice and explained the reason why, the majority sit down and talk about and do deals, others are happy to reappoint a bit later and be given the due time, whereas the kickers get the arse and rant on the internet.
We secured our March and Q1 numbers with a fortnight to spare and as such, get the reward of an increased target to take up the slack of other branches that are lagging behind (amusingly, it's our Retailers making up for the Corporate team's shortfall...) - so we have that to deal with as well as delivering all the cars, typically three times a normal month's business, whilst still ensuring our buyers have no reason at all to return anything other than a Completely Satisfied experience, which takes more effort in terms of time and organisation than just doing the deal with the customer ever did.
In school holidays however, the OP would however have recieved a different experience, as time is considerably more free and prospects thinner on the ground. There will have been an effort vs potential reward vs potential loss of opportunity time and cost analysis by the individual, based upon their own particular workload at that time.
Yes we are brand ambassadors to a point. But investing an hour or two fulfilling a fairly basic and obvious requirement was deemed not to be as worthwhile as whatever else they had to do that day.
Valeters, drivers and so on are all flat out too and as for "take it during lunch" - taking a car to a customer to test drive off site is rather more doing work than taking a lunch break isn't it? (We don't tend to take lunch hours like regular humans, because customers are demanding as it is). Would the prospect be happy for a salesperson to turn up with a demo, pasty in hand, park it in the garage for them and bugger off? I doubt it very much. It's not an experience anyone I know would want to deliver either.
Quite often we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. So might as well be selective to a degree as to how best to make use of our working time.
I've lost track of how many times people have pulled the garage query. I ask them if they have their garage dimensions to hand, as I have the car dimensions for both their current and prospective purhcase, so we can work together to solve it with some fairly rudimentary arithmetic. "Err no, we haven't measured it..." - if it's *that* vital, they would have. I have also taken cars to people's homes, provided the service, to people who have qualified as worth investing the time to do so. Car fits, they are pleased and take it as "food for thought", then vanish into the telephonic abyss. Pay a little visit later and you see a new car with Arval/Leaseplan/Hitachi plates etc. Buyers are liars, we know this.
If "all you have to do for my business is bring a car and it fit in my garage", no problem. Let's work out the figures, ensure that we are eligible suppliers, have a vehicle to the right specification that we can supply at an agreeable timescale, take a deposit subject, raise a provisional order subject to that condition. Then they start squirming and you know they only need to take up another minute or two of your time.
We are well recompensed for what we do. Exercising our own judgement is a part of that and being able to state your reasons for not following up a particular course of action and being prepared to be accountable for it is another part of it. Occasionally you get it wrong and you get a howler ring your boss or head office, who then ask your side of it. They'll usually agree with you, but get somebody else on the team to follow up with the customer and oblige the customer's request, if it's a reasonable one - at a reasonable time, both to the customer and for the business. Right now, we'd get roasted for doing an offsite test drive in the last week of March/Q1 for a single vehicle user and likely a forward order for a negligible profit anyway.
A company car user chooser can request a corporate demonstrator for evaluation via their fleet manager in any case, which means you usually get a driver or corporate sales bod deliver a car to your place of work for a couple of days, a much better opportunity to evaluate than going into a retailer for a normal test drive, usually with a retail sales exec who doesn't want to spend the time with a non-opportunity anyway. It's usually a result of lazy company fleet managers who can't be bothered to arrange these through the correct channel and just tell their user choosers to go to their local dealer and pretend to be a punter, which results in the wrong experience and result for all involved.
KingNothing said:
The only thing you learn from a pistonheads car salesmen thread after the resident salesmen have chimed in, is; if you want to get anywhere; lie you're arse off to them to pass their rigorous "qualifying" criteria. otherwise if you say one minor thing that irks them, you're branded a tyrekicking timewaster not worthy of their time, even if you are genuinely ready to buy from them.
Nonsense, these threads often come up with some PHer moaning that they can't get a salesperson to sell them something. It's laughable it really is, what they mean is the sales person won't do what I tell them be that X Y or Z, there is a difference.
Buying a car is so easy but it seems beyond some people, but it isn't really as they don't want to buy, the sales person knows this and moves on.
KingNothing said:
The only thing you learn from a pistonheads car salesmen thread after the resident salesmen have chimed in, is; if you want to get anywhere; lie you're arse off to them to pass their rigorous "qualifying" criteria. otherwise if you say one minor thing that irks them, you're branded a tyrekicking timewaster not worthy of their time, even if you are genuinely ready to buy from them.
Its hardly "vigorous". I've never yet had ANY problems buying a car - or getting time with a car salesman - when i wanted to.
Theres clearly more happening here than the O/P is letting on.
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