Learn From Salespeople Who Do It Wrong

I find that in order to get better at sales, you must allow yourself to experience the sales processes of others.

What I’m trying to say is in order to get good in sales you have to constantly let salespeople try to sell to you.

Yeah it’s not always pleasant, but by constantly gauging your reactions to what other salespeople do while they are selling to you, you will improve faster than most people.

For example: Yesterday my wife and I went on an adventure to find a new car for her. Her car is on its last days and we decided to look at what was out there.

Keep in mind that although we have been thinking about getting a new car for sometime, we decided, on a whim, that we would drop by a couple car lots to see what was out there.

We had no idea what we wanted, we had no idea what we wanted to pay, and we were really “just looking.”

It was also late at night (9pm which is late for car lots) and most places were closed (which was nice).

However we happened upon a used car lot that was open and decided to take a look.

Now this car lot is a chain and sells more used cars in our state than anybody else. They have more advertising than just about anybody else on the radio/TV and they are not a small company by any means. So I would’ve expected that their salespeople were well trained and knew what they were doing. I was wrong though.

So we pull in and get out of our car.

Less than 1 minute on the lot and we already had a salesman on our heels. Note: That by the time we got to this car lot we had been to a couple others and decided that we might be interested in a certain model.

The salesman greeted us and asked what we were looking for. We asked him if he had any of the particular models we were thinking of on the lot. He said they had one but they just sold it, but he quickly got us inside to see if he had anymore of that model on any other lots.

Up to this point the salesman was very kind and I felt pretty good about him. Even the manager who was brought over to help find us the model we wanted on another lot was very nice and helpful.

We learned that the salesman we were dealing with was one of the top performers there. He had plaques all over the wall and even had a ring that indicated that he sold 20 cars a month for more than three months in a row. Now I don’t know a lot about the car business but that sounds like a good number of cars to sell in a month. I mean, if they have a special ring for that accomplishment it must be somewhat significant.

So I would’ve expected this guy to know how to sell a car.

So eventually after some checking the salesman and manager realized they had a car similar to what we were looking for in the back that was currently being washed. The car was just in and they were cleaning it before putting it out on the lot.

So we took a quick walk to the back to take a look at the car while it was being cleaned. And although we didn’t get a great look at it we thought it looked like a possibility. So we asked to test drive it.

They happily agreed.

After it was cleaned they brought it around front and they gave us the keys to take it on a quick spin (alone, which I liked).

My wife took the wheel.

She liked how it handled and was pleased with the interior. After a couple minutes I made her pull over at a parking lot that had big bright lights so we could get a better look at the exterior.

After getting out we noticed a couple things we didn’t like. First off there was no sun roof which we didn’t notice the first time we looked at it. And we wanted a sun roof.

Second, there were some major cosmetic damages to the front of the car which we couldn’t see when the car was wet. In particular there was a horizontal dent on the hood that was starting to show the paint chipping. This was not good considering it was an ’06 and was not priced to reflect these damages.

This was an easy decision since we keep our cars looking nice. It just wasn’t the car for us, plain and simple. That’s ok because we weren’t in any hurry anyway and didn’t expect to buy anything that night (which they knew).

So we took the car back and told the salesman what we didn’t like about it and that it was a “no go.”

So at this point you would expect him to try and convince us otherwise or to say something like “OK, well lets figure out if we have anything else, and if not I’ll get your information and let you know when we get something in that you may like.”

Really all he had to do was find the same car with a sun roof with no major dents and he would have sold a car.

But no, nothing of the sort occurred.

When we got back he acted shocked that we didn’t like the car and immediately changed into another person.

Now of course this was all an act and he was (incorrectly) trying to exert his non-existent power and try to do a takeaway. He turned to his manager and rudely said, “They didn’t like the car.” like we were crazy or something. The manager replied, “They didn’t like the car!?” again, like we were nutcases.

So what was wrong with that? Well first, they are placing blame on us and actually trying to make us feel bad for not liking their car. It’s a pretty stupid thing to do when you have a whole lot of other cars to sell us. Do they think we’ll just feel bad and say, “Well ok, since you sales guys think this car is so great…we’ll take it, where do we sign?!” No.

And to top it off that was the end of our conversation. The salesman said, “OK, thanks for coming in.” That’s it. Didn’t want to give us his card, didn’t want us to give him our info if he got another car in (keep in mind this is the biggest used car dealer in the state and they get many cars in every day), he didn’t want anything.

And of course my wife and I are savvy customers and don’t play games so we just shrugged our shoulders and left. In fact we laughed all the way back to our car and discussed how weird the whole situation was. We even told our friends how ridiculous the whole situation was and to steer clear of that business.

Now you may not think that’s such a big deal but for a salesperson like this it should be. Why? Well first because we are looking to buy a car, and soon. Also, we were great customers. We didn’t dodge any questions, we told them what we wanted, we told them what we wanted to pay, we told them our time frame, etc. All they had to do was find us the right car. Done deal!

But I guess not. Apparently if you don’t like the first option they show you it’s over at that dealership. And what’s funny is that it really is over for them. We will buy a car within a week or two and it won’t be from them. It’s sad because they started out the relationship so well and could have made a huge commission on us. Oh well, we’ll take our money elsewhere.

So, lessons I took away from this experience: Don’t be offended if somebody doesn’t immediately fall in love with what you recommend or try to sell to them. Ask them why they have their objections and then try to overcome them. Don’t just throw a fit like a child and quit.

Also, if something doesn’t work out the first time it’s nice to leave the relationship you just built with your prospect on a good note. If this salesman had done this we would have been back and he probably would have made a sale without any extra work. Or we might have referred someone to him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to close people the first time but sometimes you just can’t. Prospects tend to go back to salespeople they’ve already built a relationship with. So if the buying time isn’t right right now, it may be in the future for your prospect and he may be back.

So anyway, that’s the story how I didn’t get sold a car.

Do you have any stories about salespeople who did or didn’t do something right? Send them in and I’ll publish them on this blog.

Until next time…
Tyler
http://www.coldcallcrusher.com/thesystem.html

P.S. If you want a system to automatically build relationships with prospects and follow up with them until they buy, you need to get here now: http://www.coldcallcrusher.com/thesystem.html