Well stated. I had one younger salesman that great on his product knowledge. He was the go to guy for other salesmen if they needed a quick answer to a product knowledge question. But he was always in the bottom half of chart in # of sales. His problem was he would never shut his mouth. He would ramble on and on and on; always talking but NEVER listening. Lots of times you have to read between the lines of what the customer is saying. They are saying one thing and actually meaning another.
Knew a bloke who had a used car yard. In it was a little Mini 850 that had a crack in the engine/gearbox casing. He would weld it up and sell it cheap. When it would crack again the buyer would bring it back and he would offer them their original purchase price off any other vehicle in the yard. These other cars were always overpriced but the buyer had no option but to buy one of them. Having sold the Mini about six times he was really frustrated when the last buyer must have fixed it themselves and never brought it back. He never stopped bitchin about how someone ruined his perfect little setup by not bringing his Mini back.
Agreed. It's a proven fact that a salesperson will ALWAYS make the most money as a greenpea... before the "know too much". There are only a few kinds of customers that need that extra bit of product knowledge... customers looking for a pulling (or towable) vehicle and people that are hard up on competition models.
One last thing, for all you old car dogs, theres still a TON of keys on the roof of my old dealership, pinky rings always add at least one sale to your month and I still have the urge to take a popcorn break at 3:00 every day. I can also thank the car business for my vast experience in strip clubs, sports bars and golf courses. I miss that shit sometimes.
Totally disagree with your conclusions..........spent 34 yrs in the business. And............not all salesmen spend their spare time in 'joints'. It can be just as honorable a profession as a person wants to make it. I've seen guys work harder being devious than than they would have had to if they were 'straight', and I'm not talking about their 'orientation'......just their business ethics. Ray
Worked at a Chevy dealer in the late '60s as a line mechanic, small dealership, we checked out all the new cars before delivery, lots of '68 SS 396 Chevelles (375 hp if memory correct), 4 speeds, 3.70 something posi rearends, badass cars back then. One day I was test driving a new red one, dogged it a little smoked the tires, happened to see a guy I went to school with and his doctor father, waved hello. 15 minutes or so later pulled back into the service bays there was my old schoolmate and his doctor father standing there with the salesman waiting to take delivery of his new Red SS 396 Chevelle. Never said a word about me abusing his new car.
in 1968 home from Nam I went to work for a fairly large chev dealer as new car service manager. smoked a few vettes and those chevelles, they seemed kinda flimsey in the tranny shifter dept sure hammered some of them took a high HP Vette out and smoked it good, got back to the shop and the guy would not let anyone touch it. had a couple minor collisions on the lot like flying backwards and swinging the front end OPS another thing we had a ton of Corvairs with smoked black windows that winter, the ones with the gas heaters whole interiors got toasted another memory i guess I lunched a four speed too because of abuse, the line mech was happy who rebuilt it, he was out of work, another warranty. got accused by the cops of stripping cars when reporting engine thefts, lost a couple q jet carbs that year still had chokes then and cars slid into trailer sides from high idels, almost got punched out by a auto transport driver for claiming a dent from banging transport, that was a charge back to them i think I actually had a pretty good job, got the wrecker and help on weekends, but i was restless after the war and quit in 2 months as I did all the other jobs too
Sorry to disappoint. Edit: To specify my "deviations", I'm straight and "straight", I always held the highest CSI in the dealership, GM sent me to the FedEx/Kinkos Pro-Am every year, I love a good Longhorn game at Pluckers and when GM is in the shitter and national sales are at a record low you just cant beat $2.99 steak and fries...with a pinky ring!
The infamous road test,Go shopping ,pick up parts,go home or just people watch in the local area.The shop i worked at was located in a real bad area,drug dealers prostitutes and slums if you knew where to look. In the late 80s when the police still used rear wheel drive fifth aves my buddy john and myself who i had known since jr high were test driving a blue stripped down fifth ave.Just like a undercover cop car. We put on dark blue jackets and take a phone chord with us and head out where the hookers are. We spot a guy letting a hooker into his car so we pull up behind him as she gets in and he takes off.I pull the phone chord to my mouth like im radioing in,we go about 100 feet and the guy notices us.While the car is moving he throws her out and takes off.She is screaming and cursing and he speeds off.We followed him twisting and winding through local streets laughing our asses off,eventually going back to the shop. Eventually the cops came and planted a real hot sting hooker,we knew she was a cop because it wasnt the regular crack whores we were use to. that became entertaining also,seeing guys taken away in chrome bracelets crying while they are led into the police car. All this and a paycheck to boot.
My Dad owned a salvage yard for several years. In 79 when he bought the place, his next door neighbor had already made a deal to sell his car to the yard (deal was made with the previous owner). My Dad got to watch his neighbor change tires, swap batteries, etc. and then pay him when he brought the car down a couple days later. I'm too young to remember any of this but have been told the story.
that is wicked awsome. sorry the teenager language is comming out, but it sounds like my kind of weather!
ok this one i only "heard" happened, guy came in to the dealer needing a trans rebuild, he was quoted a price, he said it was to much and would it be cheeper if he removed the transmission himself, and was told "sure" so 3 days later he comes in with the transmission,converter and the flywheel and crankshaft still attached tech's told him he removed way more than he needed to
So i was told this story by my dad about my grandpa. It was 1958 and the local chrysler dealership owed my grandpa and another guy a bunch of money for parts that they gotten out of thier wreaking yards, my grandpa also sold lots of transmissions and radiators my great uncles rebuilt. Well they heard that the dealership was gunna go bankrupt, they heard this when they shouldnt have and on a friday, the bankruptsy was gunna happen on monday. welll on saterday they went down and convinced the salesman to trade the dept on a new station wagon the saterday manger approved the deal. My dads words where "with your grandfather and his friend those guys didnt stand a chance" well monday came around and the owner call my grandpa very angry and wanting the wagon back. gramps said no. and it was the worst piece of junk he ever owned he said.
that is the funniest thing that i think i have read on here so far. i never had any of that happen to me, but my uncle's Mustang got sprayed with potato jizz. nasty
The worst story I can think of is when I was a mechanic at A.D Anderson Chevrolet in Balto. , Md . One morning we heard a huge crash in the showroom . We all came running out to see what happened . Well A damn Chev. Vega was sitting in the showroom that came throw the front window . OK that is bad enough BUT there was NO one in the car and NO keys in the ignition ! It was one of the Brand NEW cars on display in front of the showroom . Something went wrong with the wiring and that damn car started turning over and with the car in reverse ( standard shift) it came plowing right through the window ! None if us ever figured out why or what went wrong with that damn Vega ! It was repaired and drove fine but couldn't figure out what happened . Anyway the car was sold and we never heard anything about that car again ! This was a TRUE story and happened around 1976 or so . That was spooky as shit ! Retro Jim
One day a customer comes into the service drive in a mid 80s Caprice. The smell of something dead is overwhelming. They open the hood and a cat got caught in the fan blade and fell into the shroud. Just as the service manager tells him he can't help him, the porter, who drank quite a bit says "I gets it out of there for $25.00". Well he pulls the car out into the field behind the body shop, goes to the painter and borrows a paint resporator. We watched as he would work awhile, run away gagging, go back work awhile, run away gagging again. He eventually got it out but he damn sure earned every cent. We were laughing our asses off at him.
There was a salvage yard about a mile from where I used to live in London back in the late 70's. The back end of the place was overgrown with weeds. Cops show up one day & start pulling licence plates out of the weeds.. within a couple of days they had found out where over 400 stolen vehicles ended up....
I was looking for a truck and found myself at Autolist here in town. They didn't have what was looking for but said they would check the holding lot. I thought nothing of it until... surprise... they called to tell me they had a 05 Ford F-150 4x4 that should meet my needs. I showed up the next day only to find the sales person I was dealing with was not there. I get some young gentleman with a clip on tie who makes an honest effort to track down the truck in question which he manages to do after 20 minutes or so. The truck has 135,000 kms and is not prepped for sale. I think this is a good thing since I get to see it before it's prettied up. It has some body damage, a flat tire, a cracked windshield and won't start. With the hood up I see a strange rust line on the firewall and the engine looks a little worse for wear. I immediately note the AC compressor is not hooked up. Once they get it started we hear a tick in the serpentine belt drive. We take it for a drive. The drivers side window goes down but not up, the power seat is toast and the brakes pull so hard right that I almost stuff the truck into the car next to me. There is a death wobble in the front end at highway speed, it won't go into 4 wheel drive and by the time I get it back to the lot the check engine light is on and it's sounding like a diesel. (not good). I'm a handy guy with a wrench and I'm curious what they want for it. I'm still interested if the price is right. In my mind I'm thinking $5,500 as is. The clip-on guy won't give me a price until I fill out the paper work which takes 20+ minutes. Clip-on takes the forms to the sales manager and then returns to get me to initial a hand written notation on the top of one of the forms indicating I will buy the vehicle if we come to terms on price. I refuse to initial anything hand written making that kind of agreement. In short, the kid tries 3 times to get me to sign the statement, each time I say no he gets berated by the sales manager and sent back to get me to sign it. The explanation is the agreement is to weed out the tire kickers so the sales people don't waste their time. At this point I've had enough and start walking out. The sales manager and clip-on see this and track me down before I get to the door. I stand my ground basically saying it's their job to have tire kickers waste their time and if I don't get a price I'm out of here. Finally the Sales Manager agrees, he dismisses the clip-on kid and sits me down in his office. He reviews the documents then plays the write the quote down on a piece of paper game. He slides it over with a smile I wanted to wipe off his face with a baseball bat. The quote.... $24,999. I show my wife, she starts laughing, I start laughing and we start to walk out. The sales manager chases us and tries to justify the quote indicating on the documents all the features the truck was offering. I ask him if he even knows what truck he just quoted. He didn't. So I ask him to come outside and look at the trade in I was going to use. He agrees so we go outside and I show him the truck I took out for a test drive. The sales manager walks around the truck and starts taking notes. I help him out by explaining a few of the problems with the truck. (Brakes, window, 4x4, seat etc) It once again won't start so he gets the same guys from the first time to jump the truck. Immediately it starts knocking and sounding bad. In the end he offers me $3,000 trade in for "my" truck siting the mechanical and body damage as the reason for the low offer and emphasises he's doing us a favor at that price. At this point, right on cue, clip-on walks by and my wife asks him (in front of the sales manager) if he would show the guy what truck we want to buy. He looks really confused and points to the truck we're standing beside. When it dawned on the sale manager he was offering us $3000 for the truck he quoted $25,000 the look on his face was priceless. He called me a few less than friendly names as my wife and I walked away. I ran the VIN number the next day at my brother's shop. It was a flood write off from one of the reservations. That explained the rust line under the hood. The truck had been beaten to death and then submerged in the spring flooding. 2 days later we bought a 2009 Dodge 1500 4x4 for the same $24,999 the Autolist goof had quaoted us. We even made a point of bringing it by to show him.
1987, I worked in the shop but when a service writer quit I would step in til a replacement was found. I worked late. Late one Friday evening a guy buys a new vette and the tail/brake lights didn't work. I'm foolin around tryin to fix em but the new owner is most anxious to get on the road. He finally says "I will get it fixed at home" which was about 100 miles away. Monday morning the dealer found out the guy was bogus. The guy had used his life insurance to buy the car. His Mother pretended to be the Rep for the ins co. We got the car back and my boss, when asked if he was gonna prosecute the mother too, said " HELL NO I want to HIRE her"!!!!! peace
Many years ago I phoned the local Ford dealer, Bonnell Motors in my home town. I was searching for a part for a Galaxy hardtop my dad had on his used car lot. I think it was a door handle or some kind of small body item. It was customary when calling most large dealer parts department that you requested either body parts or mechanical parts to the counter person to expedite your order or inquiry. Some cat promptly answered his ringing phone and I spoke out that I wanted body parts. Long pause on his end and then he repeated to me" You want body parts?" "Yeah, body parts." I replied. He lost his cool and violently unloaded his full 4 letter word vocabulary into my right hand ear. "You fu$%&@ng SICKO" He screamed at me plus a lot of other words I never heard before. Seems I dialed the Winchester CEMETARY Department by mistake. Hung up real fast on that dealership phone call!
When auto dealer employees get bored... "Binny" died a couple of years ago; we have the obituary. Lou knows "Arnie" personally now, and we know the hideous truth behind this tape -- that "Arnie" was, ALL ALONG, a CO-WORKER of "Binny's," and could in fact SEE Binny through the auto-parts window off the showroom while the calls were being made. MOREOVER, practically everybody in Hillsboro, even the cops, were in on it. The single most impressive thing about this Call series is that what you see below is but a tiny fraction of the whole. There are 4-5 hours of tapes, and the experiment went on for YEARS. A transcript of part of this story appears here. A partial audio clip linked here.
was an apprentice back in 67 one of our lady customers son put a V8 into his falcon he could not get it started and i was asked to go and check it out were in the kids garage i was looking at it and told him to turn it over it cranked real slow i looked down and saw the fuel line turn cherry red screamed stop he had made a solid line from the body to the engine i looked at the battry and it was grounded to the body he had been trying to start it for a weak every day after school i thaught it was going to blow up years later he sold his 57 chevy it came into the shop to look it over ( the new american tworkthrust's were stolen off my nomad) i was turning a wheel and found my wheels i stamped my tag # in the inner lip cops did nothing i got my wheels back
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