Besides, how difficult could a career in sales really be?
"YOU CAN LEARN CAR SALES IN TEN DAYS, KOH-WEKT?"
"I hear you're gonna be a sleazy car salesman," my nephew said last December, smirking at me in the same way I smirked at the world when I was 18--that "got the world by the balls 'cause I can legally buy Playboy" look. But I didn't blame him--at the time or now. Trying to justify my chosen career path was something I was struggling with. Plus, the conventional wisdom is true: car salespeople are sleazy individuals overall. Folks you wouldn't invite over to grout your tub, much less waste an evening attempting to be pleasant with. I'm generalizing here, but some stereotypes exist for a friggin' good reason.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
The local Toyota dealership ran an ad specifically looking for folks who had no prior sales experience. That was me. Just because my old man had been a hotshot sales manager for Culligan in the '70s didn't mean I had similar aspirations growing up. I'd managed to avoid any job that smelled of sales from my first gig with McDonald's at 16 to well past my 35th year. But here I was unemployed for several months, drooling like Oprah outside IHOP over the potential salary range listed in the ad: $43,800 - $86,900 in the first year. Hot damn! Where do I sign?
I met with an independent car sales guru from Miami, hired as a recruiter/trainer by the dealership and affectionately known by the managers as "Cuban Bob." He was actually from Portugal, but there's your first example why car salespeople are assholes. They're ignorant about most things not having to do with money and cars and they flaunt it proudly. But ol' Bob came off as a likeable fellow. He was genuinely excited about teaching everyday folks what he'd learned in 30-plus years of car sales. And he only wanted $549 bucks to do it. Of course, he didn't tell me that up front. Nothing in the ad said anything about money for the three-day class with Bob.
The last thing Bob had me do after the otherwise typical interview, was ask me to sell him a pen. He handed me one from his shirt pocket and pretended he was a customer.
"Well, sir" I stammered, "what are you looking for in a pen?"
"I want it to write," Cuban Bob said in his thick accent.
"Well, I think you'll be very impressed with this Uniball. It leaves a nice clean line, as you can see..." I test-drove it around some scratch paper, and continued, "and it comes at an affordable price."
Two days later, in the upstairs conference room of the dealership, Bob told our class of 17 that none of us sold the pen correctly--or "koh-wektly" as he pronounced it with his accent.
36 folks responded to the ad. We were the cream of the crop. For the next three days, eight hours a day, we would attend Bob's comprehensive course. Then he would continue on to his next gig at another dealership in another part of the country. Our education would continue the following week when a few managers from the dealership would teach us Toyota product knowledge before we were set loose on the sales floor on a Saturday--the busiest day in the car sales industry.
After we introduced ourselves to the class, Bob began by telling us that the customer is not always right. Customers will lie to you--especially if they say they're not buying today.
"How many of you walk into a dealership knowing you don't intend to buy a car that day?"
I was the only one with the 'nads to raise my hand.
One of the dealerships managers was there to observe. He glared at me. "You actually walk into a dealership and waste their time?"
"When it comes to spending that kind of money," I replied, "my wife and I comparison shop at two or three different dealers and research stuff on the 'net."
They didn't believe me.
Bob told us that if we successfully sold ourselves first, the dealership second, and the car third, we could be counted in the 20% of salespeople who sell cars 80% of the time. That's making a sale to four out of five customers. The first type of customer that buys, buys the car immediately. The second type of customer buys 72-84 hours after leaving the dealer.
I had purchased two cars in my life before. The first time, when I was in my early 20s, I fit the first profile. The second time, at age 33 and married, I had purchased a car at this very dealership--but only after visiting at least five different Toyota dealers during the course of a week or two. And even then, I didn't fit Bob's profile per se. On the day we bought, my wife and I looked around the lot, found one promising vehicle, told the sales guy we would be back after lunch with our decision, and went to another dealer to scout lower prices. We didn't buy there only because the salesperson we'd been dealing with the previous week had been out to lunch, and another idiot who could barely be bothered to answer our questions was rude and inflexible.
More "facts": 99% of customers buy with their emotions. If their emotions are properly aroused, they'll find a way to pay, even if they think they can't afford it. If someone quotes the most common figure a salesperson hears--$2,500 down, $250 a month--a successful salesperson should be able to convince a customer they can afford more. If they smoke, mention that at $3 a pack at three packs a week, they're spending over $36 a month on cigarettes. If they stop smoking, that's money that can go toward a higher car payment. If their family eats out four times a month, by eating out only two times a month they can afford $50 or more easily.
I knew off the bat that I wouldn't have the stones to tell a smoker to quit his habit or convince a stir-crazy young couple with a newborn drooler they shouldn't get out of jail as often.
Then Cuban Bob told us stories about how he became successful. Having never sold anything before in his life (like most of us), he walked into a dealership and told the sales manager he would be their top salesman by the end of the month. Through trial and error, he perfected his technique and proved himself. He related horror stories about difficult customers and how he managed to land sales that seemed doomed from the start. Then he segued into the amount of money we could make, and how students of Bob's program averaged $58,000 a year. The top salesperson at this dealership made $212,000 last year (he hadn't taken Bob's course, though, I would find out later).
For the last few hours of that first day, he explained the break-down of our commissions. Our heads swam with the possibility of earning $283 per new car (the national average in 1999) and $374 per used car. If we sold to just one out of three customers a day...why, we could easily earn over $100,000 grand a year once bonuses were added! If we sold 10 cars in a month, we'd get $150 extra dollars! For 15 cars it was $350! And for 30 cars, which was completely do-able, it was $1,550! And we'd get to drive a demo car for free! Sign me up for a Land Cruiser!
But first...
Bob had to screen us one at a time to determine if we were made of the right stuff. And to see if we had $549 for the rest of the course.
For those of us who made the cut, our homework was to stop in a dealership on the way home and pretend to be interested in a car to study the salesperson's pitch.
"You mean you want us to walk into a dealership and waste their time?" I asked.
"Koh-wekt," said Bob.
The manager who had been in the class earlier wasn't there to taste the irony, though.