Just Cuz I Sell Cars For a Living Doesn't Make Me an Asshole

Well, I’ve been toiling away now for 10 months now. I’ve had a few good months and I’ve had a few crappy months. I’ve met some real nice folks and I’ve met some jerks.

The dealership where I work is in an upscale community in San Diego County. Good credit and good income is the norm. We also get a number of Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton, usually with pretty good credit too. And all that helps. What doesn’t help though is the cynicism, smugness and sense of entitlement that all too many customers bring with them usually because they’ve managed to look something up on the internet.


The internet actually does a lot of disservice in many areas not the least of which is in car sales. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t make it the gospel. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t eliminate the need to read all the fine print.

Anyway, this hopefully isn’t going to degenerate into a rant. But let’s see what flows from my brain to my fingertips.

There’s a lot of down time at a dealership. And there’s times when you’re desperate for something to keep you busy. And, it doesn’t help when the dealer filters all but the most basic of websites from its computers. Forget search engines or news sources.

So here’s a couple of things from a car sales guy that might help you a bit the next time you think you want to take the plunge and go shopping for a car:

Narrow your choices of a new car down before venturing out. Have a pretty good idea whether you want a cross-over utility vehicle, sedan or mini-van before venturing out. All major manufacturers have websites where you can screen various models and trim levels and do your basic comparison shopping before leaving home. Remember, if I don’t sell anything, I don’t make anything. I’m patient but not to the point where I’m happy to spend 2 hours with you doing nothing but “kicking tires” on your first foray to a car dealership in 10 years.


Are you thinking of trading your car? That’s fantastic. And if you want to withhold it until the end, that’s fine too. But bear in mind that now isn’t the time to get impatient over time because it’s now going to take 30 or more minutes longer when we have to appraise your vehicle and if a balance is owed we have to contact the lender to secure an accurate 10 day pay-off. (The sum of your remaining payments is not your payoff unless you have a 0% loan).

And, the amount you owe on your trade has absolutely nothing to do with how much it’s worth. A customer a couple of weeks ago was incensed that we couldn’t provide her with a trade value that would pay off her vehicle. She owed $8500 on an 8 year old vehicle that was worth $5000 at wholesale. I finally asked her a direct question: “Miss, if you only owed $1000 on your car would that mean that it’s only worth $1000?” Of course, she answered “No”. To which I responded, “Well, wouldn’t you agree then that the amount you owe on your vehicle has nothing to do with how much it’s worth?” Of course it doesn’t.

If you’ve already ground us down to a below invoice price on your vehicle, you have no expectation of a “retail” value on your trade. We’ll go wholesale to wholesale or retail to retail. The dealer where I work rarely tries to go retail for our car and wholesale for a trade (but we will). It’s lousy business for us to go wholesale on the vehicle we’re selling and retail on the vehicle the customer is trading. We won’t do it and will tell a customer right up front that we can’t and don’t.
Here’s a hint. The sources of trade information online are generally woefully inaccurate. The closest we’ve found is Edmunds.com. The source we try to use most is a source that only dealers have access to. It’s known as Manheim Market Reports and is the commodity based pricing from Manheim Auctions, the largest used vehicle auction company in the nation. The prices we get from there are the amounts that used car managers from dealerships have actually paid for specific vehicles. That’s a commodity price and represents real money paid for a car as close to “just like yours” as we can get.

You know, I’m an old fashioned customer service kind of guy. I’ve never held with the notion that selling cars needs to be a confrontational exercise where it’s all about putting another number up on the board for unit count and maximizing my commission on each sale. And the dealership where I work reflects that approach as well.

But if I don’t sell, I don’t earn. We earn a percentage of the gross profit on each vehicle sold. On new cars the minimum is $200. But there’s less profit than that on most new vehicles. Many have no profit or even a loss. It’s a simple matter of trying to put units over the curb and on the road. The profit center of a car dealership is in its “fixed operations” department (a fancy term for parts and service). And the only way that department gets customers is for us to actually sell a car.
Forget stuff about “holdback”, etc. That is indeed money that the manufacturer provides back to the dealer to help offset expenses—like the light bill or the property taxes or fixed salary expenses or even the interest on the loan the dealer takes to finance the inventory.

Sometimes we will dip into it to close a sale. That’s because increasingly customers demand that we compete against the other dealerships which sell the same brand as we do when it comes to price. We are required by customers to shave prices incrementally with the one most willing to whittle down the price winning. Imagine selling a $30,000 vehicle because you beat the guy selling the identical vehicle 20 miles down the road by $50. It happens all the time and it’s absolutely exasperating.



I earn about 1/3 of what I earned a couple of years ago as an automotive industry consultant. The benefit is that I have reduced my business travel from 150 nights a year in a hotel to 0. That’s worth it.

I love the customers I work with, by and large but the bottom line is that I’m a professional and just because I sell cars for a living doesn’t make me an asshole.

I Gotta Go to Work Today or Selling Azteks for Fun and Profit

Today’s the day. After 9 months of being unemployed, I’m going back to a “sales line” at a local car dealership.

I haven’t sold cars since May, 2003. Until January of this year I was a consultant and trainer to car dealers. I represented the manufacturer and worked with the dealership on practices that would help them be more profitable (inventory management, etc.) and did sales training.

Lest you think I’m some sort of ogre teaching people how to be sleazy, how to bluster their way through a sale or how to manipulate a customer into a corner which guarantees that they get the shaft and the sales person gets the money, let me just say here and now that my number one message was always “never, ever lie to a customer”.

Let’s do just a bit of math, OK. A car salesperson averages about 10 sales a month. That’s 120 a year. If those sales average $20,000 then the sales volume for that person is $2.4 million for the year. How much commission do you think he/she makes from that? !0%? 5%? Either one of those would provide an incredible living. It’s more like 1.5 to 2%, a very modest amount. On average, an automotive sales person makes 25% of gross profit per unit—after “pack”, the amount added to dealer cost for things like administration, etc. That alone should tell you how little profit there is in the average new vehicle transaction (profit margins are substantially higher on used vehicles).

The rest of that story is that these people work a goofy schedule that typically includes at least one 12 hour “bell day” a week and half to two-thirds of weekends. Many dealers are also open 362 days a year closing only on Christmas Day, News Years Day and Thanksgiving.

Here’s a story I’ve told many times in sales training classes:
I was the top Pontiac Aztek salesman in the California Region for 2 years in 2001-2002. Remember the Aztek? It’s widely considered one of the ugliest vehicles ever made—right up there with the old AMC Pacer. And it was. (The interior fabric was even uglier than the outside too!) But it was also a really good vehicle.

When I first started selling Pontiacs, a customer would tell me they were interested either in SUVs or wanted to see this “all new” Aztek. I would take them to our selection—we’d have several on hand. Invariably the customer would say something about how ugly the Aztek was. Something like, “that’s sure butt-ugly”.

And I’d dispute that. I’d tell them things like, “It’s just the edgy styling of it that you’re not used to,” or “It really grows on you,” or “Naw, look at these lines. This thing is really cool.” The customer would look at me like I was just the “typical” car salesguy—you know a big BS’er. A lot of them would leave then because I had been arguing with them or blowing smoke at them about the car.

So, I needed to do something to slow them down. What I came up with was to agree with them and do it with humor.

“Well, sir,” I’d say, “I can’t say that I disagree with that but…you know, my sister was pretty homely too, but we loved her anyway. Let me show you some of the reasons why you’ll fall in love with the Aztek.” And they’d laugh. And they would get interested in the vehicle rather than shutting down their interest. I now had an opportunity to build value. And I sold a bunch of them. They were roomy, versatile, powerful, economical and u-g-l-y. But people would buy them.

As Zig Ziglar always said, “Buying occurs when value exceeds price.” That’s the only time when any of us buy anything—ever.

And here’s the rest it: We build value when we communicate with our customer about ourself, our product and our company in terms of what we do more, better and differently than anyone else. Those are the dimensions of value. And it doesn’t matter what anyone sells—clothes, insurance, vehicles or groceries—the only time a customer parts with their money is when value exceeds price.



It seems like I've spent a great deal of my life working my way "down" the ladder of success. Or, as I'm somewhat fond of saying, "I can take my Masters degree and $2.50 and buy a cup of coffee at any Denny's".

I didn’t want to have to go back to work selling cars. And yet, I should have done it several months ago to earn some money and to be doing something productive. I was never any “superstar” salesguy but I worked hard and was totally honest. In this industry, like any other, it comes down to integrity, honesty and ethics. Those may sound like an oxymoron when used in a context of automobile sales but they’re vital.

So, I gotta go to work today. Let’s hope it all works out.

A Totally Honest Car Salesman--Honest!

Selling cars for a living is one of the hardest, most stress filled things I’ve ever done. Straight commission. Monthly minimum quotas. Oh yeah, if you don’t earn enough in a given month to cover your time, you get paid “hours” which means minimum wage for your efforts (at least here in California). At many dealers that’s also when they “blow you out”, which is a euphemism for getting fired.

When I first moved to California, I went to work for a Ford dealership almost, but not quite, on the border of Mexico. It was an interesting environment for a middle aged white guy who had just moved from Iowa.

But enough of the “background” In the late 90’s SUVs and pick-ups were all the rage and Ford was a good brand to sell because of the popularity of the Explorer (also known as the “Exploder”), Expedition and F-150. And, we were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the new mega-SUV, the Excursion.

People wanted big, bigger, biggest and the Excursion was the biggest and baddest. Customers were interested in the most massive SUV they could get. They equated it with safety (kind of like the idea of an M1 tank rolling over and crushing lesser vehicles).

I was one of the first to sell an Excursion (late 1999 for the launch of the 2000 Excursion). A customer came on the lot interested in the vehicle and wanted to order one to fit his exact specifications. It was a 4x4, XLT, 5.4 liter V-8, all the whistles and bells and leather interior. It was the first $40,000 vehicle I ever sold. And I would make a whopping $200 commission on the deal. Wow!
As I was discussing the process with the buyer he told me, “I want one with zero miles on it, that’s why I’m ordering it.”

“Well sir, that’s not going to be possible,” I replied.

“Why not?” was his question, just a little bit miffed.

“Well, they all have a couple of miles on them. They drive them off the line, and then for a couple of miles to make sure everything works, then load them on the transporter.”

“So, how many miles will it have?” he asked.

“Well, no more than 5 or 6”, was my response.

“OK,” he said, “just make sure that it’s no more than 5 or the deal is off.”

Well, I was just a bit nervous because I had seen new vehicles come in with more miles than that but I was still excited over the prospect of the “status” of selling one of the first of these big SUVs that none of us had even seen yet.

It took about a month and one day I got word that the vehicle would be coming in on the transporter the next day and I should get hold of my customer. When the transporter arrived, I had already made an appointment for the final paperwork and delivery of the vehicle.

I watched the transporter pull onto the dealership and saw the brand new, olive green with tan trim, special factory order Excursion perched on it. I had already tipped off the guys in the back that this vehicle was for a special order, was being delivered that evening and that I needed it PDI’d right away. (PDI means Pre-Delivery Inspection where all the fluids are checked, etc. to make sure the vehicle is ready to be driven. Then it’s detailed.) I went back and checked the odometer reading and breathed a sigh of relief. Four miles on it. Good.
The customer arrived at 6 p.m. and I grabbed the keys and went to “fetch” his new Excursion. He was excited and so was I. I came cruising around the side of the building sitting up high in this huge SUV, window down, elbow out, grinning. The buyer was grinning too. I parked it and climbed out.

“How many miles are on it?” he asked.

I handed him the key, and said “Take a look. It’s got 4 ½ miles on it.”

He checked the odometer, and poked around for a bit inside obviously liking what he was experiencing for the first time. His very own “testosterone-mobile”.

I got just a bit brave. “So, why was it so important to have virtually no miles on it?” I asked.

“Well, I wanted to make sure that I was the first one to fart in it,” he responded still smiling.

My smile disappeared, replaced by a look of surprise. “Man, I wish you had told me that before,” I managed to stammer.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

And with total honesty, I responded, “Because, it’s too late.”

He bought it anyway. And that’s what happens when an “old fart” sells a new car.