If you want to better the overall experience, it helps to be an honest customer. Everyone wants the same outcome; customers want to pay the least and dealerships want to make the most.

At the end of the day, hopefully we both go home satisfied. The difference is, next time my satisfied customer comes back to see me, I`ll have been
run off by the old crusties in management who have been holding a gun to their customers heads for decades before you or I bought our first car!

How did we get here? How did automobile salespeople get so screwed up that it has come to this?

Is it really true, as Bret says, that it works on some people? I’m not convinced that it does. I have this suspicion that this is one of those marginal benefit things, where yes, if you hold a gun to someone’s head and threaten them, you probably can get them to say they love you and give you their money. But it’s the last time you’ll play that game.

Wouldn’t even Bret agree that this is scorched-earth selling? Why would anyone ever want to do repeat business with someone after being ravaged like that? And why would any intelligent dealership want to employ people who ruin future business prospects like that?

A few months ago Chris Brogan wrote an interesting piece too on how clueless auto dealers were–he even gave them, as I recall, a complete turnkey roadmap to doing it right. But somehow I think hardly any of them will have the smarts to believe him.

This all reminds me of the boiling frog metaphor (yes, I know, it’s been proven a myth, but it’s still a helluva metaphor): some people (like auto salespeople) believe that just because holding a gun to a customer’s head leads them to sell, that they should always hold a gun to a customer’s head.

This kind of thinking just totally ignores the effect on the customer–which is to never come back, and to tell all their friends what jerks they are at that dealership.

What do you think it is, Dave? Why do they do this?

And thanks, by the way, for writing a really funny (funny painful, not so much funny ha ha) narrative of this horrendous sales experience.

Sadly, this isn’t exclusive to the auto industry, nor is it the times we are living in. I experienced this when I refurnished my entire home 2 years ago, with a wedding planner (23 years ago) and numerous other times throughout my career.

The great news is that it provides opportunity for those “who get it”!

I really enjoyed this post and will make it a point to take extra special care of my cars so I can avoid the experience

Respectfully,
Paul Castain

Thanks for the comment!