Automotive Sales Training
"Laugh at your Customers"
By: Jeffrey F. Knott
Laugh at your customers. No I don't mean laugh with your customers. I literally mean that there are times when you should laugh at them.
I will never forget the sales meeting that I was fortunate enough to be a part of back in my second year in the car business. It was Saturday morning at 8:30 am and as is the case with most car dealerships I was waiting for the sales manager to brief us on the weekends advertising campaign, announce the spiffs and bestow some profound knowledge upon us before we headed out on to the dealership's showroom floor to begin selling cars.
As the sales manager entered the room he looked directly at the salesman next to me and the smile that was on his face began to grow bigger. Then without any warning what so ever he let out a laugh. Everyone in the room craned their necks to see what was so amusing about this sales person. With 25 salespeople in the room it was inevitable that a few other salespeople began to laugh. At this point I still could not figure out what was so funny.
As the sales manager continued to laugh he shifted his attention to another salesperson. He didn't point. He didn't gesture. He just simply laughed a long hearty laugh and the longer he did it the more salespeople followed his lead. Was I missing something? There was nothing apparently funny to me. But the more I heard everyone laughing the closer I came to laughing. After all I was already smiling a smile that was bigger than what I would normally have considered appropriate for any person in their right mind. But just as someone whose cheese had slid off of his cracker I too let out a random chuckle and I too began to laugh uncontrollably along with the rest of my fellow car salespeople. I still wasn't even sure what was so funny. But as the saying goes, “laughter is contagious” and at that moment I too had been bitten by a random, unexplained laughing bug.
It felt good to laugh. After a few minutes the sales manager stopped laughing. Upon doing so the rest of the salespeople's laughs tapered off with the exception of a few random uncontrollable chuckles. Then Bob spoke these words, “Today I want you to laugh at your customer. If you laugh they will laugh back. If you can get them to laugh you can sell them a car.” Then he exited the room. No Spiffs. No announcements regarding the newspaper advertisements. Just a brief lesson that I knew I needed to test. Sure I knew that you could get away with saying anything to another person as long as you had a smile on your face. But a car sale is no laughing matter. Or is it? After all they say that laughter is the best medicine and most people who walk into a dealership are sick with fear.
As I walked down the steps from the meeting room to the showroom I reaffirmed in my mind, “Today is the day. I am going to test the theory. I am going to laugh at my customers. After all my manager told me to.”
It was a busy Saturday and it wasn't long before I was with a customer. They had a simple request. They wanted another Sedan to replace the one that they arrived at the dealership in. After a short period of orientation and proceeding through the process of selecting a new vehicle my customers had found, driven and confirmed that we had found a vehicle that they would like to own.
Now came the negotiation process. That's right, the dreaded negotiation process. I showed them numbers on our vehicle and on their trade and almost instinctively the wife blurted out, “That's not enough for our trade and what about the discount on the new car?” I laughed. I couldn't help it. I had heard the words from every customer for two years. I found it predictably hilarious. I laughed harder. That's right I was laughing at my customers. They started laughing. Not quite as hard as I did but they did laugh.
As my laugh tapered off I explained even as I was being partially being interrupted with a chuckle or two that by the time the manufacture finished raising the invoice price to the dealer while simultaneously keeping the MSRP priced competitively with other models in its category that there was no room left to negotiate. I started to chuckle again as I directed them to sign the buyers order that I had presented earlier. They laughed in agreement with me while they signed the buyers order.
Will this work on every customer? NO. Does Anything? NO. Remember every car buying consumer is different however customers all have one thing in common. Fear, they fear that they will make a mistake. Laughing helps to elevate fear and bring a situation in to perspective. So the next time you have a customer who is making an unreasonable demand you may be able to bring their thinking back in to line with a simple laugh. Read More...
Jeffrey F. Knott is the Author of From Zero to Hero, How to Master the Art of Selling Cars and can be reached by email: Jeff@Showroomtoday.com |
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