Sales Tactics: Why Buying A New Car Is Such A Painful Experience

By L James Johnson

L James Johnson

Contributing Writer BIO

L. James Johnson joined the automotive industry after winning recognition as a radio & TV journalist and running three thriving, fast-growing small... More

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1,091 views Oct 7, 2010

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I did an informal survey with everyone I talked to one day. I asked them on a scale of one to ten how much they disliked walking into their neighborhood car dealer to look at new vehicles. An answer of one meant they enjoyed the process, while ten was pure hatred for the experience. The average answer I received was eight. That was not just a strong, negative response to car dealers, but virtually each person that I talked to had a story about how bad their experience was. It seems that car dealers have a bad reputation for good reason.

A Practical Example

Although I ended up as Internet Manager for a major car dealer, I still remember when I was new to the business and being trained. I kept noticing that our customers regularly got upset during the negotiating process. One sales person in particular often had his customers stand up in frustration and threaten to walk out. He had to work hard just to calm them down to get negotiations back on track. This would even happen more than once with the same customer.

I pulled the salesperson aside one day and asked him why his customers almost always got upset. His answer made sense from a strictly business perspective. However, while his response was insightful from a humanistic viewpoint, it was also a disheartening glimpse into the reality of car sales. But it did clear up any confusion I had about why buying a car at a dealership is so frustrating for many buyers.

Pull’em Off the Ceiling

My coworker explained, “When a customer comes in with unrealistic expectations—expecting to buy the car for such a low price that we either won’t make a profit, or we simply can’t sell it to them for what they want—it’s my job to keep hitting them with such a high price that it knocks them off their unrealistic expectation. I create a strong reaction on purpose, and then ‘pull'em off the ceiling.’

“But why,” I asked, “are your customers furious with you two and three times while negotiating for the same car?” The salesperson didn’t skip a beat when he replied, “I have to pull some customers off the ceiling three times before they’re willing to move off their lowball price.”

The other insightful information I got from this conversation was why his customers had such unrealistic expectations throughout the car buying process. “Didn’t you let them know upfront they couldn’t buy the new car for what they wanted,” I asked. His answer was another insight into the inner working of this strange, new world. “You never want to talk price on your feet. Do that, and they’ll walk out and go to another dealership. You want your customer to fall in love with the new vehicle first: the new car smell, the feel of the steering wheel, how it drives. All the while I’m reassuring them that I’ll make sure they’ll get a good deal when we sit down inside and go over the figures. That’s when I hit them with the high selling price. They are usually so shocked that I have to “pull them off the ceiling.”

The only thing I could think of in answer to my coworker’s response was how in the world could I survive in this kind of a business if I was expected to work with my customers like this. More on that in another article.