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Another Late Night at the Car Dealership
Part 3 of Car Dealer Confessions…by Tug Pullman.
Saturdays are the big days at a new or used car dealership. This is the day which makes or breaks your entire week. It’s not uncommon for a car salesperson to sell three or four cars on a Saturday.
At this particular dealership, they had a lovely invention entitled “Midnight Madness” every Saturday. As you may have guessed, this means the car dealership is open until midnight on Saturday all throughout the summer months.
Midnight Madness rules were simple: Sell a car and you get to go home at your regularly scheduled time. This was either 6pm or 9pm. If you didn’t sell a car, you were subjected to not only working the midnight shift, but also the shame and ridicule of your peers.
And, if you have ever worked outside, on black-top, during the summer months in North Carolina…you know that a 16 hour shift is no prize.
As you can imagine; fifty car sales people with type “A” personality aggressively pursuing a limited number of customers, in the hot summer sun, does not make for the best of customer experiences. Haven’t you ever noticed that you felt like prey when you pull into a car dealership?
So, with this enourmous threat looming over our heads, we sit in the Saturday morning sales meeting. In this particular meeting they review the newspaper ad for this week. The sales manager went into specific detail about the vehicles advertised for the super low prices. He said they were ordered special for the advertisements (car dealership lingo for price leaders), and customers will not want them.
These vehicles are the ultimate base units available; without the options most of us would consider standard. One was a Ford Explorer without power windows, door locks, or air conditioning. The sales manager said these vehicles usually only sell to fleet companies, so whatever we do: “Don’t sell them because they are hard to get!”
I didn’t have the nerve to speak up in the sales meetings - afterwards I asked my manager: “So what do we do if someone wants to buy the Ford Explorer in the newspaper?” To which he responded: “Switch them to something else.” I inquired, “Isn’t that bait and switch?”
His profound retort: “Yeah, but everyone does it.” I asked myself again “What have I gotten myself into?”
