Car Salespeople

Scráib

Does anyone ever feel pretty p*ssed off after having dealt with car salespeople?

I don't know if it's me or not, but every time I've had occasion to deal with them as a group they always leave me feeling cold. I was out at a dealership a few weeks ago and the guy who dealt with me gave me the impression that I was wasting his time even though I was genuinely interested in a car. As a result I've pretty much decided not to go near that dealership again.

This week I mailled another dealership asking did they have a particular model in stock. They said they did and I asked them were they open today to which they never replied. I drove out this morning to find the gates locked, I'm now here kicking myself for not ringing in advance but I'm also annoyed he never bothered replying to my second mail.

Even in situations where I've bought a car I've come out of it relieved to be finished dealing with the sales guys. Has anyone had a similar experience in the past? Or has anyone had the complete opposite, where the salespeople were genuinely sound?

Anan1

I've met the odd good one, but most are incompetent.

bucketybuck

I work in service, and you would not believe the amount of times I have passed onto salesmen details of people interested in buying, only to find out afterwards that they never bothered responding to the potential customers.

The mind boggles. If I was in sales I would be all over a customer who was actually showing serious interest, instead of just window shopping, but these guys never even bothered giving them a call.

I knew a guy up north with a fleet of Mercedes. He went out and bought 15 Volvos. I met him a few months later and when just chatting, asked him why he didnt stick with us in Mercedes. "Sure I left four of five messages for X to call out to me and do a deal, and I never heard a thing from him. So **** him says I".

A man buying mercs for decades, lost to Volvo because the useless twat of a salesman never bothered his hole to respond to a sure thing.

johnos1984

Like every job the idiots stick in mind the most while the good guys get forgotten.

There are good salespeople out there but I completely agree there are more out there with no sales skills who would be better off taking orders in MacDonalds as they don't know how to sell a car

MugMugs

Speaking as somebody who is currently having an argument with a sales man I went to the garage I bought my passat off 7 years after doing so.... Parked it across the road and went over. Started chatting to him.... He had my surname and car type in 10th minutes of chat. He then went through his old diaries a few weeks later to get my number after he had the sort of car I was looking for in stock....

That's impressive!

FrontDoor

MugMugs wrote: »

Speaking as somebody who is currently having an argument with a sales man I went to the garage I bought my passat off 7 years after doing so.... Parked it across the road and went over. Started chatting to him.... He had my surname and car type in 10th minutes of chat. He then went through his old diaries a few weeks later to get my number after he had the sort of car I was looking for in stock....

That's impressive!

Is that not what you'd expect him to do? Be observant, figure out what you want and then go and get it.

CharlieCroker

I was a car salesman for a few years and the amount of lads who didn't know the product, didn't qualify customers properly and failed to follow up with a simple phonecall was outrageous. Most of them were order takers, not salesmen

I thought the recession got rid of of most of them.

Drummerboy08

CharlieCroker wrote: »

I was a car salesman for a few years and the amount of lads who didn't know the product, didn't qualify customers properly and failed to follow up with a simple phonecall was outrageous. Most of them were order takers, not salesmen

I thought the recession got rid of of most of them.

I think the recession has gotten rid of most of them, but to Joe Soap, every car salesman is awful when they dont get the massive discount/trade in that they thought they deserved.

johnos1984

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

I think the recession has gotten rid of most of them, but to Joe Soap, every car salesman is awful when they dont get the massive discount/trade in that they thought they deserved.

The numbers generally haven't been an issue for me. It's more a case of the salespeople not knowing the stock, how much it is, the details, not calling abck etc etc

Anan1

CharlieCroker wrote: »

I was a car salesman for a few years and the amount of lads who didn't know the product, didn't qualify customers properly and failed to follow up with a simple phonecall was outrageous. Most of them were order takers, not salesmen

Me too, and you're dead right.

CharlieCroker wrote: »

I thought the recession got rid of of most of them.

One would think, but i've yet to notice an improvement.

On a slight tangent, I could never under the commiserative threads that used to appear here whenever a long-established garage would shut down. 50 jobs lost, sad day for the industry, and all that nonsense. In most cases they were no loss to anyone.

Drummerboy08

Anan1 wrote: »

On a slight tangent, I could never under the commiserative threads that used to appear here whenever a long-established garage would shut down. 50 jobs lost, sad day for the industry, and all that nonsense. In most cases they were no loss to anyone.

No loss to anyone, except the staff's families. Mine included.

TBH that attitude of yours stinks.

pburns

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

No loss to anyone, except the staff's families. Mine included.

TBH that attitude of yours stinks.

Sad fact is the motor trade was a bubble, inflated by the moolah the banks were dishing out. The SIMI were sucessful in lobbying for the scrappage scheme to 'preserve jobs' but these jobs were as unsustainable as those in other industries such as the building sector. Preserving jobs in sales (and lets face it, we dont have a motor 'industry') to send profits to Germany, Korea, Japan etc. seems self-defeating to me and only delaying the inevitable - with my tax money.

Drummerboy08

pburns wrote: »

Sad fact is the motor trade was a bubble, inflated by the moolah the banks were dishing out. The SIMI were sucessful in lobbying for the scrappage scheme to 'preserve jobs' but these jobs were as unsustainable as those in other industries such as the building sector. Preserving jobs in sales (and lets face it, we dont have a motor 'industry') to send profits to Germany, Korea, Japan etc. seems self-defeating to me and only delaying the inevitable - with my tax money.

The scrappage scheme didnt cost you a penny in taxes. But I'm not getting drawn into another argument about the pro's and con's of the scrappage scheme.

dinneenp

If you het bad service I'd always recommend give feedback to the manager/owner.
It's he/she is losing out on the money and they will let the staff in question know and/or give you attention.

I got bad phone service from Currys, stated so on Curys boards.ie thread and got a detailed reply and also asking did I want to contact him and he'd look into my request fully b

TURRICAN

Qualified liars who will say anything for a sale.:pac:

Owen

TURRICAN wrote: »

Qualified liars who will say anything for a sale.:pac:

Grow up. Not all of us were liars.

Drummerboy08

I think for whatever reason quite a few folks ended up working in car sales who had little passion for cars or indeed customer service. It happens in many industries but when it's a customer facing role it's all the more obvious and as John says the poor experiences do stick in ones mind.

No doubt the lads who posted on this thread who worked/are working in car sales were/are very dedicated and professional as they are car enthusiasts and have good work ethics etc.

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

No loss to anyone, except the staff's families. Mine included. ..........

I'd be 100% Anan1 wasn't including the staff and families in his comment.

MugMugs

FrontDoor wrote: »

MugMugs wrote: »

Speaking as somebody who is currently having an argument with a sales man I went to the garage I bought my passat off 7 years after doing so.... Parked it across the road and went over. Started chatting to him.... He had my surname and car type in 10th minutes of chat. He then went through his old diaries a few weeks later to get my number after he had the sort of car I was looking for in stock....

That's impressive!

Is that not what you'd expect him to do? Be observant, figure out what you want and then go and get it.

Seven years later remembering my name and car model? No tbh.

Discodog

I spent many years in car sales in the UK. I started as a sales exec & ended up as a sales director. One of the reasons why we did so well was because of the standard of our sales staff. We preferred to take on people with no previous motor trade experience - in other words before they had developed bad practises. Some of my most successful salespeople were women. They are more methodical than men & have a better attention to detail.

I was asked to do a mystery shopping exercise in Ireland during the boom. The standards were appalling & attitude of the dealerships was dire. One recent example was when I went to buy parts for a Landrover at a main dealer. My old parts department would always add every parts customer to the sales database whereas this dealer didn't even ask my name.

If someone had phoned my old dealership & asked for a test drive on a Sunday we would of said "no problem what time" as we worked weekends, evenings etc. It was all about serving the customer & because we did it well we all earned really well.

From what I have heard the recession hasn't improved the quality of salespeople. It is very hard for a Leopard to change it's spots.

Anan1

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

No loss to anyone, except the staff's families. Mine included.

TBH that attitude of yours stinks.

I'm sorry for your family, but I stand by my assertion that the majority of sales staff in the Irish motor industry deserve to lose their jobs. Do you really think that someone who can't even be bothered to learn their product/call customers back deserves to keep their job in a dealership? Because, let's face it, that's most of them. Let the business go to the professionals out there who are prepared to do the job well.

TURRICAN

Owen wrote: »

Grow up. Not all of us were liars.

ouch,dont take it to heart:)

FGR

I was very happy with the service I got for my Octavia back in 2010.

That said, when I bought my Golf in 2007 the after-service from the WV dealership in question was poor, to say the least.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure 99% of the staff in that dealership are excellent, motivated; sincere and knowledgeable people. That one person I dealt with though was a disaster.

Anan1

Owen wrote: »

Grow up. Not all of us were liars.

Actually, i've met very few who were dishonest. I think laziness and disinterest were the real problems. 90%+ of the dishonesty I ever saw was coming from the customers.

bladespin

Anan1 wrote: »

I'm sorry for your family, but I stand by my assertion that the majority of sales staff in the Irish motor industry deserve to lose their jobs. Do you really think that someone who can't even be bothered to learn their product/call customers back deserves to keep their job in a dealership? Because, let's face it, that's most of them. Let the business go to the professionals out there who are prepared to do the job well.

Have to agree, have both good and bad experiences with car sales people, unfortunately the bad outnumber the good by quite a way, tha majority just didn't seem bothered at all (even when it came to a fleet sale of landcruisers), pretty much 'yeah, whatever' attitude, amazed I have to say, in the UK I'd have been pestered but guess that'd be a pain too lol.

Drummerboy08

Anan1 wrote: »

I'm sorry for your family, but I stand by my assertion that the majority of sales staff in the Irish motor industry deserve to lose their jobs. Do you really think that someone who can't even be bothered to learn their product/call customers back deserves to keep their job in a dealership? Because, let's face it, that's most of them. Let the business go to the professionals out there who are prepared to do the job well.

And how many sales staff have you dealt with, say in the last 10 years?

As a percentage, what would that figure be of the number of sales staff in Ireland?

You seem to have a massive amount of tar on that brush of yours.

Discodog

Anan1 wrote: »

90%+ of the dishonesty I ever saw was coming from the customers.

When I first started our MD would say that they (the customers) don't trust us & you should never trust them .

The funniest were the fairground lads. You would value their Merc as a PX but when they bought it in to collect their new car you would realise that everything that could be changed had been changed. What you had seen as a nice PX now had 4 bald tyres, holes in the exhaust, tears in the seats etc. They all drove the same model so that they could swap parts over.

Anan1 wrote: »

Let the business go to the professionals out there who are prepared to do the job well.

That might not happen as the problem goes right back to the owners of the dealerships & in some cases to whoever holds the Irish agency. Ireland wasn't seen as a big market so it was easy to "buy" the manufacturer's franchise. Many years ago, in the UK, the manufacturers took back the wholesalers & concessions. BMW, Mercedes etc all opened head offices in the UK.

I suspect that the owners & concessions have no idea of how to run proper sales operations. In their day it was all about who you knew & where you played golf :rolleyes:

Discodog

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

And how many sales staff have you dealt with, say in the last 10 years?

As a percentage, what would that figure be of the number of sales staff in Ireland?

You seem to have a massive amount of tar on that brush of yours.

I surveyed over 30 dealerships & they were all bad. Their wasn't one shining light.

By the way the poor service isn't just restricted to the motor trade. It is endemic in most businesses.

thebman

I had my first good experience with a car dealer when I bought recently and TBH I was shocked because I once worked with one god awful previous car sales man who told me his stories with pride.

Drummerboy08

Discodog wrote: »

I surveyed over 30 dealerships & they were all bad. Their wasn't one shining light.

By the way the poor service isn't just restricted to the motor trade. It is endemic in most businesses.

But my problem isnt with you. My problem is with someone has an opinion of something that he hasn't really researched or experienced fully (like you for example).

Being told that you, a member of your family and your work colleagues probably deserve to lose their jobs by someone who hasnt a clue is really rather annoying, and pretty hurtful too.

Declan Lander

Discodog wrote: »

I spent many years in car sales in the UK. I started as a sales exec & ended up as a sales director. One of the reasons why we did so well was because of the standard of our sales staff. We preferred to take on people with no previous motor trade experience - in other words before they had developed bad practises. Some of my most successful salespeople were women. They are more methodical than men & have a better attention to detail.

I was asked to do a mystery shopping exercise in Ireland during the boom. The standards were appalling & attitude of the dealerships was dire. One recent example was when I went to buy parts for a Landrover at a main dealer. My old parts department would always add every parts customer to the sales database whereas this dealer didn't even ask my name.

If someone had phoned my old dealership & asked for a test drive on a Sunday we would of said "no problem what time" as we worked weekends, evenings etc. It was all about serving the customer & because we did it well we all earned really well.

From what I have heard the recession hasn't improved the quality of salespeople. It is very hard for a Leopard to change it's spots.

Sounds like you worked for a decent outfit. Who were they ?

john reilly

bill cullen the most annoying car salesman ever

bladespin

john reilly wrote: »

bill cullen the most annoying car salesman ever

Yeah but 10/10 for effort, that's the kind of salesman I'd expect to see.

Declan Lander

bladespin wrote: »

Yeah but 10/10 for effort, that's the kind of salesman I'd expect to see.

0/10. The effort is for Bill's benefit, not yours.
I'd say Bill holds his average customer in sneering contempt.

johnthemull

In every walk of life you will get good and bad. Just bought a BMW from a great salesman, no bull****, let me spend the day driving any car I wanted on my own, and gave me a great price for my old banger. Absolutely no complaints:cool:

Anan1

Drummerboy08 wrote: »

Being told that you, a member of your family and your work colleagues probably deserve to lose their jobs by someone who hasnt a clue is really rather annoying, and pretty hurtful too.

Unless you, your family or your work colleagues are disinterested and inept salespeople, i'm struggling to see how any of what I said applies to you?

Discodog

Sitec wrote: »

The worst is salesmen who aren't into cars. Purely there for the money and haven't a clue about the brand or vehicle they're selling.
If you get a salesman who is passionate about the brand and has good customer focus it's a pleasure to buy car.

I disagree. I preferred to employ people that wanted to be successful & understood the importance of customer service. Funnily enough most of them weren't really into cars. They would of been good at their job whatever they were selling.

It's usually about doing the basics right. If you say that you will call someone at 9am you don't call at 10am. You ensure that you meet every commitment that you make. What people want is for a salesperson to identify their need & then satisfy it. It's not rocket science. It actually helps that people have low expectations - it's easier to impress them

johnthemull wrote: »

Just bought a BMW from a great salesman, no bull****, let me spend the day driving any car I wanted on my own, and gave me a great price for my old banger. Absolutely no complaints

He would of got some serious complaints if he had worked for me. We would never allow someone to test drive a car unaccompanied because you lose control of the situation. It's great for the customer though .

johnthemull

Discodog wrote: »

Sitec wrote: »

The worst is salesmen who aren't into cars. Purely there for the money and haven't a clue about the brand or vehicle they're selling.
If you get a salesman who is passionate about the brand and has good customer focus it's a pleasure to buy car.

I disagree. I preferred to employ people that wanted to be successful & understood the importance of customer service. Funnily enough most of them weren't really into cars. They would of been good at their job whatever they were selling.

It's usually about doing the basics right. If you say that you will call someone at 9am you don't call at 10am. You ensure that you meet every commitment that you make. What people want is for a salesperson to identify their need & then satisfy it. It's not rocket science. It actually helps that people have low expectations - it's easier to impress them

johnthemull wrote: »

Just bought a BMW from a great salesman, no bull****, let me spend the day driving any car I wanted on my own, and gave me a great price for my old banger. Absolutely no complaints

He would of got some serious complaints if he had worked for me. We would never allow someone to test drive a car unaccompanied because you lose control of the situation. It's great for the customer though .

Maybe you should take a look at how you do things. I would suggest its not illegal? The strategy worked for the garage. I really hope you don't have an agenda that wants to shaft someone?

tw0nk

This is a really interesting thread, when I bought my last car (2 years ago) I was on the lookout for a number of weeks in the Wexford area. I ended up narrowing my choice down to 3 cars and was straight up with each salesman about the 3 cars and the garages they were available in.
One salesman on hearing that I was looking at cars in different garages completely lost interest and couldn't be arsed, one of them consistently tried to up-sell me to a new car, one entirely different to the one I was interested in, and the last guy rang me back with extra information, like:

- he got the second set of keys from original owner
- they were able to get all scratches out of paintwork and would I like to see it?
- could open up the garage on the sunday to complete sale if I couldnt make it down on the saturday

I bought the car from the last guy but the amount of sales people I met that annoyed me in just the Wexford area was amazing, reasons included:

- All but 2 of them not ringing me back after taking my details to find out if they could source the type of car I wanted (please ring back even if you cant find one)
- Leaving me waiting for ages in showroom
- Giving incorrect information about cars (I had done my research beforehand) the phrase "I dont know" is ok to say
- Not willing to deal, this was weird, instead of entering any kind of negotiation, just saying repeatably "the price is the price", the perception with buying cars, wrong or right, is that haggling is part of it, you cannot change this overnight

I did meet some good salesmen, one was a Mercedes guy, who knew his stuff and drove the old model, really honest about depreciation etc. But the overwhelming majority took a lot of the fun out of buying a car

Discodog

johnthemull wrote: »

Maybe you should take a look at how you do things. I would suggest its not illegal? The strategy worked for the garage. I really hope you don't have an agenda that wants to shaft someone?

Sorry I haven't a clue regarding what you are trying to say or imply. What's not illegal ?

If you are referring to letting a customer take a car for a day it may result in a sale or not but there are professional reasons for not doing it.

Unless you set up & get signed a formal loan agreement you may be encouraging problems. You also have insurance issues. Then there is the possibility that the loan conveniently coincides with a wedding etc. Losing the car for a day also stops anyone else from viewing it so you are then giving a bad service to another customer. Then there is potential damage, stone chips, etc.

A professional dealership has to balance what the customer wants against what is best practice. Next time the garage loans out the car for a day the customer might crash it or take it to his mate who says that it's the wrong model etc. Someone might be very keen to buy it & today is the only day that they are free for a demo but the car is gone for the day.

gerarda

Last year I took a trip to a certain BMW dealer in Kildare as I was interested in buying a 2nd hand merc he had. I arranged a viewing and asked that if he sells it in the meantime to please contact me to save me a wasted journey and he replied 'of course - we pride ourselves on customer service'. So i drove down and yes you guessed right - the car was sold that morning! I asked why didn't he call me and he said it wasn't him I was speaking to on the phone! I said ' Is your name: ***** ? and he said yes. I reminded him about his customer service and that he promised to call me and he just laughed at me. So i just walked away, later that day he called me to say that the car I wanted to view was sold!! I swiftly told him to f**k off! and hung up.

Discodog

tw0nk wrote: »

- Not willing to deal, this was weird, instead of entering any kind of negotiation, just saying repeatably "the price is the price", the perception with buying cars, wrong or right, is that haggling is part of it, you cannot change this overnight

I was selling Mercs & BMW's in the days when giving a discount could lose you the franchise. BMW would even phone dealerships, posing as buyers, to try & get discounts.

But only an idiot says "the price is the price". It is all about how you empathise with the customer. You have to find a way where you give the customer something. It might be cheap finance, or a long warranty. The key to a successful negotiation is it ends with both parties feeling good about it.

tw0nk

Discodog wrote: »

I was selling Mercs & BMW's in the days when giving a discount could lose you the franchise. BMW would even phone dealerships, posing as buyers, to try & get discounts.

Wow that's amazing, but I guess it's pretty much the same with apple products to make a vague comparison. I would say though that the car I was looking at was used, were they that strict on used cars too?

Discodog

gerarda wrote: »

Last year I took a trip to a certain BMW dealer in Kildare as I was interested in buying a 2nd hand merc he had. I arranged a viewing and asked that if he sells it in the meantime to please contact me to save me a wasted journey and he replied 'of course - we pride ourselves on customer service'. So i drove down and yes you guessed right - the car was sold that morning! I asked why didn't he call me and he said it wasn't him I was speaking to on the phone! I said ' Is your name: ***** ? and he said yes. I reminded him about his customer service and that he promised to call me and he just laughed at me. So i just walked away, later that day he called me to say that the car I wanted to view was sold!! I swiftly told him to f**k off! and hung up.

That's a classic example of not doing something simple & it's this that gets people so angry. Good salespeople have to be good organisers - they tend to be good diary keepers & very disciplined.

Discodog

tw0nk wrote: »

Wow that's amazing, but I guess it's pretty much the same with apple products to make a vague comparison. I would say though that the car I was looking at was used, were they that strict on used cars too?

You would of thought that price fixing was illegal but it isn't. Companies like Apple, Nike, etc have all been accused of maintaining a standard retail price. There was a famous case in the UK when Tesco started selling Levis. The manufacturer couldn't stop them selling them so they said that any wholesaler selling to Tesco would not longer be allowed be supplied with Levis. It's price fixing by the back door

Stainless_Steel

There is a lot of chancers out there, especially used car dealers.

I reckon I have dealt with about 15. I can only remember one that was nice to deal with.

djimi

Ive had mostly good dealings with car salespeople in my time but the thing that gets me with a lot of them is that they have a tendancy to treat you like a bit of an idiot. One dealer I went into I was looking at an Accord they had for sale; I was trading in a Civic and at all times I made it plainly clear that I was looking for another Honda and was not really interested in anything else. He then proceeds to spend about 15 minutes trying to convince me to buy a Hyundai Lantra... Its a bit annoying when you know what you want but the dealer isnt really listening to you.

Timmaay

Dear god, you coming from a Honda, and a dealer has the cheek to try flog you a Hyundai Lantra !

Tubbs4

When going for my first car i was asked what budget i had. Was shown a dawoo car that he could leave go for the top budget of 3500. It was Saturday so after the test drive he locked up shortly afterwards. Went home to compare prices in the dawoo car and saw he had it on Carzone for 2750. Went to another dealer and got a better car after research this time.
Just goes to show how they try rob people as if he said 2750 i be stuck in a dawoo car for a year.

Discodog

Timmaay wrote: »

Dear god, you coming from a Honda, and a dealer has the cheek to try flog you a Hyundai Lantra !

Yes because the Lantra probably had a sales bonus on it

Discodog

Tubbs4 wrote: »

When going for my first car i was asked what budget i had. Was shown a dawoo car that he could leave go for the top budget of 3500. It was Saturday so after the test drive he locked up shortly afterwards. Went home to compare prices in the dawoo car and saw he had it on Carzone for 2750. Went to another dealer and got a better car after research this time.
Just goes to show how they try rob people as if he said 2750 i be stuck in a dawoo car for a year.

It would of been funny if you had a car to part exchange. Say they valued your PX at €1000. You accept the deal & then point out that the car is €2750

shankespony

Customer service can be very poor, particularly for women who call in to look at buying a car, what a mistake it is for the salesman to focus on the male when selling the car a definite no no. My opinion was they had done all their homework on the web and if you treated them properly then they were more likely to buy than male customers.