Being a car salesman

The whole salesman - customer relationship is much changed from what it was 10 years ago. Price in the key now - remote purchasing and valuations mens the role of salesman or saleswoman is largely reduntant. How much commission do you expect to earn per car? Its not as much as you think. If a car shows a 1000€ profit you might get 10% - 100€ minus income tax means its not a lot in your pocket at the end of the month.

Still good opportunities to clean up if you are a good salesman with a good brand IMO. Still probably will be for another few years too, did hear a stat recently like the average Irish new car buyer now makes 0.8 showroom visits before they buy a car. Means I suppose some people never visit and everybody else doesn't visit twice, if they are in the building, they are there to buy.

Tricky enough getting a start in a useful position though. You'd need to be getting in with a good brand, in a dealership that doesn't already have too many piranahas in the tank as they say and also somewhere that isn't looking for a junior salesman, that's just someone to organise the key box and straighten up all the cars on the forecourt for minimum wage.

Be looking to get in with VW group, Hyundai or even Renault would be good i'd say. Be prepared to never have a lunch break or Saturday off again. Lot's of timewasters and lots of people will have to get insulted price wise.

If you think you are good at selling though, that's where you'll make money, swlling lifeshine, gap insurance, suervice plans, extended warranties, finance etc. "All the bits".

take tips form the best ARTHUR DALEY 😉

Over the next few years, a lot of manufacturers will be changing to follow the Tesla model so it's going to be predominantly online sales, with handover hubs next to service centres. Volvo have already publicly announced this and its rumoured others will be announcing fairly soon, so the need for new car sales people is going to dry up over the next few years. Whether dealerships will then flip to mostly used sales and need sales people, I don't know.

Also - one of my dealer contacts left car sales earlier this year to go and sell sheds! More commission per unit on a shed than a new car, and more units moving.

Lots of people don’t actually care what their car is like to drive, only the price of it and what it looks like. That can be expressed easily over the internet.

A few years ago I saw an early version of BMWs virtual reality showroom- and it was good. The teenagers playing games on VR headsets now are going to have no hangups about using them to spec their cars in a few years time.

showrooms in shopping centres may become a thing too- small unit with brand ‘experts’, videos, configuration kiosks etc and a few cars in the underground car park to test drive. SEAT have a setup like this in Westfield in London.

Closer to home, AFAIK one of the premium brand dealers in the southwest will on request send a sales guy with a demo car to your house anywhere from Donegal to Kerry. I imagine this is colossally expensive so I’d expect the customer‘s willingness to buy to be well sounded out first.

Ireland will as usual be well behind the rest of the world in rolling out any new process innovations, so there’s some life left in the car sales job for a few more years yet.

Test drives weren't possible for ages during lock down, and cars were still selling by the bucket load. A large proportion of people nowadays don't want/need to test drive a vehicle before buying.

Great margin to the manufacturer selling direct to the public and giving someone a handling charge for vehicle prep and handover. The last 18 months or so has changed thinking in a lot of industries - who needs a fancy physical premises when most of the donkey work can be done from a bedsit in Dublin 9 (or Bangalore).

It's a pity really but the world changes. I personally miss paper brochures etc. but I'm most likely in a tiny minority like that

There are already huge online car supermarkets popping up in the UK and its only a matter of time before they catch on more. And loads of used cars were sold online throughout lockdown.

Look at Cinch.co.uk for example.

Id expect that a same-brand, low mileage, 2-3 yo car could be reasonably valued off a set of photos. The dealer would have more or less the same allowance in their mind to get such a car prepped to 'approved used car' status. For other brands, older cars etc., I expect they'd go straight to the trade as is. The used car dealer makes the call on whether it's worth their while putting money into the car in order to retail it. Dont really think the car supermarket concept has really caught on here yet (Im not aware of any apart from the Charles Hurst one in Baldonnel), but cashoffernow.ie and zucar.ie offer an easy way to offload your car for cash before you get stuck into looking for a new one. Just don't expect a high offer:-)

The strange irony is, the distributors (particularly the premium ones) have spent the last few years forcing dealers to spend millions on massive glass showrooms - or lose the franchise!