5 Customer Relations Tips for Auto Sales Graduates
Auto sales is a tricky business in the automotive industry, sometimes much more so than an automotive technician – but it’s an incredibly rewarding one as well. Your main job is to ensure the satisfaction of the customer, and to see that what is requested or ordered is fulfilled in a timely and professional manner. However, things go wrong, customers get angry, and sometimes the world of customer service and auto sales can seem like complete and total chaos, even with all that car sales training. So how do you keep your cool in a world that’s so dependent on you being cheerful, helpful and productive?
These are five great consumer relation tips for graduates of auto sales!
- Listen. This may seem completely intuitive and extremely obvious, but it would blow your mind to know how often people get so caught up in what they’re trying to say or sell that they just stop listening. Really, truly listening to what the other party has to say means that you’ll be able to serve their needs as perfectly as possible. If you don’t listen to what they’re actually saying they want, how do you expect to make them happy?
- Be efficient. Being a friendly, helpful person is great, but it’s not everything. People want to be handled efficiently and professionally. If you’re a likeable, beaming person but take a slower, much less efficient course of action or completely forget to do something, that’s not very helpful.
- Punctuality is essential. Not even a cheerful attitude can get you out of the doghouse for a missed deadline. There is nothing more unprofessional than being late for a meeting, late for delivering a project or, well, late on anything. Punctuality is the mark of professionalism in auto careers.
- Make sure people are informed. Keeping people in the dark is no good to anyone. If people clearly understand the options they have and what they mean, they’ll be able to make an informed decision and most likely walk away happy and fulfilled, instead of you assuming you know what’s best without consulting them. Giving people all of the information you can is essential to retaining good relationships.
- Follow up. You’d be surprised how few people ever do this. Following up reassures the person that they’re not just another face, and that you actually have some heart invested in this relationship. People will respond much better to you if they feel they’re being treated like an individual, not just one of many units being cycled through.
Running with these five great tips will have you mastering the art of auto sales in no time.
