Selling cars can be an uphill battle. That’s not to say there aren’t wildly successful car salespeople or that it’s not a rewarding or lucrative career, but even with the best car sales training it isn’t easy to close a deal. Fewer people are willing to drop the money on a new car these days, and they don’t want to be spending every day at the auto mechanic because they bought a clunker. However, we’ve gathered some great techniques that will turn you from just an ordinary sales person into a car selling machine.
Listen
One of the biggest mistake sales people make is that they spend all of their time trying to convince a potential buyer about what car they should buy, trying to spout off as many features as they can to make the car sound great until they’re blue in the face. There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to buy a car and all the sales person is doing is yammering on. If you actually listen to what the customer is looking for, you can help them arrive at a car they’ll actually buy and they will feel like their opinion matters. Always listen more than you talk.
Analyze the Situation
This logically follows the listening, because as you’re listening to the needs of the customer you will begin to see the situation that is prompting them to buy a new car. Do they want increased safety and reliability because they’re starting a family? Do they want something with great gas mileage? Do they want something clean and eco-friendly? By analyzing their primary concerns, you can then start to formulate viable options for them that cater to their situation. Forcing what you think people want on them is a sure-fire way to lose business.
Patience
Just like a skilled automotive technician must be patient when working out the kinks of fixing a car, so must a car salesperson be patient when trying to sell. Hastily trying to get the customer to pick a car or trying to close the deal as quickly as possible are awful sales tactics. With more automotive information available on the internet and the trades training BC offers, customers these days are more likely to have a better idea of what they want. But buying a car is a huge decision, and people need time to mull it over. Give them your card, tell them you’ll do anything you can to help them, and that you’re always available. No one’s going to want to buy from you if you’re trying to get them out the door as fast as possible.
Today’s car sales professionals avoid all the clichéd “tricks” and “scams” of decades past, and must be honest, attentive and patient. Check out this great video that sheds some light on why people so often fail at sales. Steve Richards makes some very good points that today’s informed, internet-savvy customer requires an educational salesperson that gets potential customers excited about the car but is logical and mathematical in the closing sequence.
