Posted May 6, 2009

A quick entry tonight since even sales guys sometimes get distracted watching overtime playoff hockey games. www.hurricanes.com

My weekly LinkedIn network update email  arrived today and I noticed that one of my connections responded to a poll with a title:

“When purchasing a car would you prefer to negotiate or have price pre-set?”

Answer the poll here: http://bit.ly/fvAPv  (BTW, the poll author really needs more responses. And I hate to send you away and risk that you won’t come back, but I have strong opinions. You should go do the poll before reading what this persuasive sales guy has to say)

I had to make some assumptions to answer that question, but it made me wonder about the sales model that is commonly used in the US to sell new autos. Is the model, which assumes some level of negotiation will take place, a good thing?

I believe that the role of a sales person is to make their products fly off the shelves (or parking lots, I suppose) by providing solutions to customer’s problems and putting the interest of the customers first. So, what problem, exactly do the sales people really solve in the US retail auto sales model. Sadly, I fear that too many tend to create more problems than they solve. Seriously. how many of you have honestly felt that the retail auto sales folks that have worked with you in the past had YOUR best interest in mind? How many honestly tried to assess your transportation needs, as opposed to determining first what the maximum amount of money they could extract from you was, then searching for a car that was priced 10% beyond that amount?

Can you tell that I have personally had a few bad experiences on car lots where I felt I was blatantly being mistreated and manipulated?

So here is my take: I prefer not to negotiate, and think that the customer would be better served by a model that offered set, but reasonable, fair pricing, and eliminated the sales people who’s sole role often appears to be focused on getting the upper hand in negotiations. This would remove a very costly layer of the business model and exponentially improve the experience of the buyer. Maybe a few non-commission product specialist would be needed to answer product questions, but the “I’ll have to go ask my manager” pricing games could finally stop.

What do you think?

Am I missing something here? Are retail auto sales folks really noble victims of unfair stereotypes?

Would you rather buy a car off the shelf at WalMart, or from Joe the Pro Negotiator?

Jeff Cress, the Sales Guy

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