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You dealers are F'ing crazy

Alex Snyder

President Skroob
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May 1, 2006
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I just posted an article over on the blog (I know, I know, I'm way overdue) -
You F’ing crazy car dealers. Title a bit too harsh?
Be sure to jump over onto the blog and give it a quick glance. Then come back here and let me know what you think...

...because I haven’t worked in a dealership for more than 6 years now. Today I’m a vendor; working closely with OEMs and dealers. I've have been explaining to coworkers and manufacturer representatives how to make life easier for dealers, BUT unless they have dealer experience, neither will ever understand.

People who buy and have their car worked on at car dealerships are the root of all our communication issues. That’s basically because they’re fuk'n crazy!

If car buyers were sane we’d all drive a Hyundai Accents, perfectly reliable for A to B travel and affordability. But we’re emotional predators who want all the options and accessories and not have to pay for it.

So, when our customer side comes out, we make most of our buying decision in an emotionally irrational manner. And our emotional side is fed like a fire. Fed by someone else’s emotions: our sales agent. He/She reinsures that we’re making good decisions, so we more easily say “yes.”

And that’s the key.

An emotionless sales agent cannot sell to most buyers; she needs to be short-sighted and excited.

So a dealership’s sales success is based on how well the sales team can empathize with a bat-shit crazy customer. To put it another way: being bat-shit crazy is good business.

Unfortunately for our industry we have clashes between car dealers, vendors, and OEMs because bat-shit crazy is not good business where detailed planning is necessary. The building of software and automobiles requires deep rational thought with long-term visibility. It is almost robotic on the emotional scale.

I’m fortunate to have been a bat-shit crazy car dealer most of my life and have gained the experience to operate as a stone-cold boring robot. Both have their upsides and their downsides.

Not many people have had the chance to live on each side of the fence, but it is the only way to truly understand both parties. One must live it and feed your family from it.

On your next frustrating call, please remember that culture is causing your communication breakdown. And that culture has good reason to exist.

What do you think, is being bat-shit crazy is good business?
 
I don't know if it's good for business but I agree. People/Consumers morph into someone TOTALLY DIFFERENT when it's time to buy a vehicle. We become extremely selfish, greedy, often bad tempered and many times logic gets tossed out the door = bat shit crazy.

And the longer they shop, the crazier they get...


CrazyCarShopper.jpg

IMO - this is why most car buying statistics are crap.
 
I hate to end the funny streak of bat shit commentary but saw the post and it reminded me of something I recently read in the book "Priceless" by William Poundstone. In the book the author gives several examples of the ultimatum game. In all of the scenarios if the subjects behaved as reasonable economic model proxies they would accept free money regardless of how low the offers were. The surprising consistency around low offers however was that they were often rejected. It seemed as if the receiving individual in the studies were deciding to turn down money to spite the offering participant. Why would they do this? Because somewhere coded deep in our DNA is a want and need for fairness. When presented with an unfair offer people do get a little nutty.

My thought is less about getting emotional charged sales personnel and more about creating an environment to help reduce the chances of unreasonable behavior. I would suggest changing your entire online and in store process to eliminate this potential confrontation from occurring. Decide the profit you are willing to make on each deal and implement a purchasing and pricing strategy to support it. Create a sales process that supports it. Provide training and accountability that supports it.

Fairness is most likely not a generationally specific moral quality but it does seem to be a prevailing concern of millennials(I know, I know, I am tired of even typing it):

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/d...tte/gx-millenial-survey-2016-exec-summary.pdf

http://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Econ 286/Fairness.pdf

Sorry if this took an unexpected hard left turn into a serious discussion but I couldn't help myself.
 
What a bat-shit crazy idea @Cullen C :lmao:

Why would you actually provide a decent thought for us to chew on?

Yes! For damn sure fairness and good presentations of it is really all those bat-shit crazy customers want. For some reason we have shunned this notion for what seems to be the easy route: just throw a piece of meat out on the pavement and see if he closes deals. No way would one ever want to hire a professional whom they would need to invest in with training, a humane schedule, and fair pay? That's just ludicrous!

Your point points out that we (as an industry) really don't understand customers. Which, in turn, means we don't know how to staff for them.
 
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