Looking for a new car - are we doing something wrong?

[[TW]Fox]

We're thinking of getting a Yeti... went to the Skoda dealer at the weekend and within a few minutes speculative chat we were just offered the keys to go for a test drive on my own - no time/distance restrictions stated (but it only had 35 miles of fuel onboard!).

Yup, some dealers get it absolutely right.

Others would have you down as a 'timewaster' because you didn't buy today.

 

[The Running Man]

I guess thats the difference between an order taker and a salesman. The order taker will lose the sale to the broker every time so presumably has no interest in dealing with anyone who doesn't walk in offering list price with supaguard. The salesman, however, will clinch that sale at least some of the time.

Everyone who walks in* could be a potential sale, just some need a bit more work than others.

*Maybe not the guy in the N reg Saxo.

The sales guys aren't there to think about Ford globals P&L. They have a months target and they want to hit it. Unless they are KPI'd on After sales revenue why would they care if you came back for a service in 12 months time? They will be out if a job for not hitting targets or working for Citroën instead so won't care about that. You could be out wasting your time test driving with mr and mrs daisy and your competitor swoops on a potential legit sale while your wasting your time.

I work with 400 sales guys daily, you have to think about their narrow minded will this help me hit my target today or not? Of course you could come back in a month but they will have a knack of filtering out the buyers from the tryers. Of course none of this means that they shouldn't be genuine, polite and courteous. But the same needs to be true from the customer too..

 

[[TW]Fox]

The sales guys aren't there to think about Ford globals P&L. They have a months target and they want to hit it. Unless they are KPI'd on After sales revenue why would they care if you came back for a service in 12 months time? They will be out if a job for not hitting targets or working for Citroën instead so won't care about that. You could be out wasting your time test driving with mr and mrs daisy and your competitor swoops on a potential legit sale while your wasting your time.

This is pretty much exactly what I already said.

The salesman has no incentive or reason to care about service revenue which is why most of them don't. But the business that employees the salesman DOES have a reason to care about service revenue as it's likely the highest margin operation they carry out on that premises!

IMHO the entire system is broken and out of date but quite what the alternative is I've no idea.

 

[Rich_L]

IMHO the entire system is broken and out of date but quite what the alternative is I've no idea.

Tesla must be doing something right, judging by the amount of money from the car dealership industry paying for laws banning them from directly selling to the public

 

[Marvin]

Well I'm glad that we're not being unreasonable, although in a way I'd have liked to be told that we are doing something wrong - obviously it's easier to re-manage one's own ways than to try and change some of these dealer's attitudes.

I understand the counter point about targets and so on - not wanting to waste time with customers on test drives if you don't think they're interested , but then you could always offer them a test drive without accompanying them everywhere like a limpet. Any dealer worth its salt should have unaccompanied demo cover (it's not that expensive in the scheme of things) and actually have a taxed demonstrator. Again, perhaps I'm being unreasonable.

I take it that those of you who do work in the trade/in sales presumably buy effectively blind? As that is what we're effectively being asked to do.