Tag car sales

So I have found that potential clients for my race timing service may have an issue writing a check to an individual versus a business name.  I had avoided getting a business bank account until now because I made the assumption it would be a pain in the ass bridge that didn’t need to be crossed until things got rolling.  Well yesterday I found out I was wrong.

The type of account I would need is called a DBA (doing business as) account which allows me to accept payments under the business name.  Establishing this type of account has minimal requirements.  All I had to do was officially file a “Fictitious Name” on on a Florida state web site which costs $50.  Once the application is officially filed all I should need to do is take the form to a bank along with my drivers license. I was surprised it could be that simple.  Just like so many things, if you don’t dig below the surface you don’t get anywhere. (or learn anything)

The next thing I will need to do but not right away is get a LLC established which will allow me to create an invisible barrier between my personal and business assets. It’s a smart way to protect yourself.

So if you are part of the Facebook crowd you are familiar with what TBT means, Throw Back Thursday.  It has become an excuse for people to post old pictures of themselves which can be funny to varying degrees.  Well I thought I occasionally would use TBT as a tool to write about past chunks of my life.  Today’s chunk is the 16 months I spent as new/used car salesman at a Hyundai dealership in the late 80’s.

The job was my first that did not involve physical labor.  I was 20 or 21 years old and had been working at Weis Markets as a meat cutter for the last 2-3 years.  I thought it was odd that a car dealership was willing to hire a young kid with no sales experience but I later realized it was by design.  They were able to train/mold the new hire from scratch the way they wanted since the hire didn’t have any prior experience.

The job seemed incredibly exciting to a young dumb kid like me.  The sales manager and successful salesman talked of the six figure salaries that were within reach.  Of course that top end was weighted by the reality that your actual “salary” was $75 A WEEK.  So if you had a slow week and sold no vehicles you pocketed maybe 60 bucks.  I also got to wear fancy clothes to work instead of nasty garments that constantly had the stench of spoiled meat on them.  Finally, all salesman were also given a free loaner vehicle to drive which was “free”, as long as you sold 10 cars a month.  If you fell short of that goal you were charged for it.  I think it was either 100 or 200 bucks penalty. So of course all the focus up front in my naive mind was the highlights and not the potential pitfalls of the job.

The staff at the dealership had some of the most interesting collection of personalities I ever had been exposed to.  The general manger (who was fired a few months after I started) looked like he stepped right off the set of a soap opera.  He was classically handsome and smooth.  The sales manager, Jerry, was as slick as they came.  He knew every trick when it came to closing a deal and there was basically no line he would not cross in pursuit of making a sale.  Jerry was promoted to general manager. Jerry’s dad was the manager of the service department.

There were a couple other guys that were sales managers during my tenure, both of them lifetime car salesman.  Phil was a well dressed and likable Italian.  He was less aggressive than Jerry but still very polished in his TO skills. A TO was when you “turned over” a client that you could not close to the sales manager so he could take a shot at beating them into submission.

Butch who also was a lifetime car guy whose father owned a Ford dealership, (never quite knew why he was at a Hyundai joint) would sometimes fill in the closer role.  He looked like an average Joe with a big full beard.  His style was markedly different.  He talked to customers in a very quiet manner, a few ticks above a whisper.

The sales crew had a few memorable cast members on it as well.  Rich was a tall funny guy with nicely feathered hair. He was always cracking jokes and could make nearly anyone laugh.  He used his personality to his advantage as he was one of the top salesman at the dealership.  He always wore the best clothes and high end accessories.

Terry  was an overweight, classic car salesman who looked like he could be a cousin of Andy Reid.  He was a relatively mild mannered, low pressure type of salesman who really did not fit into the mold of what the sales managers wanted.  He never sold that many cars and his stint at Hyundai was probably less than 8 months.  He was the first person that ever took notice enough of my speech that he mentioned how I start running words together if I spoke too fast or was excited. It’s something I always knew I did to some degree but until Terry said something about it I never really focused on it much.  From that moment on I have always been very aware of it.

There was a young kid like me whose name is escaping me (we nicknamed him Eddie cause he looked like Eddie Munster) who seemed like a young Jerry, the slick sales manager.  He came from a boat dealership but easily slipped into the car sales genre since the skill set was basically the same.  He was Italian as well and dressed in a manner that looked appropriate for both the car dealership or the set of the Sopranos.

Jon was a skinny, middle aged, thick glasses wearing guy who looked more like a chemistry teacher than a car salesman.  He had a very quirky personality that was hard to figure out at times.  He was pretty successful during his brief tenure at the dealership but his personality also included an aspect of perpetual malcontent which expedited his departure.  He must have liked me because before he left he gave me all of his potential leads.

Bob was very interesting.  He was a cool dude in his late 20’s early 30’s that had an odd small patch of gray hair.  He was a high level, competitive skate boarder which always seemed like an odd fit to me with a car sales career.  He talked in a manner which seemed very 420.  He never seemed to get overly excited or angry.  I saw him show off some of his skateboard skills firsthand around the service garage, they were indeed impressive.

Then there was Mike, a red headed, motivated ball of fire.  He was almost always the top salesman each month and there was a reason, he was aggressive, relentless, and oppressively positive.   Quite often before he walked out on the lot to approach his “UP” he would declare to all of us how he was going to sell them a car.  More often than not he backed it up.

Mike was also one of the most polarizing salesman on the force, routinely stepping on the toes of the other salesman, cutting into the UP line or conveniently ignoring a “be back” (was in dealership before) customers work with another salesman and act like they were new.  If a customer worked with more than one salesman the commission was split between them.  If not the salesman gets it all.  Mike was one of those act first, apologize later type of people.  He figured if he got flagged for stealing someones b-back he could always just claim ignorance of the prior interaction with another salesman.  Mike had a few nervous ticks which included a head tilt coordinated with a half shoulder shrug.  When he was going in for the kill the ticks would increase.

About midway through my 16 months a decently attractive woman named Christy started whom was a slightly dialed down version of Mike.  An aggressive woman salesperson can do very well and she did just that.  She had a slight gap between her front teeth but her body was good enough that most men didn’t notice.

In the F&I office (finance and insurance) we had Todd who gave off an extremely polite and professional aura to anyone who first met him.  He used this to seduce customers into a false sense of comfort as he sold them loans packed full of profit bloating options like jacked finance rates, extended warranty packages and loan insurance.  All of these options were overpriced.  Anything he got over their actual cost to the dealer was what he got paid on.  It was funny watching him transform the second the customer walked out of the door where he would celebrate another “full boat” F&I deal which typically included a high five with the sales manager.

I was friendly with a few of the guys outside of work.  I used to play racquetball with the sales manager Jerry and F&I Todd.  Mike and I played a few intense games of one on one basketball followed by just hanging out from time to time.  Seeing him outside of the sales floor allowed me to get to know the non-prick side of him.

My sales style was pretty much in the middle.  I tried to follow the outline provided to me by the sales manager but I was never a slick talker, pressure applier, or adept liar.  I tried to instead focus on knowing the features of the car well and use that knowledge as a tool to educate potential customers.  After all at that time Hyundai was a brand new name so most people knew nothing about them.

Some of the tactics taught to me were pretty funny.  Whenever we listed used cars in the paper we never would include the price, instead there were directions to call for the low, low price.  When we got a call for the price we were supposed to make a lot of noise, bang on the desk for example, and then tell the customer that we were out in the service area.  You then tell them you can get the price as soon as you get back to your desk, all you need is their phone number to call them right back.  Just like that you have scored the persons phone number without them even realizing it.  From that point on they were in your lead book that you would go through on a regular basis, calling them to buy something until they either came in or bought somewhere else. There were a ton of little tricks like this we were instructed to use.

Sometimes things got really crazy.  I remember during one deal that did not involve me (one of Mike’s customers)a negotiation got very intense.  The customer said they had enough and got up to walk out the door.  As he approached the door the sales manager locked it, refusing to let the customer go until they worked out a deal.  Believe it or not they actually wound up getting the sale.

Early on in my car sales career I had some moderate success, letting friends and family know I was in the business brought in some sales, something I am sure the dealership counted on when they hired me.  I was having a good time.  Making a car sale was exciting, driving a new car for free was cool, and the cast of characters I was working with were stimulating.  Things started to get significantly less exciting as we entered the slow months of car sales.

There were days and even weeks where 95% of your day was spent staring out into the lot waiting for an “UP” (customer) to appear.  If you spent the entire day waiting and the one UP you got was someone just wasting time while the wife was shopping at K-mart it was incredibly frustrating.  I had quite a few of those no sales, salary only weeks which made you feel like an utter failure.

The times were tough for all the salesman as the newness of the Hyundai brand faded.  Pretty much every single sales person I listed earlier, except Christy, left the dealership before I did.  Turnover in the car sales business is pretty extreme.  By the time I left I was pretty beat down by months of meager sales and even more meager paychecks.  From there I moved on to an inside sales job for Donnelly Directory but that is a story for another TBT.