People Will NOT Care About How Much You Know, Until They Know How Much You Care

This concept is one that is missed so much in sales, especially in the automotive industry. Think about it, when you first get into this business, you get inundated with factory training. The manufacture of the brand of your dealership wants to make sure you know all about the products you are about to sell. You spend hours and hours at a computer watching videos, reading articles, and even taking tests about your product knowledge. Then you go out and experience the cars for yourself. You sit inside them, that them out for a test drive, and really get to know the product. Seems, like knowing your products is one of the most important things a salesperson can do to be prepared for a customer, right?

Maybe, Maybe Not

Let’s take a look at it from another perspective. In the above scenario, we talked about the hours and hours we spend learning about our product, but how much time do we spend getting to know our customers. Be honest, how many questions do you really ask to in order to get to know your customer better? If you were truly honest, and if you are like most salespeople, you do not spend enough time getting to know your customer.

Now imagine this scenario, a customer walks onto the showroom floor, and when you greet them, they tell you that they are there to see a specific stock number. In this scenario, if you are like most salespeople, the few investigative questions you typically ask, go right out the window as you rush to show the customer the vehicle they asked about. Most salespeople in this situation think the customer already knows ‘exactly’ what they want, so let’s hurry up and show it to them, and make a quick sale. This is actually, a disservice to the customer.

The fact is most customers buy something different than they originally intended. For one reason or another, 80% or more customers say they buy something different than they originally intended because they liked, trusted and respected their salesperson.

This only happens once the customer believes that you are operating out of their best interest. A customer will only believe that you care and that you are working in their best interest when you ask them about:

Not only is all of this information vital to properly select, present, and demonstrate the RIGHT vehicle to your customer, but by asking the right question questions, about your customer, you get them to open up to you, building the relationship and lowering their defenses. Once these defenses are down, you can now really put all that time you spent getting to know your product to use.

By learning about the customer’s current situation, identifying the problems they are looking to solve, and providing them with solutions that fit their desired, you will be able to present and demonstrate only the features that have the most BENEFIT to the customer, even if the features were not something the customer was originally considering. And the best part is, the customer will be open to what you have to say, because they know how much you care.

Take the time, to get to know your customers. The process of getting to know your customers provides you with the information needed to close the sale, while it opens the customer up to be sold the right product for them. It is actually, the perfect process, that once perfected will have you selling more cars, for higher profits than you ever thought possible, and it all begins with showing your customers that you care.