Last Time I Looked, People went to a dealership because they were interested in a car.

Sounds pretty elementary.  Let’s look at other things people purchase and the amount of time they spend ‘researching’.

At a grocery store, labels and prices are the main source for ‘research’.  Many people simply pick up what they want and don’t bother with either price or labels, some people spend time going over both.  As we move up the price scale to something like appliances (dishwashers or refrigerators), the research becomes more likely to occur.  Sometimes weeks and months of research are put in prior to a visit to an appliance outlet.  By the time the majority of people arrive at the local appliance outlet, they have a pretty good idea of the features they want, the brands that offer those features and a price range that they find acceptable.  This information is derived from magazines, websites and possibly previous visits to appliance outlets among other things.

When it comes to cars, all of the above applies, but even more so.  A car usually costs several times what a dishwasher or refrigerator costs.  Many people also have more personal capital associated with what car they drive than what refrigerator they own.  This makes the potential purchase of a car a more emotional experience than most other purchases with the possible exception of a house.

With all this said, imagine that your are heavily emotionally invested in your next car purchase and you finally arrive at a dealership (remember, now days, the average number of dealerships visited is about 1.4 prior to purchase) and you come up against a sales process that attempts to ‘control’ you?  The number of negative emotions this can set off could include; resentment, anger, loss of desire, feeling of victimization and culminating in lessened enthusiasm possible regret.  I ask you, are these the emotions that you want your customers to have?  Are these the kind of emotions that customers will have when you hold gross?  I wouldn’t think so.  These are the kind of emotions that lead to combativeness, and the promotion of ‘price’ as the controlling factor in the purchase.  When price becomes the controlling factor, you all know what that means.

Do yourself a favor and spend some time listening to solutions to make a customer feel like they are buying rather than being sold from Tom Watson  www.iwanttothinkitover.com

Tom has spent 30 years researching and developing these 4 to 7 minute modules.  It would be foolish to ignore this amount of knowledge when it is offered to people for free.

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