I think everyone knows that G.O.A.T. stands for Greatest Of All Time. Well once you hear this story you will be wondering whether this award winning Salesman is really a Greatest of all Time or a goat. This is a true story that just happened in the last couple weeks to a good friend of mine. Watch the video and make up your own mind and then we will talk about some lessons to be learned from this experience.
What lessons can we learn from this short story? Before you think of a couple of answers let me add a bit more detail. My friend (Bill in the video) had purchased 2 cars from that Dealership in the past but not from Adam. The car Bill wanted is difficult to get with long backorders; the dealership had two that were originally spoken for but one of the deals fell through so they called Bill to let him know (so they had his full name and number). When Bill visited the dealership and met Adam for the first time Adam, knew nothing about Bill. So now what lessons can be learned?
- Adam did not do any research on Bill. I would be shocked if a large and mainstream car dealer does not have a CRM or at the very least customer records that indicated Bill was a previous two time customer. There are many sales situations where a customer calls or visits and you have no ability to do any background research but when you know someone is specifically coming in at a certain time why would you not check to see if there is a history with this prospect? What I can tell you is that this immediately created a concern for Bill with respect to how Adam would handle this process.
- Adam never called Bill back. Chatting with my friend we expect what happened is someone else came along and offered to buy the car outright with no haggling and no lease buyout to sort out. Given this, Adam took the easy route and simply went with the deal in hand and completely ignored my friend. Does it really matter – Adam probably made the sale and earned his commission?
- To finish this story, my friend has unequivocally decided he will never go back to that dealer. How do you think the owner of the business would feel if he or she knew this?
- What is also interesting is this same friend told me that over the holidays a wealthy friend of his decided he wanted to buy a Tesla and when he called the Vancouver sales office he went to voice mail that was full and would not take any more messages. He called the service number and they recommended he call the US contact number so he did. They were very surprised he could not reach the Vancouver Sales team so they took his info and promised to have someone call him within 24 hours. Weeks later he has still not received a call back…
I find these situations extremely frustrating as they cast such a poor light on Sales people in general and the car industry in particular. I like to talk about the car industry as a great example of really good test close training but in this case it was just a dismal failure.
The good news is you can learn from these stories and resolve to never leave your prospects or customers hanging even if the news you give is not what they were looking for. By being honest and professional in a timely manner, you will not burn bridges and keep that prospect or customer open to speaking with you in the future. So don’t be a goat – be the greatest of all time!
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Have a great day!
