I've never had the experience as a car salesman but my common sense tells me not to ever bash your potential customer's current vehicle . As a matter of fact don't even bring their current vehicle into conversation at all even in positive context unless you are 100% sure they adore their current vehicle. Just then you can go ahead and try to bring up common good things their current vehicle shares with the one you are trying to sell them.

 

I agree, Vladi. I test drove a new BMW several years ago and the salesman just kept on ragging on my current rides, which were, at the time a V8 4Runner and a first gen TSX. Totally turned me off and I left with a sour taste from the experience.

 

Especially when you're talking about luxury cars, salespeople need to find a way to acknowledge the excellence of the customer's current car, yet find a way to show them why their product is superior.

Case in point, I test drove a new E300 yesterday. Great salesman, when I told him what I drove his response was "very nice car, very smooth and quiet", yet in our conversation he asked me if I had ever had a Mercedes, to which I replied no because I haven't, and he said "There's just something about a Mercedes that a Lexus or a BMW or an Audi doesn't have, if you like luxury cars everybody should have a Mercedes at some point in their life". I would agree with that statement, and it didn't put down what I have or what I've had but it shows me that theres something I'm missing...very good. I'd buy an MB from him for sure.

 

That's the difference between today's M-B salespeople and the ones from the past. For years, M-B shops, like most of the rest of the German auto industry, tended to have uppity, snooty, aristocratic salespeople...I found some of them downright annoying. No more.....or at least almost no more. Strong competition from Japan (and now Korea) changed that.

 

A good salesperson (man or woman) will sell up their product without putting down a competitor's product.

A good salesperson may, in fact, praise a feature of a competitor's product that is widely known in the industry but try to sell up a related feature of their own product; for example, she may praise the reliability of my Lexus but sell up the fact that her product offers free maintenance.

A good salesperson may also acknowledge a widely-known shortcoming in the competitor's product and try to sell up that feature in their own product; for example, she may acknowledge that the Lexus ES is not known to be engaging as a driver's car, but their vehicle is known as a driver's car.

The point is that the salesperson must seem to have empathy with the (potential) customer in order to prove to the customer that not only does she know what she is talking about but understands the customer's particular situation.

 

Well said. I've been in sales for almost three decades now and most of that works well. The idea is to get on the customer's good side, whether that be sympathy, agreeing with what he/she says, or just listing out a list of positives that you feel will fire them up. Most people want to hear happy thoughts and not negative facts.