With car sales down 63 per cent, dealers are facing closures, staff cuts and low morale. But what's it like for the buyers out there? Paddy Comyninvestigates
IT CLEARLY isn’t a good time to be a car dealer. Global recession, a recent change in the car tax regime and the lack of availability of credit mean Irish dealers are at the forefront of grim industry news and statistics.
However, are dealers doing enough to attract business in these hard times? Have sales staff lost the skill of sales? Or did they even have it in the first place?
We recently took a personal trip to the car sales jungle. The Comyn household’s BMW 3-Series Touring needed a change to something more frugal, sensible and CO2-friendly: something along the lines of a Ford Focus, VW Golf or even a BMW 1-Series diesel.
With the mileage clocking up and a petrol engine under the bonnet, our car has suddenly found itself to be no longer invited to the Green’s party. Many Irish drivers now find themselves in the situation of owning a car that has dropped significantly in value and vainly trying to trade it to a dealer who doesn’t want it.
However, on a total of 16 visits, split between various dealerships, the results of our shopping trip were pretty poor.
Of all the forecourts we visited, unless we personally knew the people working there, (which was the case in one dealership) there seemed to be some basic customer service elements missing.
In one dealership, a huge, glass fronted palace of a building, I stood at reception, having walked up and down the car park like a stalker.
After several minutes standing like some uninvited guest caught on the dancefloor when the music stopped, I was eventually asked by the receptionist if I would like to be seen by someone. The person I was going to be given the honour of an audience with hadn’t bothered to raise his head in my direction since I had walked in, so I wasn’t so inclined to go seeking his interest.
Then there is the absolute nonsense that comes out of the mouths of some sales staff, with nonsense being the politest way to describe it.
I was told a car will do 65mpg when I simply know it won’t. Ever. Or being told that a car has air conditioning when it just, well, doesn’t. Customers now have myriad research tools at their disposal, including this supplement and its reviews. They’ve done their homework before coming in, so it’s incredibly insulting to assume that they don’t have a clue.
There were very few dealers interested in our trade-in, which you can understand because it may not be something they could easy retail themselves, but this was seldom explained properly.
Prices are low, but these prices relate in many cases to a straight cash price and the price with a trade-in is often significantly higher. Unless your car fits very strict criteria, then it appears to be difficult to trade-in. This is a situation that many motorists are finding themselves in and, in many cases, that can be blamed on the change to the VRT and taxation laws.
Some dealers did get it right, however. Put a cup of hot coffee in a customers hand and they aren’t going anywhere for 10 minutes. Tell us – honestly – that you won’t be able to offer a lot for a trade-in and we might actually believe you.
So for our part, here is a little wish list that we would like to see when we finally go to buy that car.
1. Be interested
If we have taken the trouble to go to a retail park on the edge of town, we probably aren’t there for the lovely scenery or wonderful entertainment on offer.
2. Don’t lead with a stock list
Try a handshake. Try eye contact. Try getting off your rear end and coming out to meet us. As we found in too many showrooms, we were forced to approach a salesman who appeared to be stuck to a desk by some sort of lazy glue, fixated by solitaire or, perhaps, irishjobs.ie
3. Ask proper questions
Don’t assume that we actually know what we are there for: you should be the car expert, not us.
Ask us if we have kids, ask us what mileage we do, ask us what our budget is and don’t wave over at a line of cars and hope that we are good at matching car names on a stock sheet to the cars on the forecourt.
4. Follow up
We have names; make a note of them, write them down, use them. If you say you will call us back with a trade-in price, do. Only one of the dealers we encountered bothered to pick up the phone and call us back.
This article isn’t meant to be a cheap shot dig at dealers. By and large, we came across dealers who seem to be disheartened, probably due to lack of available finance.
But there is also the fact that in many dealerships, there are staff who aren’t used to selling. The Celtic Tiger created a breed of order takers. When car sales peaked in years like 2000 and 2007, discounts weren’t asked for, finance was easier to get than finding someone to serve you and the only worry a customer had was if they should opt for air conditioning or a sunroof.
So what is the secret to good car sales? For an answer, we turned to the Europa Academy. This third-level training academy trains professionals across a range of industries, with particular emphasis on the motor industry.
Mark Richardson, training and development director at Europa, has almost 20 years sales experience in Ireland and UK. He has worked in selling and management roles with brands including Renault, Toyota, BMW, Rolls Royce and Porsche.
Richardson’s training career commenced with a period working with Dale Carnegie Training and, since 1998, he has been director of the Renault Training Institute, where he has designed and developed a training programme for novice car sales specialists. We asked Richardson to outline what it takes to succeed in car retail.
“Recruitment of the right people is important – they have to be good natural communicators. They need to have the right attitude and be enthusiastic. They also need to be properly trained, whether it is in-house or externally,” he says.
“In a lot of cases, people are selling at a subconscious level rather than a conscious level. There isn’t always a process being followed and that can work well when times are good, but when times become more challenging, the hit-and-miss aspect of it is not something that we can afford as individuals or as businesses.
“For me, selling is a transfer of enthusiasm. If you are not enthusiastic about what you are selling or if you are not confident about what you are selling, how can the customer have the confidence to buy it?
“People buy from people. In our own experiences of mystery shopping for clients, if the sales person hasn’t ticked this box or that box, but if they come across as genuine or interested in the customer, then often this can make up for any shortcomings. People buy from people and behaviour breeds behaviour.”
From this writer’s experience in the showrooms, many of the staff we met seemed to be lacking the basic skills and this, according to Richardson, is a vital start to any sales transaction.
“Sales staff must recognise the importance of the first few minutes of meeting the customer, as this first impression will largely determine whether the customer is likely to want to do business with us. We always say a great ending needs a great beginning. Are they creating the right impression and asking the right questions? Everyone has different buying motives and is coming from a different perspective. Unless we establish those buying criteria, then we haven’t earned the right to present our car and sell value. Often, some basic criteria such as price or whether the customers is looking for a new or used car are got and the sales staff then stand by a car and list features. This just isn’t selling. People can only listen typically to about 25 per cent of what is said to them, so being told a list of things isn’t always helpful for the customer.”
In terms of morale, Richardson has sympathy about the environmental factors that can’t be controlled. “We have to be empathetic that the media is full of doom and gloom and, in many cases, the garage isn’t in a position to take a trade-in, as is the case so often at the moment. The other scenario is that they take a sale to its near-conclusion, only to fall at the last hurdle when it comes to finance, because the banks are operating such strict criteria.”
High profile casualties within the industry, such as the Hogan Group – which was famed for its good service and loyal customers – serve to illustrate that good dealers and bad are suffering at the hands of recession.
However, for the dealers who are in business and the sales staff that are in jobs, it would appear that there is more work that can be done on the forecourt to make things that bit better.