Ask an expert car salesman

I’m from Fonthill, Ontario, and I’m 57 years old.

I’m the Dealer Principal of two Hyundai dealerships in the Niagara region. I’ve been in the business for 30 years.

Yes, prior to the car business, I was a musician, touring the country. I used to play keyboards for the Robbie Rae Band.

I met my wife Maria, got married, got off the road and stopped playing with bands. One night my wife and I went for a drive, looked at a new car, and ended up purchasing that vehicle. I became friends with the manager who sold me the car. One day he asked me if I wanted to fill in a few days because one of his salespeople was sick. That’s how I started. I just stumbled into it.

There was always a part of me that was interested in business, as I was also working in a music store at the time, in the keyboard section, in sales. I enjoyed the sales part of it. I didn’t know, at the time, that I would be getting into car sales, but I did know that I wanted to be in business.

I probably could sell anything, yes, but I really do enjoy cars and the interaction with the car buyer, no doubt about it. Business was the first attraction, but then I realized that it’s a very exciting, very vibrant industry. Once you get into it, there are always new challenges and opportunities. I started to really love the automotive business.

There are a lot of regulations. Different provinces across the country have different levels of these regulations, but I think in most areas now, you need to do some sort of test. The government is involved, and there are transparencies, legalities you need to understand in order to get a salesperson license. You also have to get a job at a dealership, where they’ll say, “Yes, this person is going to be working for me, learning how to sell cars.” When you start, there will be on­-the­-job training, orientation. Some places—some manufacturers or franchises—have more than others. But it’s a combination of factory, internet, and live training, plus the on­-the­-job, everyday motions of doing the work: learning as you go, every day.

I think that that’s one of the interesting things about the opportunities as a car salesman. I would imagine that you could open the paper any day and see a job posting for “Car Salesperson Wanted.” So the opportunity is there, but if you’ve got a store that has always got somebody they’re looking to replace, you’ve probably got a store that doesn’t have the best culture or environment. Other places might have other reasons for it: they’re growing, or they’re a very popular brand at the time. But, yes, car sales is probably one of the industries where, especially if you’re experienced and you need to relocate somewhere across the country for whatever reason, you should always be able to get work.

In our store—and every store has their own thing—we’re always on shift first thing in the morning at 8:30am. We gather in the boardroom, we review what happened yesterday, what opportunities are going on today, and whether there are any new programs happening. Then about 15 minutes later, we go down and start working on our daily activities, our work plan. That’s anything from getting ready for a customer who’s coming to pick up their new or used car, to getting ready for an appointment that’s already been scheduled, to setting up new sales appointments.

For scheduled work, our hours should typically be about 40 to 44 hours across the board. But the high achievers—people at the top of their game—all work more hours, because that’s what they want to do. That’s the opportunity of the business: if you put more in, you’ll get more out.

It’s one hundred percent commission. That’s why the more you put in, the more you get out.

This store is one of the best stores in the country; out of 220 stores, we’re still the number one Customer Satisfaction Dealer in Canada. We’re a large store; we sell from 1800 to 1900 cars a year. But in order to achieve great customer satisfaction, it’s all about the process, having a great environment in the store, and getting the right people in the right positions. I think people respect the leaders of the store if they know exactly what they stand for: how we treat customers, how we treat each other, how we do things. Our employees know what’s expected, and they know they’ll be rewarded for what they do. If someone does something great, we make the accolades in public; if something’s not going that well, we deal with it one­-on­-one.

The other component is that we empower people to take care of customer concerns. A salesperson can spend up to $150, no questions asked, to satisfy a customer concern. Those are the things that drive what we are about. And when, as a company, you consistently work that way, the customer will know, the staff will know, and it will start to have a life of its own. Because that’s how we do it—that’s the culture, the environment. It creates a motivational environment where people understand what to do, and how, why, and when to do it. It sounds like a no­-brainer, but there are a lot of pieces involved in making it happen.

The motivational environment, the culture, is a top down thing that’s sustained and expected by the ownership and the general managers. We set the tone for what is acceptable, as far as the culture with employees and the culture of taking care of customers. As the Dealer Principal, I create everything from the process to the word tracks to how we do things. The store is the store because of our amazing staff that buy into the philosophy. It’s the only way that I know how to run it, and, thankfully, it works wonderfully. That’s what’s great about this business—you can be transparent and you can do the right things and be successful. That’s the way you’re going to succeed.

I have 50 employees, and we have very good relations. There are a lot of people, a lot of very different personality types. We work with everyone’s strengths, we help them with their weaknesses. If you’ve got people with a good attitude, you can keep all that together.

They’re wonderful. We get great reviews: a lot of comments like “The best car buying experience I've ever had.” Thirty­-eight percent of all the business we do was referred to us by a friend or family member. That’s really a sign of doing the right thing the right way.

Yes, very much. And not only do you have to interact with people face to face, you have to interact in a professional way on the phone, email, text message, and social media. There are so many different ways to communicate now that in order to come across as professional, the grammar, pace, and punctuation of what you say on the job have all become very important. It depends how successful you want to be and how much you want to grow, but you need to sharpen your skills in all of those areas.

You can really set your sights, your goals, on how high you want to go. It’s up to you to achieve a level that says success to you. Everybody’s definition of success is different. Maybe it’s making a certain amount of money in a day, and that’s great. Another person might have to be the best, have to have the highest volume. Another person might need to become a manager or a dealer before they feel successful. You can set that for yourself, and if you do want to be one of those top performers, you can do it.

I think it’s the same as any industry: the down economic cycles. With less people coming in, we may need to restructure in some areas. That’s probably the worst thing in any retail industry. With car sales jobs being a commission career, down cycles are a little tougher. Companies do put things in place to keep the best people going, but it’s still a challenge.

We’ve had several record years, and to tell the truth, I don’t think it’s going to stop just yet. There’s still a lot of older cars on the road that need to be replaced with new or newer vehicles.

As I mentioned earlier on, like with any career, you could work your 40 to 44 hours a week and keep your balance perfectly. Our company advocates having a personal balance, but there are some people we have to tell to go home because they’re working all the hours. So today car sales is a business that understands that you need balance. The old way of doing it, when I started in the business, was to work six or seven days a week, twelve hours a day. That’s not a sustainable business practice. I think most companies understand that.

Now, having said that, it is a commission based job. You’re creating your own business, so sometimes you have to make sacrifices—especially in the early stages—to grow and learn and move through the ranks in the industry. You have to pick and choose how much of that is pulling away from your personal balance.

For me, I’m process­ driven, I like people, and I think that I have a free flowing spirit as far as continuous improvement goes. I’ll always look at what I accomplish and think about how I could improve upon it moving forward.

Most of the top performers have a good, strong “will­-do” attitude. They’ve got high energy, and a lot of them have some sort of sports background. In fact, women with sports backgrounds are some of the top performers in the industry. You also have to be able to work with different personality types and not just the ones you understand. That’s really the key combination: a good attitude, high energy, tenaciousness, and a personality that can work well with different types of customer personalities.

An energetic, long­ term thinker. Somebody who likes to be in control of their own income and career.

Look long­ term. Build your business within a business, one completely satisfied customer at a time. Don’t move around, if you can help it; stay put and grow your business.

Like I said, if you’re a sales consultant selling cars, you’re on 100% commission. The company supplies the phones, the internet, the cars, the building, a cubicle—everything else. We even supply the advertisement to bring the customer into the showroom, to bring them to you. Those clients bring in the referrals that help you build your personal business. All of a sudden, you won’t be needing any “new” customers as you’ll have so many of your own people coming back to see you, and referring their friends and family to you every year. That’s when you’ve built your business within a business.

Well, I can tell you about mine. I sold cars and then I became a Financial Services Manager—a business manager who takes care of finances. Then I became the Leasing Renewal Manager, then a Used Car Manager, and then a New Car Manager. After that I became the General Sales Manager, then a General Manager, and finally I became a Dealer Principal­ Owner. All in the same company.

You have to earn the right to qualify for the position. In order to do that, you have to continuously do the right thing, the right way. So if you stay the course, consistently doing the right thing, the right way, then you can get there—with some time and patience. But in order to grow, you have to be curious, you have to read, and you have to understand the industry. It all depends on how curious you are, how much you want to grow, and how much risk you can take as a person. Because the higher you go, the more risk is involved.

If they’re new to the business, the number one reason is probably that they came to a store that doesn’t have good process, or doesn’t teach you the process, and allows bad culture to have a cancerous effect. In those stores, new people are often blown out by the people who have been there for awhile.

Number two is that the person came to the career with all the best intentions, but is not comfortable with what you need to do in order to sell. Even in the best of stores, that’s possible. There are sometimes misconceptions about what selling cars is like. It’s not like selling shoes, where you present something and the person tries it on. That’s sales, it’s not selling. If you can be a top car salesperson, you’ll never be without work or income. It’s just one of those things. If you’re good at car sales you can basically sell anything.

They go everywhere. I don’t think there’s a clear answer to that question.

When you’re young and you first start selling cars and you think that it would be really great to be a Dealer Principal of your own store, you sometimes question whether that’s actually available to you. But the amazing thing about this business is that it’s available to anyone who is willing to put in what it takes. So if I had known that earlier on, I probably would have fast-tracked what I did a bit quicker.

That car salespeople are dishonest, that we’re not transparent. I think that’s the biggest hurdle. But our company works it 100% the opposite way. We’re totally transparent: if somebody wants an appraisal, we just do it. If somebody wants to buy a car, there are no deposits needed to get the figures. That’s how people want to purchase vehicles: quickly and transparently. So even though that misconception causes a lot of resistance, it’s also an opportunity. If you’re honest and professional with people, they’ll come back to you. If you are the real deal, you’ll grow very quickly.

But that’s not necessarily the same across the entire industry. Everybody has their own take on how to conduct their business—they’re going to do their own thing in a totally different way. This is just the way we’ve chosen to do it, because we believe it is the right way. So far it’s working well.

I think the biggest thing is that the car business really, truly is an incredible career. There really is nothing else like it. Where else can you sell a product, create a great living, and if you desire, stay the course and become an owner someday?