It actually seems very hard to lose your gig as a car sales person.
Targets are relatively simple, you are required to sell a certain volume of vehicles, with a minimum gross margin..
For the most part, the dealership brings in the warm-ish leads for you, the internet channels driving foot traffic, making genuine appointments with sales staff, who are then charged with converting those leads into sales within particular margin parameters.
But thats not where the fun stops.
The reason some car salespeople indicate that car X is better than car Y is the volume of sales incentives on one compared to the other.
Most dealerships are focused heavily on their cashflows, on maintaining the minimum number of cars on their floorplan finance, and knowing that most financiers have a trigger point in age of cars where they have to be paid out.
So... for example, a brown Ford Falcon XR6 might have been on the books for 75 days, and the dealership is obligated to buy this car off the floorplan when it 90 days of age.
To make sure that doesnt happen, the dealership incentivises the sales staff, offering bonuses of $250, $500, $750 or more to clear this particular item of inventory...
Meantime, Fred Bloggs wants a white XR6. Goes to his local Ford dealer who has the brown XR6 in stock that is getting very ripe in age.
Sales person listens to the requirements.. Takes the prospective customer for a test drive... get them to feel the product, love the product... to create the emotional attachment with the car..
They discuss a deal.. the prospective buyer says he wants a white one.. sales person tells him the whites ones are scarce and it might take some time (weeks/months/never..) to source. Might even go away from the desk to appear to talk to someone in stock control out the back.
But there is this brown one over here. Same spec as the one you want. You can pick it up on Wednesday.
Plays to the emotional attachment to the car, how great it is to drive, how great it is to be seen in, pushes all the right buttons on the prospective customer such that the faster he/she/it gets into that car becomes the primary imperative
Sold.. one brown XR6... to a customer who didnt want that colour really... and the salesperson gets their sale, at a good margin, and with a nice aged stock kicker along for the ride.
And.. the dealership (and manufacturer) surveys the customer, who gives glowing feedback because the emotional attachment to the car has overridden the sensibilities of the deal.
Which the sales person also gets a bonus on...
Allegedly of course
