Confessions of a Car Salesman

It's a long read, but it's really well written. Edmunds hired a guy to go under cover to work at at 2 car dealerships. The idea was to get first hand knowledge of how the car sales industry works from the inside. He went to work at a high traffic, high pressure dealership and a slower "no hassle" dealership for a month each.

If you've ever bought a car, are thinking about it or just need something interesting to read, check this shit out. His tale starts with applying for a job at a Japanese car dealership in LA. High stakes, high pressure.

I'll start reading this now.

For a similar article, check out Car and Driver's Showroom Turncoat Comes Clean article. It wasn't written by an undercover journalist, but rather by a guy that legitimately worked as a car salesman and quit because of the guilt.

I read this a couple months back. Its fucked.

Gonna buy a car soon. I bookmarked the page.

I've read that before. Working at the high-pressure dealer reminds me a lot of my brief time at Best Buy, many of the same tactics were used.

I may have reached into my bag of tricks to buy a couple of cars cheap and sell one high, but that was just general salesmanship. What some of those guys do is just wrong, almost criminal.

It really sounded like sales in general. The primary (and, yes, quite large) differences are that cars are usually 10-50x more expensive then most other stuff sold in such a manner and they can't really be returned in the same easy way (if at all) that you could for something like a television.

I've been going over a lot of similar stuff recently as one of my friends just started selling cars, and I've been talking with him about sales techniques and how to work with people. It's interesting to hear him talk about how people approach and react to him and how they'll try to get deals.

One of the guys I went to college with started working in the shop of a VW/Toyota dealership. Long story short he has been selling cars for about a year and a half now and he easily clears $100k a year now. He was always a talker, he's very persuasive (helps that he's 6'6") it's like he was born to do it. He sees them coming from the time they drive onto the lot and knows how to get the sales. About to turn 25, just got married and just bought a house.

Half of TNL should print this out to begin training for their career slangin Hyundai's.

Good read, the writing was excellent too

This completes my day for today....well written:tu: