Selling Dents

One of the screwiest deals I ever did was when I was the desk guy and one of my guys was trying to sell a little old lady a new Honda Accord. I watched my guy talking to her, saw them take a drive, and I was watching when they drove back in from my office which had a window that looked out at the parking lot. I didn’t hear the conversation they were having, but I was so sure we had a deal I was tempted to put it on the sales board behind my desk.

So I waited. If you run the desk and there hasn’t been a deal to work for a while you know how to wait. There was no Facebook then, no little personal computers, and definitely no more smoking at the desk.

Tim came in and started talking. Usually, when I was the salesman, if my write up was good and I knew we had a deal I would just lay it on the desk face-up. If I wasn’t sure it was a deal I might turn it upside down on the desk and make the manager turn it over, (no idea why I did that, just did), but if I was so far from a deal I was embarrassed to be there, I would hold the write-up sheet and start talking.

And Tim was talking…this and that, and she says/I said…we said. “She wants a ten thousand dollar discount.”

Then silence, and he laid the write-up sheet down on my desk. I was silent too. A new Accord EX with leather was less than nineteen grand back then, so her offer was stupid. I didn’t know what to say and Tim asked me what he should do with her.

We talked some and Tim had a credit app with the lady’s info on it. She was qualified to buy anything she wanted was my impression without running her credit. I took my red marker and crossed out her offer and wrote in full price, plus the window tint and whatever else we might have installed on it plus tax, license, doc fees, and totaled it all up and wrote it in big red letters and handed it to Tim.

And I told him, I don’t know what to do with her but show her this, I guess.

Tim came back in about five minutes to get keys for a green Accord demo we had. It wasn’t leather and it was less money, but it had a lot of accessories we added and maybe five thousand miles or so. And it had a dent on the hood under the nose mask thanks to the clown who had been driving it until we caught him stealing money and fired his dumb ass.

Tim came back in with a new write up sheet and she agreed to the full price of the car. We sold it to her, of course, and then pointed out the dent in the hood and agreed to fix it. She was happy, I was happy, Tim was happy and the last vestige of the scheming ex-salesman who drove that car was finally gone.

And it was a pretty decent deal for a new car sale. Nice little commish and I got to put it on the board.