I Qualified Them From the Porch

When I first got in the car bizz, my boss always hammered me to take every up. He told me not to judge them from the showroom, just go talk to them. After a few months I was an “old pro” like everyone else and I qualified the ups from the showroom like all the other sales guys, but I always remembered what my boss had taught me and always felt guilty when I would see a family of naer-do-wells get out of their old 67 Plymouth with a red fender and a green hood, and I would bolt to the vending machines for a smoke and coffee.

Later in my career I taught he same words to all my new salesmen and watched as they slowly came to the realization that they might spend hours and hours with someone who couldn’t come up with a hundred bucks, let alone thousands, and they couldn’t finance a donut, and then they found a way to be scarce whenever Ma and Pa Kettle wandered in to look at cars.

I took a nice truck and fifth wheel trailer in trade on a new Honda. The truck was late model as was the trailer, low miles and like brand-new out of the wrapper. We smogged the truck and dusted it off and put it out on Pecker’s Point which was all the way across the lot across a little ditch right next to the freeway fence. If someone was driving the freeway it was almost in front of them, so everyone could see it who drove into town. But it was a long hike from the showroom to the truck. And it was on the frontage road so people didn’t have to come on the lot to go look at it. They could drive down the frontage road and bypass us completely.

After a couple of weeks of it sitting out there, all the sales guys learned that the only peeps who stopped to see it weren’t going to buy it. And it was a long walk out there and usually when the peeps saw the salesman trudging across the lot toward them they would get in their car and leave. My guys stopped going out and the truck just sat there waiting, waiting, waiting.

We were in the truck right. Well more than right; I stole it when I took it in. One morning my three salesmen were standing on the ramp in front of the showroom telling jokes and lies and ignoring the family out on the point crawling all over my truck and trailer. The folks were trying the doors, looking in windows, and I could see them drooling from a hundred yards away. My salesmen weren’t even looking at them, so I asked if anyone was going to go say hi and make their month.

One guy said, “Those people can’t buy apples at Safeway.”

I didn’t answer him. I just walked out there met the folks and sold them the rig. They flat laid down. Even though I was the manager I took the commission and showed everybody my voucher for $2600.  I used that voucher for a few years until it was tattered and worn so you couldn’t read the numbers on it anymore. Those cars don’t sell themselves.