My son is in the car bizz now. It’s a whole lot different for him than when I got in the bizz. He uses e-mail and programs to keep track of customers and his pipeline of “ups.” I used a sheet of yellow legal pad, that I wrote down names, numbers, desires, and any other information I got while talking to an up or phone pop. I folded that piece of paper and kept it in my pocket. Every time I had a lull and I wasn’t talking to anyone about them buying a car, I would pull my list out and start calling people. Back then most didn’t even have an answering machine, so I listened to phones ring a lot. Sometimes I would get an answer and remind them of when they’d been in or called and find out how their car buying process was going and try to set an appointment to come in and buy a car. And I would cross their name out when they told me they bought a car.

Now the list is all made on a spreadsheet program. And the salesperson can set reminders to pop up names to call or e-mail to try and set appointments. So much more…well complicated and convenient. But my piece of legal pad worked for me and it sold me a lot of cars. When my sheet got filled, I’d start a new list and transfer the names of those who hadn’t bought yet to it and start adding the new ones. Sometimes I would have two sheets of paper folded up in my pocket.

After I had been in the business for a while dealerships started hiring sales trainers to come in and show us how to use their tickler systems to track customers. Usually, they were file card boxes and a stack of file cards with spots for name, rank, and serial numbers of the customers and the object was to file them in slots in the box to construct a follow-up system. More complicated and not conducive to putting it in my pocket. But I tried it for a while. It was kind of neat to fill out the little cards and have it all nice and organized but after a while it became cumbersome. I would write everyone’s information down on pieces of paper to use to transfer to the cards and file them, so had little pieces of paper and notes on the back of my business cards all with the intention of transferring that information to one of my “lead cards” at the end of the day. And when I had a car deal late it usually didn’t get put in my system until the next day.

I never had those problems with my sheet of legal pad. And pretty soon my file box was abandoned and found a spot at the bottom of the large drawer on my desk. I know the dealership paid a lot of money for those “systems” but they were lost on me. And I had my sheet of legal pad in my pocket once again, and I used the little box to store the one recipe I got from the receptionist who made the best hot wings I ever had.

Later in my career when I was the sales manager at a dealership, I hired a salesman who came in. He had been in the bizz for a while and seemed an earnest young man with lofty goals and a need to make serious money. The first day he sold two cars. I was strolling by his desk the first day he was at work and noticed on his desk one of those little file boxes like I had years before. It was beat up, discolored, and grimy but I could see the remnants of the decal I had seen on my little box. I asked him about it. He told me he had gotten it from the same trainer I had many years ago and he still used it.

I saw him every day going through his little box. He’d pull his file cards out and look them over. They had notes all written in just the correct slots and on the back a list of the times he’d contacted his customers and notes of what they said. Some cards had a year’s worth of correspondence listed and meticulously noted. The guy was relentless and he sold a lot of cars. The first thing every morning he would go through his stack of cards calling people and writing notes on his raggedy cards and file them in his little box. And then he would go sell a car or two. He usually had at least one appointment a day, sometimes five, and he sold a lot of cars, I mean a lot.

One day, I got a phone call. The lady on the other end of the conversation was really nice. She was apologizing for the call profusely and said she knew it was his job and it was very refreshing to find someone so dedicated to their job, but she would greatly appreciate if I would kindly tell Jeff to stop calling her. She was not going to buy a car anytime, at least for a while, and when she decided it was time she would surely come find Jeff and buy one from him, but she was tired of his calls. She was nice and we both marveled at Jeff’s dedication and I told her I would talk to Jeff.

I did talk to him and told him what she had told me. We came up with a plan for her. Jeff stopped calling her, but since he had her address he sent her a thank you card with a nice note on it. At the end of that year, he sent her a Christmas card with a note. The next year she came in and bought a car from Jeff.

I saw Jeff years later at a different dealership. He was the used car manager and I was wholesaling. I saw his grimy little file box sitting on his desk. We laughed.