Sluggish car market may lead to corners being cut

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The car market continues to be sluggish with all the beautiful weather dissuading buyers from going into car showrooms, leaving bored salespeople plenty of time to top up their tans. Those buyers that have ventured in or got bored with the sunshine have clearly been tempted by some cracking deals with dealers falling over themselves to give a bit of value and ensure that customers do not walk away from any deal.

The problem when this sort of situation exists is that car buyers can often find buying a car intimidating. When sometimes they are only at the beginning of the buying process and not ready to make the final decision, but when a sales exec hasn’t seen a customer all day and is under severe pressure from his manager to get the ball rolling it often leads to desperation and hard sell tactics. This ultimately either means that a customer will end up buying the wrong car or will be scared off and not go back to the dealer ever again.

There is a fine balance between encouraging someone to buy a car and the “big sell” and we find that even experienced sales people – who would normally adhere strictly to a sales process designed to ensure that the customer is dealt with in the correct way and the sales exec gives themselves every chance of selling the car – deviate when times are tough. It only takes a couple of blank days and even the most skilled salesperson will cut corners and try to ‘close’ a customer before they have completed the decision making process and these car buyers are left confused and indecisive as a result.

Although we are used to these temporary downturns in the motor trade they still frustrate and disappoint when they are with us. Waiting for buyer confidence to return takes patience and nerve to see it out and wait for the customers to come back. The ones who can do this often don’t even realise that business has slowed down because they are looking at the big picture and too busy actually selling cars!