Wheelin' & Dealin'

By Baker S. Field

To the outside world, every car salesman is a snake-oil peddler—the butt of endless jokes, the personification of all that is slick and sleazy. When you call a politician a “used-car salesman,” you’re not paying him a compliment. You’re saying he’s a crook. You’re saying that, if he’s selling it, it can’t be worth buying.

Most people get jumpy the minute they pull onto the lot and see a car marked “actual miles.” What does that say about the mileage listed on the other cars? And what’s so great about a car that’s had a “local owner”? Think about it the next time you watch as a car with Davidson County tags plows through a red light.

My name is Baker. I am a car salesman.

Or at least I was—at 12 different dealerships, from Hendersonville to Hickory Hollow, from Rivergate to Bellevue—even on Gallatin Road’s dealer-saturated “Miracle Mile,” where backyards echo with car-lot loudspeakers. You name it, I sold it: Oldsmobiles, Pontiacs, Nissans, Jeeps, Eagles, Isuzus, Volkswagens, Chryslers, Mitsubishis, Hyundais, Fords, Mazdas, Audis, Hondas, Chevrolets, and Suzukis. Not to mention countless used vehicles.

I sold cars for nearly three years. These days in the auto sales business, six months makes you a veteran.

I worked with plenty of dealerships that advertised themselves as being different from the rest, a place where customers are treated fairly and everybody is easy to deal with. Obviously, those dealerships’ ad agencies had never met their sales departments. The car dealership is a world unto itself—a world where the relationships between customer and salesperson, and salesperson and management, really are based on mutual antagonism, aggression, and distrust.

You see it in every facet of dealership culture. The law of the showroom is the law of the jungle. If you don’t tear off enough heads, sooner or later, you get thrown under the bus.

The car lot has its own language, lore, and legends. For example, the bane of the salesperson’s existence is the “be back,” the shopper who says he’ll think it over and be back. Statistics show that a be-back customer is most often a lost customer, a sign of the salesperson’s failure.

That’s why, from the minute you stroll into the demilitarized zone of the showroom, you are the focus of a careful battle plan. Somewhere, usually in the elevated area known as the “tower,” a sales manager is watching your every move. Outside, packs of well-groomed sales vultures are waiting to ambush. Their war cry is relentless: “Buy or die.”

Usually, the salespeople bunch together, waiting for the next “up”—the next prospective customer. There are different kinds of ups: There’s the “phone up” (a phone customer), the “floor up” (a customer who’s actually in the showroom), and the “lot up.” The best up is a “citizen,” a customer with an unblemished credit portfolio. All the stops are pulled out when it comes time to close on this one. If the stars align properly, though, every salesman occasionally gets the real dream customer, a “laydown”—a buyer who offers little or no resistance and pays full sticker price.

At the opposite extreme, a “bogue”—a prospect with a wretched credit rating—is absolute scum. According to one Gallatin Road dealer, a bogue’s chances of buying a car are virtually nil: “He’d have a better chance playing Pick-Up Sticks with his butt cheeks.” Salespeople have absolutely no compassion for bogues. But it’s hard to know if the next customer is a dud, reeking of “bogue-osity.”

So when the next up arrives, the swiftest or the most ambitious salesperson heads straight in for the kill, offering an enthusiastic greeting, complete with a firm handshake. If the salesperson fouls up after that, he might as well expect a “T.O.”—a turnover of the customer to another salesperson. Whenever I’d get T.O.’d, a nice young man—a salesperson like myself—would suddenly materialize at my side. He’d introduce himself as a manager, and then he’d roll up his sleeves. If you’re a salesman who’s been turned over, your duty is to trail along and keep your mouth shut.

T.O.’s are legitimate. On the other hand, stealing another person’s customer, or “skating,” is anathema. If a customer asks for you, he’s your customer, even if you’re not available. If time is of the essence, another salesperson may be permitted to step into the breach. If he makes a sale to your customer, the two of you split the commission. Skating may be frowned upon, but it still happens, thanks to an unwritten dictum: “When you’re not selling, all the rules apply; when you are selling, none of the rules apply.” In other words, management likes salespeople who make money. If an aggressive, high-grossing backstabber steps on a non-earner, management may be willing to look the other way.