The next time you are shopping for a new or used car, pay close attention to the greeting you receive from the salesperson. Is it a warm, heartfelt "Hello, welcome to Audi Seacoast. May I be of some assistance?", or is it more of a "Hi, can I help you?" The majority of time it will be the latter. A very disinterested salesperson is a poor salesperson, destined to be looking for a different job soon.
Customers, people in general, are more willing to open up to someone who seems to take a genuine interest in them. You can kill a sale in the first ten seconds of greeting a customer with the incorrect approach.
Regardless of the geographic region, Boston Honda or Toyota Los Angeles, a proper greeting can go a long way with many, many customers.
Selling cars has a lot to do with gaining the customer's trust. By nature, we are in a business that has built up years and years trust breaking. It takes quite a bit to get the customer's to drop the wall they have around them, especially early on when walking onto a lot for the first time in a while.
Even the setting of your dealership can be conducive to success or failure. Let's say you drive onto a Dallas Mazda dealership and 20 salespeople are gathered around waiting to pounce on you. It is going to be next to impossible for any one of those salespeople to make a positive impression on you. This is when a dealership policy needs to be created and enforced to stop the massive cluster groups and stop unintentionally intimidating the customers.
Conversely, if you drive onto a Porsche North Shore lot and you are enabled to get out of your car without being accosted and able to look at a few vehicle before being approached, that salesperson and customer stand a much better chance of hitting things off on the right foot.
Always be thinking in the best interest of the customer. They will be able to feel that you are not in this business for a quick buck, but rather to make a long and prosperous career. People want to be associated with successful people, and customers want to buy cars from successful people. It is far easier to trust a salesperson that dresses well and is very comfortable in their surroundings, as opposed to someone that lacks confidence and doesn't look like they belong.
As you can see, the greeting, along with the initial impression the customer has as they pull onto the lot, can go a long way in assisting or damaging your chances of selling a car. Like we mentioned at the top of the article, selling cars is not difficult when broken down to its simplest form, but there are many factors that can influence the customer that you may not have ever thought about.
