In Defense of Selling Used Cars
Used car salespeople.
They get the worst rap.
Epitomizing the idea of oily sales, they trick people into buying junk. Trash for money. Take this lemon off my lot, and I’ll put your cash in my bank account. Sound like a deal?
It’s a lesser-known fact, but mattress salespeople have a similar reputation.
I was young, freshly married, and looking for a job. I applied to a mattress store. The interviewer was honest.
“Would you be willing to use ‘hard sales tactics’ to get a sale?”
My naivety was apparent.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you willing to tell someone that this is the last mattress when we have a back room full of this mattress?”
“You mean lie?
“Correct.”
Thus ended my possibility of making my fortune in mattresses.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The product is not the issue. Empowerment is the issue. Sales is leadership. Leadership is about empowering others.
There are products like crack cocaine or heroin that are inherently disempowering. But this is the exception.
Cars and mattresses are useful. They help people get to where they need to go and to sleep. Cars and mattresses serve people.
So it’s not the product. It’s the tactics.
When sales are about serving the customer before making a dollar, a completely different narrative forms. This person is here is help me, before merely selling me something.
I am not going to walk away poorer. I will walk away empowered.
Change the narrative and then the tactics. This changes everything.