This course is an overview of the steps involved in selling a vehicle and building a customer relationship that serves the sales professional, the dealership, and most importantly, the customer, best.

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In this course, we’ll discuss what customers are looking for in a vehicle – and the wants and needs that drive them to make the choices they make. Understanding the difference between “wants” and “needs” is important for salespeople who need to identify and build on one or both when it comes to customers shopping for vehicles at the dealership. Every customer who comes through the showroom doors or looks at the vehicles on your lot has wants – and needs – and you need to use them to help the customer move forward with the purchase of a vehicle that meets both.

In this course, we look at something successful salespeople spend a good deal of time thinking about and working to thoroughly understand – because it has a direct impact on the salesperson’s bottom line and the dealership’s profitability. The question is, “What makes a person decide to buy a car?” There are a lot of factors that influence which car he or she buys, but that’s not the question here. The question is – and we answer it in this course – when a person goes out to look at cars, what must happen in order for them to decide it’s time to stop shopping and actually make a purchase?

In this course, we’ll look at why a customer chooses not to buy from you. There are probably many small factors that lead to a decision not to buy, but it all boils down to the fact that a customer who has chosen not to buy from you doesn't see a justification - a good reason - to buy the car you're offering. This happens when we fail to show that car as a solution to their problems or as satisfying their emotional wants and needs. If they don’t see the car as a good value, they can’t justify the purchase in their minds. By examining how you may have failed to justify the purchase, you’ll learn how to avoid the same mistake in the future.

Your primary goal when greeting a potential customer is to give them an immediate feeling of comfort. You will welcome them with your physical appearance, your attitude, your confidence, your sincere smile, and your eye contact.  You must not force yourself on customers walking onto the lot or into the showroom. You must develop a greeting that causes customers to want to respond to you in a positive way.

The first words you and the customer exchange can make or break the possibility of selling them a car. You will learn how to make your first exchange a positive one, how you can respond to the customer no matter how he or she reacts to your introduction, and how to make sure that the “Meet & Greet” leads to the next step in the process of selling a car.

The Fact Finding step along the Road-to-the-Sale can speed up and improve all the steps that come after – from selecting a car from the dealership’s current stock to filling out the paperwork to handing the customer over to your dealership’s financial team. Why? Because the more you find out from the customer after you’ve met them and given them a warm and reassuring greeting, the easier it will be to close the sale quickly and provide the customer with what they need and want in a vehicle, at a margin that’s good for the dealership.

We’ll learn about the most powerful tool in any salesperson’s toolbox – the question. Questions can come from the customer, giving you the chance to not only provide helpful information, but to determine what’s driving their car shopping and what’s important to them in terms of the car they’re eventually going to buy, hopefully from you. Questions will also come from you, as part of the fact-finding and rapport-building process. From questions that arise from the questions customers ask to questions you initiate through the exchange of information is what makes it possible for you to successfully sell the right vehicle to your customer and make money while doing so.

Selecting a vehicle from dealership stock is only possible if you’ve done a good job fact finding. If you asked the right questions and asked them in the right way, the customer will be willing to give you useful answers. By now, you should have all the information you need to select the right car or truck to show your customer. The first one may not be the one they end up buying from you, but the closer a match it is to their expressed desires, the more likely it is that you’ll close a sale with that customer.

The success of this step in the Road-to-the-Sale rests on two things – the effectiveness of your interview and how well you present the vehicle you’ve selected from your dealership inventory. And, of course, how well you present the vehicle makes the evaluation of your customer's trade-in, possible – because you won’t be closing a sale if you don’t get them excited about the vehicle you show them.