collectiveSome

collectiveSome
Corporate Heresies, Technology Rants, Personal Observations

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

full frontal capitalism

A zillion years ago I was a grad student in a university known for its Marxist leanings. It was a late afternoon seminar in the dead of a Montreal winter ... the sky had long ago turned jet black, the blinking white weather beacon atop the local English language newspaper reminded anyone who cared to look up that - yep - another heavy snow was coming our way ... and there we sat. In a room looking over the city. Smoking our French cigarettes, being smugly certain that we were -- somehow -- destined to share our wisdom with the proletariat.

A professor let out some of the wind in our sails as we talked about mean-spirited factory foremen tweaking out the extra bits of a laborers work just to make The Owners a few more shillings. His question to all of us "has anyone here ACTUALLY worked for a foreman in a factory?"

For over a decade I've been moving air (occasionally expensive air, at that...) about The Consumer Experience. Grand marketing ideas about "you make the Material *im*-material and you make the IMmaterial *material*. Big puffy theories about touching consumers' emotions.

A buddy, Sim, and I were shooting the breeze a few months ago. Sim's a guy in hi-tech marketing. We were having this kind of a conversation ... we both agreed that having the Occasional Real World experience in dealing with customers would make us better at our jobs.

"Well... I suppose even WE could get jobs as car salesmen."

My first reactions were

(1) I've never sold any 'thing' in my life ('consulting engagements' don't really count as *things* in my book),

(2) I've never had a pressure cooker of a job

(3) I've probably forgotten how to *tie* a necktie and,

(4) it's been 32 years since I used a car with a clutch.

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Still -- it seemed like something oddball enough to try out.

So... I "sales-ed" up my resume, created a handful of bogus "Tom Portante / Auto Sales Professional" business cards, and walked into a handful of local car showrooms.

OK - a bunch of encounters were like stepping onto the shore of some incredibly remote Melanesian island and walking into the middle of some complex, alien culture.

The _closest_ I got to a nibble was at a, oh, let's call it an Upscale Scandanavian Performance and Safety-Fetish car company. The guy's question was 'what makes you think you can sell these cars?" My answer was "LOOK at me, I'm the walking, talking demographic for the people who come into this place to buy a car."

"Come back with a car salesman license and we'll talk some more"

(that's a whole 'nother story) The short of it, I went back. He said the job was mine.

and so...?

It's a pure commission gig. You pounce on people as they come in the door because, well, you don't sell, you go home with *no* money.

It's a grandly intricate culture. There're concepts as "ups" and "turns", "minis" and "people who just come in and lay down." There're strict rules of when to poach, and when not to. I'm still awash in a culture of using "four-squares" and "getting these people off their game" in order to extract a bit more profit. (just 25% of the deal's profit goes to the sales person)

It's easy to get caught in a moral bind: there's an almost huntsman's pride in getting the best price for the dealership BUT, on the other hand, there's the inevitable field-workers' moral quandry of when to step in to stop what can be an abusive transaction.

My _hunch_ is that face-to-face car sales has to find a New Way of doing business.

'have no idea what that new way should be .. but, at least, in the interim, here're ways to buffer oneself from the most wearisome aspects of car buying.

Press here for info on how to buy a new car for invoice (or less) price

posted by Tom | 9:05 PM