I was at a friends house for dinner the other night and a couple were sitting across the table from me. The woman was one of the leading sales people in fleet sales in Southern California. She had worked at it for years, and had moved from a downtown auto dealership to one on Los Angeles’ ritzier west side. On the west side of Los Angeles it is difficult if not near impossible to sell many domestic automobiles. The west side is the land of Lexus, Mercedes, BMW and now the ecology minded Prius. Ford and GM products are not all that desirable.
Yet this women she does well in her fleet sales. She has built relationships and as one responsible for the corporate market she is able to see Fords to America’s corporations. She said the same people keep coming back to her, just as they have for the past fifteen years. She insisted the domestic cars were of much better quality than the rap against them. Matched against, say, the Toyota Camry, she insisted the Ford Focus in the better car.
At this point her husband chimed in and issued comps that were designed to demonstration the more positive qualities of the American cars. Business is good she insisted. Her husband believed it could be better. He acknowledged Ford has its troubles but in no way is it going out of business.
I asked the key question. Business is lousy in the automotive industry, I offered. But Toyota, while experiencing its first loss in decades has watched its stock drop from $138 or so to about half of that now. But Ford meanwhile is sitting at just over two bucks a share, and GM is somewhere around $3.66. There is a marked different in stock value, I pointed out. As well as the loss of market share.
The conversation went back and forth in its usual form over this very subject. But then I seized on something that made sense to the husband, while the wife wouldn’t allow herself to absorb the concept. The fact is most automotive dealerships have lousy sales people. Even with training, the bulk of the better ones come off as wooden and obvious. The others are just plain obnoxious. Sure there are some excellent sales people in the dealerships. There are sales people who truly know their products and who know how to actually talk to people. But they are few and far between.
Meanwhile, if the Ford and GM quality is comparable to their foreign rivals, it is incumbent upon these two domestic auto manufacturers to convey this through branding. They need to drive customers to the lots. They need through advertising and branding to make the domestic car a desirable product once again. Because, if they just leave it up to the average Ford or GM sales person to convince you, the customer, that the domestic car has experienced a renaissance of sorts it is never going to happen. Customers will stay away in droves. Briefly put, the sales people are not up to it.
The husband agreed. His wife did not want to give such ample ground. She went back to her own sales figures and talked about her bewst year ever. It didn’t seem to matter that while she did well in the kitchen, the rest of her proverbial ship was rapidly taking on water. Which on a macro level has been the problem with Detroit executives for quite some time.
So in thinking about it I had to wonder how many industies still recruited decent sales people. Surely there are legions of them out there. But are mere legions enough to adequate service what’s left of American Industry? Are the sales people really the relationship builders that their supervisors want them to be? Do they even know what it truly means to be a relationship builder? Or are they merely high pressure arm benders and back slappers who as tactics have had better days? Are they obvious about qualifying customers? Obvious to the point of being annoying? Just like the sales people on the car lots.
With the economy in a downturn and with people out of jobs, it may be time for you to look around for the few diamonds in the coal pile. It may be time to find true relationship builders and recruit them while you can. A good sales person can perform the kind of business development that can make you the exception in an ordinary world. It is worth thinking it over. Before you start looking to the government for a bailout of some sort. Because that, I’m afraid, may never come.
