It was Tony B. who coined the expression “rumpo-bumpo” back in the day at Hayward Ford. It was his term for getting a bump out of a customer. (A bump means to get more money than the customer initially offered to pay for the car.) Tony was one of the most talented Car Men I have ever had the pleasure of working with. I say, “working with” loosely because to use a baseball analogy, Tony was a major leaguer, and I was strictly single “A” ball—at best.
I still remember him hurrying out of the sales office enthusiastically crowing, “rumpo-bumpo!” as he headed up the hallway toward his office. He said the words as if they were a spell he would soon cast over his unsuspecting customer. When it came to a bump Tony B was THE master. So when he generously offered some advice about the process of getting a bump, I was all ears. The advice he gave me was simple, but I have to admit a little enigmatic.
“David,” he said in his lilting Spanish accent. “Getting a bump is like going to the doctor and getting a shot. When you go to the doctor what does he do? He rolls up your sleeve, rubs alcohol on your arm, then he gives you a shot, right?”
“Right,” I replied, unsure where this was going.
“It’s the same with a customer.” He grabbed my forearm and pretended to rub on the alcohol. “First you stroke them,” he explained as he rubbed. He then curled his fingers into an imitation of a hypodermic needle and said, “Then you give them the shot!” As he finished he jabbed me with his finger for emphasis. There it was in a nutshell: the rumpo-bumpo.
This was not an easy lesson for me to learn. My office was near the end of the showroom. The sales office was around back by the parts department. I was pretty good at landing a customer on a car and getting a proper commitment. The trouble started when I got the first pencil from the sales manager.
I can see it now, my brother Danny slashing his red pen through my customer’s offer and writing, “Sorry, below cost!” across the write-up sheet. What followed next was a counteroffer that was not even remotely close to the offer I had worked so hard to get.
Here is where I screwed up time after time: I would look at the pencil and say to myself, “No freaking way! My customer is never going to go for this!” This negative thought would rattle around my mind all the way up the long hall and down to my office. By the time I reached my customer who, if I had an ounce of intelligence in my green pea brain, was probably already expecting the bump, I would manage to talk myself into failure. Ding! Ding! Deal turned to someone who knew what he was doing! Half a commission lost!
One day Tony took me aside and told me what I was doing wrong. “Never look at the pencil,” he said. “When you take it back to the customer, the first time you should see it is when he sees it. Just turn the sheet around and say this is what my manager wants and shut up.”
When he saw the questioning look in my eyes he explained. “David, you are not buying the car, the customer is. So why are you so worried about the pencil? It’s the customer’s problem, not yours! You’re just delivering the bad news.”
So that was it! Get the pencil from the desk. Do not look at it during the long walk to my office. Try and keep my mind blank and present it dispassionately to the customer. Do not assume that he will say no. Just keep my mouth shut, and let the customer take the stress of making the decision, and even if he says no all I have to do is just start would-you-taking again until I got another commitment at a higher offer.
Over the years I began to realize that the most important part of the rumpo-bumpo equation was shutting up. Nothing is more effective than the silent close, and believe it or not sometimes the customer really does say yes to the first pencil. Unfortunately this simple method of prying a few extra dollars out of your customer is one of the hardest things for a Car Man to learn. Silence has an almost palatable power. When you finish presenting the manager’s offer and sit back to await the reaction, you can feel it growing in the room. Thirty seconds of silence can feel like an hour, a minute an eternity. Some guys cannot take it. They always talk first and blow the close. Always remember that the first person to speak loses; so do not let it be you!
Tony B had a trick he would use to get a bump that he had perfected over the years. He was a notorious low-baller. Now a low ball is a great tool until the customer comes back expecting to buy the car for the price you let him out at. This is where Tony was the master. I had noticed that when he spoke with a non-Hispanic customer his accent would become magically thicker. The more a customer objected to his closes, the less English he seemed to understand.
If all else failed, Tony had a secret weapon. It was his ultimate rumpo-bumpo. He had this amazing ability to fill his big brown eyes with tears at will. If things got really bad he would stand before the customer looking like a little boy confessing that he had just broken a window with his baseball. With his head bowed in shame, looking as if he were about to burst out crying, he would admit in barely understandable English that he had lied.
I’m sorry!” he would plead, his voice choked with emotion. “I have a wife and children! I needed the deal badly, and I didn’t know what else to do!”
It worked every time. Rumpo-bumpo!
Talk to you later,
David
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