The Bus from Lodi is a mythical figure in the world of a Car Man. I suspect that no matter where you go in this great land of ours, every Car Man has his version of it. Whether it’s the Bus from Hackensack or the Bus from Tacoma, the myth of a magic bus has been around for as long as I’ve been in the business, and I suppose it will continue to be long after I’ve got to that great used car lot in the sky.
As the story goes, the Bus from Lodi is always just about to arrive at your dealership. Most popularly, it’s rumored to be pulling up right after the Saturday morning sales meeting. The bus is said to be full of lay downs, all qualified and ready to go. The cash buyers sit on the driver’s side of the bus; the credit customers on their right, filled out credit apps ready on their laps, cash down payments in their pockets. So don’t go to an early lunch. You might lose out!
I often wondered why the bus was coming from Lodi, which is a city about 80 miles from the Bay Area. Why not the bus from San Jose or Oakland? Well, scratch Oakland, too many credit criminals. Out here in the west Lodi has a popular place in our imaginations ever since Creedence Clearwater Revival got stuck there in the 60’s. (If you don’t get this reference, I’m too weary to explain it to you.) Lodi is the “Everytown”, the representation of a typical American city. Instead of a city made of gold, it’s a city full of buyers.
I always imagined the passengers on the Bus from Lodi as a bunch of big dummies with a way to go. They’d all have decent enough credit. They’d all buy something in stock. Throw in a warranty and some snake oil to keep F&I happy. After delivery, they would all drive off, smiles on their faces never to be seen again. (It’s nice to have a car deal without any heat.)
One day in the late 1970’s I was working at Hayward Datsun in Hayward, California. When we arrived to work one bright Saturday morning, there was a big yellow school bus parked in front. On the side it said, “Lodi Unified School District”. The crew went crazy! We got my brother’s Polaroid camera and snapped several pictures of us standing beside the bus. No one was in it. The driver, I guessed, had dropped off a group of kids for a ball game or something and had gone out to breakfast. It sat out there for a couple of hours and suddenly it was gone.
Alas, the Bus from Lodi had finally arrived, and it was empty!
Ever since that time I have always felt a little twinge whenever a bus travels past the dealership I’m working at. Just once I would like that bus to stop and disgorge a couple of buyers. Wouldn’t that be nice? Of, if only this was a perfect world!
Because in a perfect world, it would happen.
Where is your Bus from Lodi coming from? Please leave a comment if you wish.
Talk to you later,
David
The Golden Circle
If they ever made a hit movie out of my screenplay, “Car Man”, I think I have a great idea for the sequel. It would be called, “Car Man II: The Golden Circle”. The idea came to me the other night when I was thinking about my mother ship, Shellworth Chevrolet. During the eight plus years I worked there, I sold 75 vehicles with a commission of $1000 or more. I lovingly dubbed these customers The Golden Circle.
How sweet the memory is.
So here’s the plot of the movie. A salesman at an unnamed car dealership has his own Golden Circle. One day he decides it would be a great idea to get all these people together for a group photo. You know, one of those panoramic, wide-screen jobs usually reserved for majestic landscapes.
The problem is, of course, how can he do it? I mean it isn’t like he can call them up and say, “Hey, I laid you and a bunch of other people away, and I want a photo of you all sitting on the bleachers at the high school like the football team.” Well, I guess you could, but if it were that easy it wouldn’t be a very good movie, would it?
Instead of telling you my version of how things might go—you’ll just have to wait and see the movie--I will leave it up to your imaginations to come up with ideas of getting the people together for the shot. Don’t use midgets or repo men in your version. I’ve got dibs on that!
While running this through my mind I started thinking about my Golden Circle and what those customers meant to me. You see it wasn’t just the money I made on them. It was the fact that there were people out there that allowed me a chance to make a decent living for my family and me.
Now I know that any of The Others reading this are horrified at the thought of a salesman making a big pop. In their conspiratorial brains they conjure images of all the kinky and illegal things I must have done to make such big commissions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is there is no larceny in my heart. Sometimes I wish there was, but there just isn’t. All my deals are conducted truthfully, and I think I can honestly say that the vast majority of my customers have good thoughts about me.
Do you have your own Golden Circle? I hope you do. Every Car Man needs one to be a success. Because the only way you can survive in this business is to have customers to overcome the mountain of mini-commissions out there.
Always remember that the happiest customers are, for some strange reason, the ones you made the most money on. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. The idiot you made half a mini on is more likely to trash you on CSI than the guy who paid a fair price. It’s one of the true mysteries of the Universe.
So here’s to the Golden Circles! May they continue to grow!
I bet you just can’t wait for the movie!
Talk to you later,
David
P.S. By the way my offer still stands if you would like to read the screenplay for “Car Man”. It opens with Microsoft Word. Just send me an email at drteves@citlink.net.
How sweet the memory is.
So here’s the plot of the movie. A salesman at an unnamed car dealership has his own Golden Circle. One day he decides it would be a great idea to get all these people together for a group photo. You know, one of those panoramic, wide-screen jobs usually reserved for majestic landscapes.
The problem is, of course, how can he do it? I mean it isn’t like he can call them up and say, “Hey, I laid you and a bunch of other people away, and I want a photo of you all sitting on the bleachers at the high school like the football team.” Well, I guess you could, but if it were that easy it wouldn’t be a very good movie, would it?
Instead of telling you my version of how things might go—you’ll just have to wait and see the movie--I will leave it up to your imaginations to come up with ideas of getting the people together for the shot. Don’t use midgets or repo men in your version. I’ve got dibs on that!
While running this through my mind I started thinking about my Golden Circle and what those customers meant to me. You see it wasn’t just the money I made on them. It was the fact that there were people out there that allowed me a chance to make a decent living for my family and me.
Now I know that any of The Others reading this are horrified at the thought of a salesman making a big pop. In their conspiratorial brains they conjure images of all the kinky and illegal things I must have done to make such big commissions. Nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is there is no larceny in my heart. Sometimes I wish there was, but there just isn’t. All my deals are conducted truthfully, and I think I can honestly say that the vast majority of my customers have good thoughts about me.
Do you have your own Golden Circle? I hope you do. Every Car Man needs one to be a success. Because the only way you can survive in this business is to have customers to overcome the mountain of mini-commissions out there.
Always remember that the happiest customers are, for some strange reason, the ones you made the most money on. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. The idiot you made half a mini on is more likely to trash you on CSI than the guy who paid a fair price. It’s one of the true mysteries of the Universe.
So here’s to the Golden Circles! May they continue to grow!
I bet you just can’t wait for the movie!
Talk to you later,
David
P.S. By the way my offer still stands if you would like to read the screenplay for “Car Man”. It opens with Microsoft Word. Just send me an email at drteves@citlink.net.
Saving The Big Three
I’ll be the first to admit that the Big Three: GM, Ford and Chrysler, are a bunch of screw-ups. Yes, they agreed to pension plans that were so lucrative for their employees that they now find themselves at a gross disadvantage against the Japanese. Yes, they were guilty of building trash—or more precisely a lot of trash for many years. Yes, they have made the wrong decisions time after time, but I’m here to tell you---
IT’S NOT ALL THEIR FAULT!
Television pundits and radio talk show hosts are quick to point out the flaws in the Big Three. Aside from the problems generated by past union contracts and the shortsightedness of their CEOs, they take it as a given that GM, Ford and Chrysler don’t know how to build a car. This is patently false! The Ford Focus is a great car. The Chevy Cobalt is a great car. And the Dodge Neon, well I guess there is always an exception to the rule.
What they don’t want to talk about is the crappy attitudes of a lot of American car buyers. For a large segment of our population, buying a car is a political statement. The children of the 60’s and their minions wouldn’t buy an American made car if their lives depended on it. Why?
They’re sticking it to The Man.
Somehow it’s gotten into the popular imagination that all American corporations are inherently evil. Except for Apple, of course. Yes, American cars were lousy for a long time. Yes, it took the Japanese to wake them up to quality and innovation. But I’m here to tell you that no matter how good an American car can get, a large portion of us won’t buy it simply because it is an American car and it doesn’t fit into their image of themselves.
What was a company like GM to do? Few would give their cars a chance (except for the rental car agencies!). If they had to survive on car sales alone they were doomed. But there was one thing they could do and that was build one hell of a truck.
GM makes great trucks. When it comes to trucks and the SUV’s built off their platforms, no one on the Japanese side can compete with them on a serious level. If you were GM and no one would give your cars a chance, but they’d buy the crap out of a Chevy Tahoe what would you do? If you build it they will come! And the same can be said for both Ford and Chrysler.
The Big Three did what they had to do to survive and prosper. They do make decent cars, and they could prove it if given half a chance. And if given that chance they would be motivated to focus their resources on even better cars for our future. Is America willing to give them that chance? Sadly, I fear the answer is no.
Now I don’t have a problem with anyone buying a Toyota. I’m a Car Man. All I care about is metal going over the curb. But if our American based manufactures are to survive, it is us that’s going to have to give them a break. We are the only ones that can give them a true and lasting bail out. We are the only ones who can save an industry that employs millions of Americans.
I know, it would be a little embarrassing driving up to your save the polar bear meeting in a Dodge Stratus. But think of it this way, you will be saving an even more important species,
Americans.
Talk to you later,
David
IT’S NOT ALL THEIR FAULT!
Television pundits and radio talk show hosts are quick to point out the flaws in the Big Three. Aside from the problems generated by past union contracts and the shortsightedness of their CEOs, they take it as a given that GM, Ford and Chrysler don’t know how to build a car. This is patently false! The Ford Focus is a great car. The Chevy Cobalt is a great car. And the Dodge Neon, well I guess there is always an exception to the rule.
What they don’t want to talk about is the crappy attitudes of a lot of American car buyers. For a large segment of our population, buying a car is a political statement. The children of the 60’s and their minions wouldn’t buy an American made car if their lives depended on it. Why?
They’re sticking it to The Man.
Somehow it’s gotten into the popular imagination that all American corporations are inherently evil. Except for Apple, of course. Yes, American cars were lousy for a long time. Yes, it took the Japanese to wake them up to quality and innovation. But I’m here to tell you that no matter how good an American car can get, a large portion of us won’t buy it simply because it is an American car and it doesn’t fit into their image of themselves.
What was a company like GM to do? Few would give their cars a chance (except for the rental car agencies!). If they had to survive on car sales alone they were doomed. But there was one thing they could do and that was build one hell of a truck.
GM makes great trucks. When it comes to trucks and the SUV’s built off their platforms, no one on the Japanese side can compete with them on a serious level. If you were GM and no one would give your cars a chance, but they’d buy the crap out of a Chevy Tahoe what would you do? If you build it they will come! And the same can be said for both Ford and Chrysler.
The Big Three did what they had to do to survive and prosper. They do make decent cars, and they could prove it if given half a chance. And if given that chance they would be motivated to focus their resources on even better cars for our future. Is America willing to give them that chance? Sadly, I fear the answer is no.
Now I don’t have a problem with anyone buying a Toyota. I’m a Car Man. All I care about is metal going over the curb. But if our American based manufactures are to survive, it is us that’s going to have to give them a break. We are the only ones that can give them a true and lasting bail out. We are the only ones who can save an industry that employs millions of Americans.
I know, it would be a little embarrassing driving up to your save the polar bear meeting in a Dodge Stratus. But think of it this way, you will be saving an even more important species,
Americans.
Talk to you later,
David
Rumpo-Bumpo
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
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
Cold Calls
I believe it’s a universal truth that all car salesmen hate making cold phone calls. It’s one of the great sources of animosity between salesmen and management. Handing out cold call sheets make the managers feel like their doing something proactive. Whether the calls actually work or not is not the point. In my humble opinion it’s mostly just a sadistic power trip.
I have no idea if the practice of cold calls is still prominent in this great country of ours (and I include my friends in Canada here, too). I hope it’s a thing of the past, but I suspect it isn’t.
Let me tell you a story. When I first started selling cars the salesmen in all the dealerships in the East Bay were unionized. (The now defunct Salesmen Local 1095, may it rest in peace.) Apprentice salesmen were not allowed to take an up for the first 30 days of their employment. This rule was strictly enforced. For that first month, I was put under the tutelage of a couple of journeyman salesmen whose job was to show me as they say, “How the cow eats the cabbage”. One of the things they had me do was make cold calls.
In the sales meeting room of Hayward Ford there was a telephone hooked up to a speakerphone. Each day I was taken to that room by one of the salesmen, sat down at the desk, given a script and was forced to make a few cold calls. The older salesman would listen on the speaker and critique me when I was finished.
Let me give you an analogy. When I was a kid I was raised in the Catholic faith. Nothing terrorized me more than going to confession. Here I was, sitting in pitch-black booth talking to the personal representative of God. It scared the living shit out of me. Making those cold calls made me feel the same way.
The irony of it all is that these leads came directly out of the phone book! Here I was calling people at random, in the vain hope that might just happen upon a person who needed a car. Talk about a needle in a haystack! What the hell was the reasoning behind this? At the time I hadn’t a clue. I felt it was some sort of weird Car Man initiation essentially designed to torment me.
My brother, Danny hated to see salesmen standing around doing nothing. (He didn’t understand that standing around doing nothing is one of our God-given rights!) I remember him getting pissed off, taking a telephone book, ripping out a few pages, and handing them out to equally pissed-off salesmen. I love my brother more than anything, but not when he had that phone book in his hands!
For the first five years of selling cars cold calls, or calls to orphan owners (which I’ll admit made a little more sense) was part of my automotive life. It would have been okay if making these calls worked, but I don’t think I ever sold a car off a cold lead. I hated making the calls, but I was always threatened that a manager would check my phone sheets to make sure I had really called the potential customer. For me, it was a demoralizing and depressing situation.
Then something life-changing happened to me.
I first met Tony Taylor when I worked at Elmhurst Ford in Oakland. Tony was a really great, funny guy and a consummate Car Man. He also had the best hairpiece I have ever seen in my life. Tony seemed to take a liking to me and was always giving me advice about selling cars.
A couple of years after I met him we were working together on the used car lot at CST Ford, a mid-70’s incarnation of Hayward Ford. I had been in the business for five years or so. I was a so-so salesman who never seemed to make a lot of money. I struggled each month just to make a living.
One day Tony came into my office. He closed the door and sat down across from me, and crossed his arms.
“What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Just making my phone calls, Tony,” I replied.
“Cold calls, huh?”
I nodded yes.
“Let me see all your call sheets,” he said. It was not a request. It was a demand.
I handed Tony a stack of sheets. He shuffled through them for a moment, looked up at me--and he tore them all in half.
“You’re done with that,” he said. And then he explained the secret to success in the car business. It was simple and to the point.
“Wait on customers,” he said. “Follow-up on them. Ask them for referrals. Those are the people you want call. No one else.”
“But they make me!” I protested.
“Lie,” he said simply. “Everyone else does it. Why not you?”
“But what if they check?”
Tony laughed. “David, do you really think the managers are going to check your cold calls? Do you think they have the time? Do you think when they were salesmen they made these calls? I tell you, son, it’s all just one gigantic stroke.”
In a blinding light of revelation I knew that Tony was speaking the truth. I took his advice, and I soon discovered that when I concentrated on the people I had actually talked to, I immediately started making more money. Great story, huh?
But hey! What’s that I hear? Could it be the sound of cold call sheets being ripped up?
Music to my ears.
Talk to you later,
David
I have no idea if the practice of cold calls is still prominent in this great country of ours (and I include my friends in Canada here, too). I hope it’s a thing of the past, but I suspect it isn’t.
Let me tell you a story. When I first started selling cars the salesmen in all the dealerships in the East Bay were unionized. (The now defunct Salesmen Local 1095, may it rest in peace.) Apprentice salesmen were not allowed to take an up for the first 30 days of their employment. This rule was strictly enforced. For that first month, I was put under the tutelage of a couple of journeyman salesmen whose job was to show me as they say, “How the cow eats the cabbage”. One of the things they had me do was make cold calls.
In the sales meeting room of Hayward Ford there was a telephone hooked up to a speakerphone. Each day I was taken to that room by one of the salesmen, sat down at the desk, given a script and was forced to make a few cold calls. The older salesman would listen on the speaker and critique me when I was finished.
Let me give you an analogy. When I was a kid I was raised in the Catholic faith. Nothing terrorized me more than going to confession. Here I was, sitting in pitch-black booth talking to the personal representative of God. It scared the living shit out of me. Making those cold calls made me feel the same way.
The irony of it all is that these leads came directly out of the phone book! Here I was calling people at random, in the vain hope that might just happen upon a person who needed a car. Talk about a needle in a haystack! What the hell was the reasoning behind this? At the time I hadn’t a clue. I felt it was some sort of weird Car Man initiation essentially designed to torment me.
My brother, Danny hated to see salesmen standing around doing nothing. (He didn’t understand that standing around doing nothing is one of our God-given rights!) I remember him getting pissed off, taking a telephone book, ripping out a few pages, and handing them out to equally pissed-off salesmen. I love my brother more than anything, but not when he had that phone book in his hands!
For the first five years of selling cars cold calls, or calls to orphan owners (which I’ll admit made a little more sense) was part of my automotive life. It would have been okay if making these calls worked, but I don’t think I ever sold a car off a cold lead. I hated making the calls, but I was always threatened that a manager would check my phone sheets to make sure I had really called the potential customer. For me, it was a demoralizing and depressing situation.
Then something life-changing happened to me.
I first met Tony Taylor when I worked at Elmhurst Ford in Oakland. Tony was a really great, funny guy and a consummate Car Man. He also had the best hairpiece I have ever seen in my life. Tony seemed to take a liking to me and was always giving me advice about selling cars.
A couple of years after I met him we were working together on the used car lot at CST Ford, a mid-70’s incarnation of Hayward Ford. I had been in the business for five years or so. I was a so-so salesman who never seemed to make a lot of money. I struggled each month just to make a living.
One day Tony came into my office. He closed the door and sat down across from me, and crossed his arms.
“What are you doing?” he asked me.
“Just making my phone calls, Tony,” I replied.
“Cold calls, huh?”
I nodded yes.
“Let me see all your call sheets,” he said. It was not a request. It was a demand.
I handed Tony a stack of sheets. He shuffled through them for a moment, looked up at me--and he tore them all in half.
“You’re done with that,” he said. And then he explained the secret to success in the car business. It was simple and to the point.
“Wait on customers,” he said. “Follow-up on them. Ask them for referrals. Those are the people you want call. No one else.”
“But they make me!” I protested.
“Lie,” he said simply. “Everyone else does it. Why not you?”
“But what if they check?”
Tony laughed. “David, do you really think the managers are going to check your cold calls? Do you think they have the time? Do you think when they were salesmen they made these calls? I tell you, son, it’s all just one gigantic stroke.”
In a blinding light of revelation I knew that Tony was speaking the truth. I took his advice, and I soon discovered that when I concentrated on the people I had actually talked to, I immediately started making more money. Great story, huh?
But hey! What’s that I hear? Could it be the sound of cold call sheets being ripped up?
Music to my ears.
Talk to you later,
David
Demonstrators (Part 2)
At Hayward Nissan we had a finance manager named Bill Cola. Bill was an avid skier, and every winter he’d take a Nissan Pathfinder for a demo. It was the perfect vehicle for his treks up to the Sierras. The problem was he wouldn’t come back to work until the last possible moment and that meant coming to work with a filthy, snow and mud caked demo. My brother used to really get on him about this.
One day Bill was warned that there would be a demo inspection on Saturday morning after the sales meeting, and his demo had better be clean. Bill, who didn’t like to be told what to do, devised a plan. He told no one what he was up to. The element of surprise was of utmost importance.
On that morning, Bill arrived early and parked his Pathfinder at the very end of the line of demonstrators. He slipped into the sales meeting and waited for his moment in the sun. At the meeting’s conclusion Danny announced that there would be an inspection. We all went outside and watched as he slowly walked down the line looking for violations. Finally, he arrived at Bill’s Pathfinder.
The day before Bill had the Pathfinder detailed. After it was clean he carefully taped plastic sheets right down the middle of the truck, completely covering the passenger side of the car from front to back.
Then, he went 4-wheeling in the mud.
The result of Bill’s carefully concocted plan was nothing less than spectacular. Another Car Man legend had been born that day. Here was the 4x4 perfectly clean on one side and completely filthy on the other! I honestly don’t remember Danny’s reaction to this, but all Car Men appreciate a well-planned joke!
In the early 80’s I was working for a large, multi-store dealership in Oakland (where I had my famous test drive with Rudy Henderson). I worked with a young salesman who was a great guy, but he had a serious drinking problem. For the sake of this story, let’s call him Jim, but that’s not his real name. And I’d like to add that he got sober many years ago and is not a successful businessman with a wonderful family.
It all started when we had a Christmas party. (For the record, I did not attend this party.) The showroom floor of the Honda dealership was taken over for an evening of food, booze, and fun. Jim had way too much to drink. Way too much. And the tragedy of it all is that no one seemed to think that he shouldn’t be driving home to Fremont, which was about 20 miles away. He was completely shit-faced and the let him drive!
It was after midnight when Jim poured himself into his black Mitsubishi demo and headed home. He managed to make his way down 98th Avenue and onto the Nimitz Freeway headed south. Remarkably, he almost made it home. But a couple of exits away from the one that would take him to the safety of his apartment, he lost control of the car. Now here’s the thing. There was no one else on the road at that moment. He didn’t hit anyone, but he spun the car around a few times and managed to bang in the front, back and both sides of the car on the guardrail before finally ending up at the side of the road remarkably out of harm’s way. Bill got out and checked the car. It wasn’t drivable. The rear quarter panel was crushed in so much the wheel couldn’t turn.
Jim figured he was screwed. He was drunk and wasn’t going anywhere. He resigned himself that it was just a matter of time before the CHP showed up and arrested him. He sat down to await his fate. But a funny thing happened. Nothing. The cars that passed him on the road didn’t seem to notice the screwed up, black Mitsubishi with the drunk driver.
After waiting for what seemed to be an hour for the police, Jim, who was beginning to sober up a little, got an idea. He took the scissor jack out of the trunk and used it to push out the side panel. Then, he jacked up the car, put on the spare and drove home. All this time no cops came with red lights to arrest him.
Somehow, he had gotten away with it.
Jim knew, of course, that he was screwed job-wise. The next day about noon he drove his smashed Mitsubishi into the dealership. Without a word he went into the sales office, tossed the key to his demo on the manager’s desk and walked out.
One last story.
In the mid-90s I went to work at a small, very screwed up Chevy dealership that I won’t name here. I was the third salesman at the dealership. When I started work I was pleased to discover that the other two salesmen had demonstrators, but when I enquired about one for myself they said I couldn’t have one. Why? Well they wanted to do away with demonstrators, but they didn’t want to piss off the other two guys so decided to illuminate them through attrition. My two fellow salesmen had brand new Chevy’s, I had a 1979 Cutlass.
Is that screwed up or what?
Talk to you later,
David
One day Bill was warned that there would be a demo inspection on Saturday morning after the sales meeting, and his demo had better be clean. Bill, who didn’t like to be told what to do, devised a plan. He told no one what he was up to. The element of surprise was of utmost importance.
On that morning, Bill arrived early and parked his Pathfinder at the very end of the line of demonstrators. He slipped into the sales meeting and waited for his moment in the sun. At the meeting’s conclusion Danny announced that there would be an inspection. We all went outside and watched as he slowly walked down the line looking for violations. Finally, he arrived at Bill’s Pathfinder.
The day before Bill had the Pathfinder detailed. After it was clean he carefully taped plastic sheets right down the middle of the truck, completely covering the passenger side of the car from front to back.
Then, he went 4-wheeling in the mud.
The result of Bill’s carefully concocted plan was nothing less than spectacular. Another Car Man legend had been born that day. Here was the 4x4 perfectly clean on one side and completely filthy on the other! I honestly don’t remember Danny’s reaction to this, but all Car Men appreciate a well-planned joke!
In the early 80’s I was working for a large, multi-store dealership in Oakland (where I had my famous test drive with Rudy Henderson). I worked with a young salesman who was a great guy, but he had a serious drinking problem. For the sake of this story, let’s call him Jim, but that’s not his real name. And I’d like to add that he got sober many years ago and is not a successful businessman with a wonderful family.
It all started when we had a Christmas party. (For the record, I did not attend this party.) The showroom floor of the Honda dealership was taken over for an evening of food, booze, and fun. Jim had way too much to drink. Way too much. And the tragedy of it all is that no one seemed to think that he shouldn’t be driving home to Fremont, which was about 20 miles away. He was completely shit-faced and the let him drive!
It was after midnight when Jim poured himself into his black Mitsubishi demo and headed home. He managed to make his way down 98th Avenue and onto the Nimitz Freeway headed south. Remarkably, he almost made it home. But a couple of exits away from the one that would take him to the safety of his apartment, he lost control of the car. Now here’s the thing. There was no one else on the road at that moment. He didn’t hit anyone, but he spun the car around a few times and managed to bang in the front, back and both sides of the car on the guardrail before finally ending up at the side of the road remarkably out of harm’s way. Bill got out and checked the car. It wasn’t drivable. The rear quarter panel was crushed in so much the wheel couldn’t turn.
Jim figured he was screwed. He was drunk and wasn’t going anywhere. He resigned himself that it was just a matter of time before the CHP showed up and arrested him. He sat down to await his fate. But a funny thing happened. Nothing. The cars that passed him on the road didn’t seem to notice the screwed up, black Mitsubishi with the drunk driver.
After waiting for what seemed to be an hour for the police, Jim, who was beginning to sober up a little, got an idea. He took the scissor jack out of the trunk and used it to push out the side panel. Then, he jacked up the car, put on the spare and drove home. All this time no cops came with red lights to arrest him.
Somehow, he had gotten away with it.
Jim knew, of course, that he was screwed job-wise. The next day about noon he drove his smashed Mitsubishi into the dealership. Without a word he went into the sales office, tossed the key to his demo on the manager’s desk and walked out.
One last story.
In the mid-90s I went to work at a small, very screwed up Chevy dealership that I won’t name here. I was the third salesman at the dealership. When I started work I was pleased to discover that the other two salesmen had demonstrators, but when I enquired about one for myself they said I couldn’t have one. Why? Well they wanted to do away with demonstrators, but they didn’t want to piss off the other two guys so decided to illuminate them through attrition. My two fellow salesmen had brand new Chevy’s, I had a 1979 Cutlass.
Is that screwed up or what?
Talk to you later,
David
Demonstrators (Part 1)
My first demonstrator was an orange 1970 Ford Maverick. A salesman that had been blown out a few days before I started work had driven it previously. It had 3000 miles on the odometer. At the time I was driving a 1962 VW Bug, so for me the Maverick was the height of cool. I had grown up in a household that had only been able to afford used cars, so driving something so new was quite an experience.
The first thing I did with the Maverick was to load it up with my friends and head for San Francisco. I remember tooling around Broadway checking out the topless places with my buddies. It was an evening that is etched in my memory forever. At the time, life didn’t get any better than that.
Demos, at least here in California, are largely a thing of the past. Starting in the mid-80’s the privilege of driving a new car around on the dealer’s dime began to disappear. Rising insurance rates, generations of drunken car salesmen crashing their cars, and the lessening of perks in general, were the chief reasons for the demise.
When I first started selling cars, the salesmen were the kings of the dealership. They were respected, even coddled to a certain extent, by the managers and owners. On the side of the showroom at Hayward Ford they had their own parking spaces. Each morning the spots would fill with shiny new Ford LTDs each decked out with their own dealer plate. No Ford Mavericks for them! They were reserved for green peas like me.
At one time the salesmen even had their own license plate frames. The top portions would have their name, and the bottom would say Hayward Ford. They would put them on every car they sold. This practice had fallen by the wayside by the time I started selling cars. It had become too expensive. But I still have a Danny Teves/Hayward Ford frame hanging on my garage wall from the days when my brother was on the line.
For me, having a demo was great. Here I was, a kid driving around in a new car at no charge, the envy of my peers. I didn’t even have to pay for insurance! And on top of that I even received a $40.00 per month gas allowance. What a deal!
They mostly gave me Ford Pintos to drive. Believe it or not Pintos sold like hotcakes, and it wasn’t unusual for me to have two, three, or more demo changes in a month. As time went on, so did the quality of the demo. Though I never achieved LTD status at Hayward Ford, I did manage to procure an occasional Mustang. When that happened I really felt like I had it made.
I remember one busy Christmas season. It seemed like I was driving a different car every few days. One cold and rainy day I went to the local mall after work for some shopping. The parking lot was jammed. I spent a couple of hours at the mall. When I was ready to leave, I went walked out to the parking lot and realized I couldn’t remember what kind of car I was driving! I had to walk around in a drizzle for twenty minutes looking for a set of dealer plates on a Ford.
One time the dealership held a dinner for all the salesmen at a local restaurant. It turned into a big party. There was a lot of drinking that night. The next morning we learned that three salesmen had wrecked their demos on the way home. One guy, who was driving one of those cool old Ford Broncos you sometimes see in movies, rolled it!
In the mid-70’s I went to work at Elmhurst Ford in Oakland, California. It was there I met my first sales crew that was mostly African American. They were great guys, a hell of a lot more fun then the old white guys at Hayward Ford. Like their counterparts at Hayward Ford, the Elmhurst Ford crew drove mostly LTDs, and they thought I should drive one too. Now these guys were very cool. When the drove they did something called “leaning”. Leaning consisted of putting the power seat as far back as you could, driving with your left hand on top of the steering wheel, and leaning toward the middle of the street as you drove.
They decided it would be fun to teach me to lean. They showed me how to do it on the side parking lot and made me drive up and down the street while they howled at laughter at the sight. I guess it was pretty funny, this young, longhaired Portuguese kid driving like Super Fly!
When the Mustang II came out in 1974, my brother gave me one for a demo. It was one of the first new Mustangs on the streets of the Bay Area. Although history hasn’t been kind to the Mustang II, I felt proud that I was driving a car virtually no one had seen before. On the second night I had it, I went to visit a girl in Alameda. Alameda is an island in the San Francisco Bay separated from Oakland by a wide estuary and is accessible by a tunnel called the Alameda Tube.
Well, I guess I was thinking too much about getting laid that night because as I drove down the onramp that led into the tube, I rear-ended a truck. The car was drivable, though one headlight was out, but the front end was pretty screwed up. The truck and the guy driving it was okay, but when he later found out the car belonged to a Ford dealership his neck started to hurt. What a mess!
When I was seventeen my brother bought me my first car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane. (Cost: $100.) I promptly crashed it. My mother made me go down to the dealership to confess my sin. I was nervous as hell. Danny is ten years older then I and had moved out of the house when I was nine. I really didn’t know him all that well, and I expected the worse. But when I told him what had happened he just looked at me and asked me if I had gotten hurt. When I said no, he said well, that was the most important thing. What a guy!
Well, Danny forgave me for crashing the Mustang too, though I believe that I was demoted back to Pintos for a while. The only hang up was the car was so new there was no body parts available to fix it for over a month!
Talk to you later,
David
The first thing I did with the Maverick was to load it up with my friends and head for San Francisco. I remember tooling around Broadway checking out the topless places with my buddies. It was an evening that is etched in my memory forever. At the time, life didn’t get any better than that.
Demos, at least here in California, are largely a thing of the past. Starting in the mid-80’s the privilege of driving a new car around on the dealer’s dime began to disappear. Rising insurance rates, generations of drunken car salesmen crashing their cars, and the lessening of perks in general, were the chief reasons for the demise.
When I first started selling cars, the salesmen were the kings of the dealership. They were respected, even coddled to a certain extent, by the managers and owners. On the side of the showroom at Hayward Ford they had their own parking spaces. Each morning the spots would fill with shiny new Ford LTDs each decked out with their own dealer plate. No Ford Mavericks for them! They were reserved for green peas like me.
At one time the salesmen even had their own license plate frames. The top portions would have their name, and the bottom would say Hayward Ford. They would put them on every car they sold. This practice had fallen by the wayside by the time I started selling cars. It had become too expensive. But I still have a Danny Teves/Hayward Ford frame hanging on my garage wall from the days when my brother was on the line.
For me, having a demo was great. Here I was, a kid driving around in a new car at no charge, the envy of my peers. I didn’t even have to pay for insurance! And on top of that I even received a $40.00 per month gas allowance. What a deal!
They mostly gave me Ford Pintos to drive. Believe it or not Pintos sold like hotcakes, and it wasn’t unusual for me to have two, three, or more demo changes in a month. As time went on, so did the quality of the demo. Though I never achieved LTD status at Hayward Ford, I did manage to procure an occasional Mustang. When that happened I really felt like I had it made.
I remember one busy Christmas season. It seemed like I was driving a different car every few days. One cold and rainy day I went to the local mall after work for some shopping. The parking lot was jammed. I spent a couple of hours at the mall. When I was ready to leave, I went walked out to the parking lot and realized I couldn’t remember what kind of car I was driving! I had to walk around in a drizzle for twenty minutes looking for a set of dealer plates on a Ford.
One time the dealership held a dinner for all the salesmen at a local restaurant. It turned into a big party. There was a lot of drinking that night. The next morning we learned that three salesmen had wrecked their demos on the way home. One guy, who was driving one of those cool old Ford Broncos you sometimes see in movies, rolled it!
In the mid-70’s I went to work at Elmhurst Ford in Oakland, California. It was there I met my first sales crew that was mostly African American. They were great guys, a hell of a lot more fun then the old white guys at Hayward Ford. Like their counterparts at Hayward Ford, the Elmhurst Ford crew drove mostly LTDs, and they thought I should drive one too. Now these guys were very cool. When the drove they did something called “leaning”. Leaning consisted of putting the power seat as far back as you could, driving with your left hand on top of the steering wheel, and leaning toward the middle of the street as you drove.
They decided it would be fun to teach me to lean. They showed me how to do it on the side parking lot and made me drive up and down the street while they howled at laughter at the sight. I guess it was pretty funny, this young, longhaired Portuguese kid driving like Super Fly!
When the Mustang II came out in 1974, my brother gave me one for a demo. It was one of the first new Mustangs on the streets of the Bay Area. Although history hasn’t been kind to the Mustang II, I felt proud that I was driving a car virtually no one had seen before. On the second night I had it, I went to visit a girl in Alameda. Alameda is an island in the San Francisco Bay separated from Oakland by a wide estuary and is accessible by a tunnel called the Alameda Tube.
Well, I guess I was thinking too much about getting laid that night because as I drove down the onramp that led into the tube, I rear-ended a truck. The car was drivable, though one headlight was out, but the front end was pretty screwed up. The truck and the guy driving it was okay, but when he later found out the car belonged to a Ford dealership his neck started to hurt. What a mess!
When I was seventeen my brother bought me my first car, a 1957 Ford Fairlane. (Cost: $100.) I promptly crashed it. My mother made me go down to the dealership to confess my sin. I was nervous as hell. Danny is ten years older then I and had moved out of the house when I was nine. I really didn’t know him all that well, and I expected the worse. But when I told him what had happened he just looked at me and asked me if I had gotten hurt. When I said no, he said well, that was the most important thing. What a guy!
Well, Danny forgave me for crashing the Mustang too, though I believe that I was demoted back to Pintos for a while. The only hang up was the car was so new there was no body parts available to fix it for over a month!
Talk to you later,
David
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