(6 of 10)
A good salesman scorns such tricks, content to play on customer psychology.
Salesmen get practice. They do not like to sell a man alone—they know that they will only have to do the job all over again when his wife comes in. If the wife comes in first, many salesmen try to sell her on the car's color and upholstery, quoting her a price considerably above their rock-bottom offer. When the husband comes in later, they boost his ego by letting him force the price down, so he can show his mate that he is the sharp bargainer in the family.
Salesmen must be wary of the husband who knows nothing about mechanics; the trick is to avoid making him look like a boob. To soften the customer who is undecided between two makes, salesmen often slyly deride the competition with such remarks as "Did you ever notice its cheesy dashboard?" In the final, crucial moments of the haggle, they will frequently try to win the customer by offering to throw in a side-view mirror or whitewalls without charge. Salesmen find that men make most of the car-buying decisions, but let wives pick color and interior. A salesman knows that he has a man trapped when a wife stands back, looks fondly at a car and gurgles: "Isn't that cute!" To get the customer into the showroom in the first place, dealers often use "bird dogs"—barbers, service-station operators, or friends who for a fee tip them on car hunters. Less rewarding are "cold spears" —telephone contacts taken from a list of state auto registrations or from telephone books.
Red Jackets—or Else. Like every big dealer, Chicago's Jim Moran knows that the best way to build up a solid list of customers is to become a pillar of the community—and a solid pillar he is. "If a dealer isn't interested in his community," says Moran, "then he's a poor businessman. I think that any place I go, I am an ambassador of Courtesy Motors." Moran belongs to many charitable, civic and religious groups, is a prominent Roman Catholic layman. He coaches a Little League team that last season won a district championship, has run several TV talkathons for charity. If an orphanage burned down, chances are that it would be Jim Moran, the Courtesy Man.
who would start a drive to rebuild it—and chip in conspicuously himself. He is beloved by the clergy for his contributions and for giving them what is generally known as "the clergyman's discount," i.e., cars at cost. He sponsors an annual Lake Michigan endurance swim, spends $1,000,000 a year on advertising.
Once all this hoopla gets the customer in. Moran makes it hard for him to leave without a car. His salesmen are among the most anxious, aggressive and articulate in the Chicago area. They begin in low key, but they breathe harder, talk faster and bargain more shrewdly as the moment of truth approaches. Not even a peddler steps in their door without leaving his name and address, later getting a tenacious and thorough followup.