I had to get my car serviced last week so I decided to spend the 60 minutes or so messing around the dealership.  I had my son with me, who loves cars, so we decided to test drive some new cars for kicks.  I told the salesperson that I wasn’t really a buyer but might be convinced if I could apply the value of my car towards a new car lease and essentially buy down the lease payments so I would have a zero or close to zero payment lease….

I told the salesperson exactly what he had to do to make a sale.

We took some test drives and had fun…Jack was doing his best to close me so he could drive home with a new ride!  I was waiting for the salesperson to start crafting his story to set me up for a close but he didn’t say much except answer questions while I was touring around.

Ok, back to the showroom and my car was out of service, so it was time to move on.  Mr Salesperson asked me to wait while he ran some numbers and I again reiterated my requirement if I were to even consider a deal.  I wasn’t really a buyer, but I could certainly be closed with the right deal.  Long story short…he came back with the numbers with a suggested lease payment of $211/month, not what I explicitly asked for and then went on to justify why the numbers made sense and were attractive.

I left the showroom with my old car and I received a couple followup calls from the salesperson hoping I would reconsider, but no creative solution to win my business.  He didn’t try to create a zero payment lease deal with a less expensive option, or sell me another car I may have considered, nothing like that…

He could have closed me but didn’t have the skills to do so.

What would you have done?  Do you have the skills to close?

Brick