Lenny Lawson shares his journey from a nervous rookie car salesperson to a seasoned professional, highlighting the importance of recognizing genuine, ethical salespeople versus those who exploit customers. He recounts lessons learned from a legendary salesman, Jackie Cooper, and stresses the need for buyers to be informed and cautious to avoid costly mistakes. The episode offers practical advice on handling car deals, spotting dishonest tactics, and emphasizes the value of trust and sincerity in sales. Lenny also promotes his free My Car Guru guidebook to help consumers navigate the car-buying process wisely.
"When I sold my first car in 1977, Chevrolet Impala, kind of a medium green with a beige interior, to Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, never forget them."
The Chevrolet Impala is a big car made by Chevrolet that was popular in the 1970s. The 1977 version was one of the last of its kind with a classic look and strong engines.
The Chevrolet Impala is a full-size car produced by Chevrolet, known for its popularity in the American market especially in the 1960s and 1970s. The 1977 model represents the later years of the third generation Impala, featuring classic styling and a range of V8 engine options.
"... there on the lot trying to tell them about this Caprice and this guy, he was tough. He was not cutting m..."
The Holden Caprice is a big, comfortable car made in Australia that many people liked because it was strong and fancy inside. It was often used by important people, so it’s seen as a special car. People might talk about it because it’s known to be tough and reliable.
The Holden Caprice is a full-size luxury sedan produced by the Australian manufacturer Holden. Known for its spacious interior and powerful V8 engines, it was often used by executives and government officials, making it a symbol of prestige in Australia. It might be discussed for its robust build and status as a tough, reliable luxury car in the local market.
""Mrs. Lam, this is the MSRP on the car. This is the discount. This is what we're going to pay you for the trade.""
MSRP is the price the car maker thinks the car should sell for. It's like the sticker price on a new car before any deals or discounts.
MSRP stands for Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price, which is the price recommended by the car manufacturer for the vehicle before any discounts or dealer markups.
""This is what we're going to pay you for the trade. And when I said this is what we're going to pay you for your trade...""
When you trade a car, you give your old car to the dealer to help pay for a new one. The dealer decides how much your old car is worth.
A trade refers to the vehicle that a buyer offers to the dealer as part of the payment towards a new car purchase. The dealer will appraise the trade-in vehicle and offer a value that is deducted from the price of the new car.
""No, it was a lease. It was a 60-month lease. You never lease a car for more than 36 months.""
Leasing means you rent a car for some years and pay monthly, but you don’t own it after. It’s like borrowing the car for a while.
A lease is a contract where you pay to use a car for a set period, usually with lower monthly payments than buying, but you don't own the car at the end unless you buy it out.
""And the salesperson is trained to build that up, to build your enthusiasm for doing it right now. ... you want to try to get the customer to buy today while they're there.""
Buying pressure is when someone tries to get you to buy something right away, so you don't have time to think it over.
Buying pressure refers to tactics used by salespeople to encourage customers to make a purchase immediately, often to close the sale while the customer is present.
"...because there are some dealers in this market that will add four or $5,000 in ads in the disclaimer."
Dealer fees are extra costs a car dealer adds when you buy a car. They make the total price higher than the sticker price you see.
Dealer fees are additional charges added by car dealerships on top of the vehicle's price. These can include documentation fees, advertising fees, and other miscellaneous costs that increase the final purchase price.
"You know, they'll show $13, $14,000 discount on a vehicle, but then you go down the bottom and they're adding $5,000 back to it."
Transparent pricing means the dealer tells you exactly how much the car will cost, including all extra fees, so there are no surprises when you buy.
Transparent pricing refers to the practice of clearly showing all costs and fees involved in a car purchase upfront, so buyers understand the true out-the-door price without hidden charges.
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Hey folks, this is Lenny Lawson, the Cargoer.
Let me ask you a question.
If I were to say, or to tell you, not bragging, that I am a professional salesperson, would
you consider that a good thing or a bad thing?
Now I would say that it'd be about a 50-50 split, 50% of the people would say, well that's
a terrible thing to be.
That means you're a liar or liar.
I think the other 50%, and maybe I'm being generous here, would say no, I like dealing
with a professional salesperson because they know their stuff and they know how to treat
the customer and they make it a good process.
Nah, probably not.
I think probably it's maybe 20% and it's 80% the bad way.
But I hate to admit it, but I am a professional salesperson and I became a professional because
I studied selling.
I went to the school of selling and most of that was from experience.
When I sold my first car in 1977, Chevrolet Impala, kind of a medium green with a beige
interior, to Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, never forget them.
I'll also never forget how hard it was because at the ripe old age of, what was that, 20?
I was not a professional salesperson.
I was a rookie and I had a coat on and it was very hot.
I had a tie on and it was up to my neck and I was sweating bullets out there on the lot
trying to tell them about this Caprice and this guy, he was tough.
He was not cutting me any slack.
He knew my last name was Lawson.
I think that's maybe why he was pushing me and he saw the sweat beating on my forehead
and dripping down my cheeks onto my sport coat.
Yes, it was rough, but I finally got those folks inside and I went to my sales manager
and I said, okay, I've got the lambs here.
They're interested in stock number such and such and I need to present them with a deal.
That's the way we did it.
We always made the first offer.
We didn't ask customers what they wanted to give because that was a quick way to make
my sales manager angry.
So he would write a proposal.
That's what we called it and I would walk back to my office.
The sweat started up again.
Even though I was inside in the air conditioning, it started flowing.
I think Mr. Lam saw that.
That was his cue to mess with me.
So I presented the offer.
I turned the page around and I said, Mr.
Mrs. Lam, this is the MSRP on the car.
This is the discount.
This is what we're going to pay you for the trade.
And when I said this is what we're going to pay you for your trade, I thought that I had
accidentally hit some type of ejector button because he sprang out of that seat like he
was going to go through the ceiling.
And he was, he didn't cuss, but he was saying, I'm not taking that from my car.
You're crazy.
And I was just unfounded.
So finally I calmed him down.
I said, I apologize.
I didn't mean to offend you or anything.
This is just what that guy over there told me to offer you for your trade.
Let me see if I can get him to do any better.
He said, well, you better, you know, and it was just, it was scary.
So I went back to my manager.
I said, he didn't like that offer.
And he said, well, what does he want for his car?
And I said, I forgot to ask.
And so I went back and asked him, what do you want for your car?
He said, I can't buy and sell the thing.
I didn't know what that meant.
So I said, well, is there a number that you would be happy with?
And I think he started to soften a little bit.
His wife was kind of, you know, giving him the elbow.
And so he said, he would take this much money.
It was double what we were offering him.
And so I went back to my manager.
I was afraid of my manager and he worked for my dad.
I didn't know what I was doing.
I was totally lost.
But eventually they agreed the numbers.
They signed.
I was soaking wet, but they signed.
They went into the finance office and they paid.
And oh, he was so happy when he came out.
He said, wasn't that fun?
And I'm thinking, no, that was not fun.
And I decided right then and there that I was not going to be a rookie anymore.
So I found out about this training class that was occurring in Bristol, Tennessee,
right across from where the pinnacle is now.
And there was no pinnacle.
There was no Bass Pro shop there at the time.
No hospital over on that end of town.
Nothing, but I think a holiday in.
And I went to a seminar and it was being led by a guy named or a man named Jackie Cooper.
He was three times my age and twice as scary, but he was a professional salesman.
And he went through all of these different scenarios of how to handle this situation
and how to handle this situation and what to say if they say this and what they say if they say that.
And I was just taking notes like crazy.
Thank goodness they had a workbook and I studied that workbook.
And then when I came back, I said, dad, we need to buy these tapes.
What kind of tapes?
These Jackie Cooper tapes.
He's unbelievable.
And so dad agreed to buy the tapes and all the salespeople got to watch the Jackie Cooper tapes.
And those tapes changed my destiny as far as being a salesperson is concerned.
Because he taught concepts, he taught scenarios.
He was the best teacher.
Jackie Cooper was from a small town in South Carolina and he worked at a car dealership
for about 25 years.
He worked there long enough where he saved up enough money to buy the dealership.
But Jackie Cooper averaged 50 cars a month for over 20 years and it was proven.
And I could see why he developed a tremendous portfolio of customers.
People would come from hundreds of miles away just to buy a car
from this entertaining salesperson named Jackie Cooper.
Ended up buying the dealership and he called it Jackie Cooper Chevrolet.
And that man, along with a few others that I encountered along the way,
turned me into a professional salesperson and also showed me the difference between
doing it the right way and doing it the wrong way.
And the problem in today's society, especially in the car business,
is that there's a lot of crooks out there and they look like everyday normal people.
They're nice.
They're friendly.
They know a lot about the product.
But when it comes to structuring the financial side of a car deal,
they're thieves.
They steal from people.
They take advantage of them.
And you have to be able to recognize that as a car buyer.
Because if you can't, you're going to pay too much for a car.
You know, is it going to destroy your life if you pay too much for a car?
No.
But if you do that, let's say you trade cars 10 or 15 times in your life
and every time you end up paying $5,000 or $6,000 too much, then that could be an issue.
That could, I don't know if it's a life altering issue,
but you'd rather not do it right.
And that's one of the reasons you need the My Car Guru guidebook.
It's free.
It's 32 pages.
I wrote it.
And I'll send it to you.
Send me your email.
Text it to me.
423-552-2020.
And it's got a lot of concepts to defeat the crooked car salesperson
and to recognize them for what they are.
And to put the blame where it really belongs.
It's not like me out there on the lot talking to the lambs.
It's not the salesperson.
It's the people who run the dealership.
It's the systems and the processes that they have put together.
They're the ones that have lost sight of the difference between right and wrong.
And it's that desk manager that you don't get to talk to
and what he says in the sales meeting.
You know, I know of a dealership in the Tri-Cities
where they teach their salespeople that the customer,
no, they don't teach that the customer is always right.
They teach that the customer is the enemy.
And their job is to defeat the enemy, to win against them.
Can you believe that?
And when you encounter these people, they seem nice.
They're wonderful.
They're happy.
They offer you a bottle of water and they know a lot about the product.
But then they start steering you in directions that
you didn't intend to go.
And if you're weak and if you don't learn the concepts that I teach
through the My Car Guru guidebook, then you're just going to fall into their trap.
And if you think paying five or $6,000 too much for a car is bad,
I counseled with a middle-aged lady who paid $25,000 too much.
And the one that I use as an example was from a dealership in the Tri-Cities
where a person thought they were buying the car and paying for it for 60 months.
No, it was a lease.
It was a 60-month lease.
You never lease a car for more than 36 months.
But they lease these people for 60 months.
They thought they were buying the car.
When they got done paying for it at 60 months, they still owed $20,000 on the car.
And they had a $15,000 paid for trade that they got nothing for,
basically nothing because it was a lease.
And they didn't show any down payment.
But there was.
There was a trade-in.
So basically they stole their car.
That's what you have to be able to recognize.
You know, and that's why always, like I say, you need to go home and think about it.
Don't buy a car the day that you go in.
I know you want to.
You get all excited.
You're thinking about your first trip and all that.
And the salesperson is trained to build that up, to build your enthusiasm for doing it right now.
And you don't want to.
Okay, I'll take my first break.
I'll be back here in just a minute.
I'll never forget one of the things that I learned when I first started selling cars is that,
you know, you want to try to get the customer to buy today while they're there.
You don't want them to leave because if they leave, you lose control of it.
And they go to some other dealership and end up buying from them,
rather than from you.
And then you get to call them on Monday morning and you say,
well, when are you coming in to look at this car again?
Oh, you did.
That's called the, oh, you did call.
They tell you, oh, when we left your dealership, we went up to Johnson City and we just went
ahead and bought one.
Oh, you did.
And see, I really didn't want to go in and tell my manager who worked for my dad.
I was scared of my manager.
And I didn't want to tell him that, no, they went up to Johnson City and bought
or they went down to Morristown and bought because he would not be in a good mood over
that because I let them go.
But what Jackie Cooper taught was to tell the customer this, folks,
you're not in a hurry to buy a car today, are you?
And see what that does is it takes all the pressure off, right?
And the customer's mindset changes.
And they say, you know, they're thinking this, you know, this guy's nice.
He's not going to pressure us like that other dealership did.
Because at that time, it was all about pressure.
It was all about getting people to buy now because every dealer, every salesperson
was scared to death that if they left, they were going to go somewhere else and buy.
Now that does happen.
You will have people that will lie to the salesperson.
And you know why they do that?
They've been trained to do it.
They said, well, the salesperson going to lie to me.
I'm just going to lie right back to them.
Now, not everybody does that.
I know that.
Some people would never tell a lie.
But what I found in my career is that many will, and to them, it's okay.
It's okay to lie to somebody that's selling you something.
I don't think it's okay, but I recognize that a lot of people do.
And so my job is to take the fear out of the transaction.
And so what I learned over time was how to do that and how to be sincere and have the customer
pick up on that vibe because if they come to like you and they come to trust you,
then they will probably buy from you.
And it's about trust and it's about like.
And that's another concept that I learned.
You know, you can trust somebody but not like them, right?
You can say, well, he's a good guy, but you know, I wouldn't invite him over for Thanksgiving.
Well, you can like somebody.
He's a really nice guy, but I wouldn't let him hold my wallet.
So I learned that my job was to get them to trust me and to like me.
And the way you gain trust is to make sure that the customer feels that you're putting
their interests first and it has to be genuine.
And you do that by asking questions.
You uncover what they're trying to accomplish today.
And, you know, you're calm.
It's not rush, rush, rush.
It's not balloons and, you know, police tape and, and money machines and all the hype that's
involved in too many sales transactions.
No, it's relaxed.
It's calm.
People feel comfortable and then you get even more trust by knowing your stuff,
knowing your product, knowing your inventory.
And those are things that I had to become very good at.
My problem, and I know you find this hard to believe was that sometimes I would talk too much.
I would talk myself out of a sale.
Customers say, yeah, okay, we'll take it.
And then I'd keep selling.
And that, that's a no-no as well.
I learned, I had to learn how to shut it off.
If somebody said, I'm ready to buy, then you pull out the paper and they signed the paper.
You know, you, you don't keep selling when somebody says I'm sold.
Now it's hard to build a trusting relationship in 10 minutes.
And I think sometimes customers need to slow down as well and, and work with the salesperson.
You know, one of the things I encourage customers to do for car shoppers
is to tell the salesperson when you first go into the dealership, this one thing,
I'm not going to buy a car today.
So don't even try to sell me one.
What you need to do is show me the features and benefits and show me the cars I'm interested in.
You give me a price, but I'm going to think about it.
Fair enough.
And he said, well, let me go ask my manager, you know, and that's,
you're probably in a store that doesn't operate that way.
They want to push, push, push, but you recognize it by how nervous that makes your salesperson.
If he absorbs that just very comfortably, he says, fine folks, I wouldn't buy a car today either.
Well, he may not say that, but he would say it's a big decision and I understand why you'd
want to think about it. So let's just do what you're trying to accomplish.
And then you can go home and ponder it and then maybe come back tomorrow, next week,
whenever you're ready to buy. Fair enough.
And you know what? The customer needs to honor that.
You know, a lot of people, and I understand this, they'll, they'll get a price
from a salesperson from a dealership and they say, yeah, we'll be back tomorrow.
As soon as they go home, they start shopping again. They go online and see if they can beat that deal.
And if I were a buyer, then, and a human being, which all of them are,
then if I find a better deal someplace else, I'm going to make sure I read the fine print
because there are some dealers in this market that will add four or $5,000 in ads in the disclaimer.
You know, they'll show $13, $14,000 discount on a vehicle,
but then you go down the bottom and they're adding $5,000 back to it.
So be, be fair with the salesperson and call them back and say, listen, I really want to buy
from you. You were great. We trust you. We like you. And here's what we found.
And we want to give you the opportunity to earn our business. And I think that's fair.
If somebody spent half a day with you and you were test driving all kinds of vehicles and
they were helpful and they didn't pressure you and made the transaction feel right,
then I think as a buyer, you owe it to them to give them a shot at your business.
It's not all about price every time. I mean, I've had people tell me, said,
Lenny, I don't want to, but I'll pay you $500 more than, than some dealer in Knoxville or,
you know, Roanoke or wherever, because I just want to do business with you. I know you'll
take care of us after the sale. And I said, well, I don't want to charge you $500 more.
Find out what their deal is. Or I'll help you find out what their deal is. We'll sit here
on my computer and nail it down. And I'll meet or beat anything that they say. You know,
if somebody's willing to give me the opportunity to do that, I want to do everything I can to earn
their business and to thank them for trusting me. I think that's, if more salespeople would do that,
then they'd be a whole lot more successful. And they would be selling 20 to 25 cars a month
instead of the national average of eight to 10. Okay, I'll be back here in just one minute.
When people find out that I have a brother, an older brother, he's two years older,
and they say, well, what does he do for a living? And I said, well, he's a doctor.
He's a cardiologist. And they say, well, that's interesting. I said, yeah, we both decided to
get into the car business. He's a car deologist and I'm a car salesman. They always laugh at that.
And quite frankly, being a car deologist is probably more prestigious and more admirable
than being a car salesperson. But I can tell you that I am glad I chose to do what I do
because I could have never done what he did. And I wouldn't have wanted that life for anything
because, you know, in the prime of his career, he didn't have much of a life. He was at the
hospital all the time. And I'm glad for his patients because they loved him. But I mean,
he was on call like every fourth night or something like that. And that meant being in the hospital
all night long and then having to be at work the next day. And I mean, it was just, I said,
why do you do this? Isn't there a better way? And he said, unfortunately, there's not.
That's just the way it is. And I think that has led up a lot because these younger generations
that are coming up becoming doctors, they won't put up with that. They'll just leave.
You know, they'll go work someplace else that doesn't require them to have so much on call.
Now, I had on call as the dealer. You know, I had to be available for many different types of
situation, but it wasn't anything like that. And I'm grateful. So do I think it's a good thing
to be a professional salesperson? I sure do because the world would stop revolving
if something wasn't sold. Something has to be made. It has to be built.
But it has to be sold. And buyers and sellers get together and do business many times because
they run into a professional salesperson who knows his stuff
and puts the needs of the customer first. And I hope that you find that person the next time you
go shopping for a car. Again, if I can help you anytime, 423-552-2020, send me a text or call.
My email address is LennyLawson2020 at gmail.com. And I'll see you on the next edition of My Car Guru.
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