My Car Guru Podcast Oct 14, 2025

Pay attention to the "rabbits" in your life

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22:44

Car

Nissan Versa

The Nissan Versa is a small, affordable car that is great for people looking for something practical. It's known for being easy on gas and having enough room for passengers and cargo.

Car

Nissan Armada

The Nissan Armada is a large SUV that can carry many passengers and has a strong engine. It's good for families and has a lot of space inside.

Term

liability coverage

Liability coverage helps pay for costs if you cause an accident and damage someone else's car or hurt someone. It won't help you if your own car gets damaged.

Term

Comprehensive insurance helps pay for damage to your car from things that aren't accidents, like if someone steals it or if a tree falls on it. It's important for protecting your car from unexpected events.

Term

Collision insurance

Collision insurance helps pay for fixing your car if you get into an accident, no matter who caused it. It's important if you want to make sure your car can be repaired after a crash.

Term

2005 model

A 2005 model means the car was made in 2005. Older cars usually cost less and may have different features compared to newer ones.

Car

Volkswagen Rabbits

The Volkswagen Rabbit is a small car that people like because it's easy to drive and can fit a lot of stuff inside. It has been around since the 1970s and is known for being reliable and fun to drive. Many people talk about it because it's a classic choice for those who want a practical car.

Term

Hey, folks, Lenny Lawson here, the Car Guru, and it looks like this week, the Car Sales Training

Guru.

That's what I'm going to be doing.

We ran an ad in Indeed.com, and you do get a lot of applications.

I'll grant Indeed.com that, but you don't get a lot of people that you would hire,

but that's okay because that's just life.

It's just like when a salesperson is out there working the lot.

You don't sell everybody that you talk to.

I mean, if a car salesperson is successful, he's selling about, well, the most successful

ones sell about 25% of the lot traffic that they get.

These are people that they didn't know.

Now, if they nurtured their customer base, which means just staying in touch with them

and helping them when they come in for service and stuff like that, then they'll resell about

78% of those fine folks.

So the question is, would you rather have a success rate of 25% or 78%?

Well, the challenge in this business is to have a salesperson stay in the business

long enough to even get close to developing an owner base.

Most of them eject after, well, the vast majority eject before even one year has passed.

That's pretty sad.

Why do you think that is?

Why do you think that most car salespeople would fail as a consumer?

And I don't know what you would be thinking right now.

Well, they're just not good people.

Well, that could be some of them.

They weren't committed to it.

Yeah, that could be some of the reasons as well.

You can't get anybody to work these days.

Well, that's not true.

But that may be the case with some people.

No, the reason most car salespeople fail is because most managers and trainers

in car dealerships aren't very good at their jobs.

Well, they may be good at maybe structuring deals, ordering cars, you know,

that kind of stuff, just managing inventory.

But they're not good with the soft skills of dealing with people and training them

and making sure that they're ready to be out there on a lot.

So we've got these new people that are starting here at Gateway.

And when I have them in a classroom and I'm looking at all those eyes,

looking at me, I can't help but wonder what's going through those heads.

And so I ask them, you know, what are you excited about?

What are you afraid of?

What worries you about this career that you've chosen?

See, I want to understand what those fears are,

because if I don't overcome them with my knowledge and experience

and great attitude, then they're going to fail.

And that's what happens to most new salespeople,

is they just don't get those questions answered because they're never asked.

I ran into one of the new guys a little while ago and I was just talking to him.

I said, you've worked in a restaurant, right?

And he said, yeah.

I remember he actually served me at a restaurant one time.

And I was impressed with him back then.

And I said, well, what's the first thing that they want you to become aware of

or learn when you work in a restaurant?

He said the menu.

And I said, well, that makes total sense to me.

That's kind of what I want you to become familiar with here,

is you have to know our product.

You have to understand how that product meets the needs of the people

who are interested in it.

And you have to know how everything works.

You know, there's nothing worse than to have a salesperson showing you a car.

And he said, and the customer says, can I see the engine?

And he can't figure out how to get the hood up.

Or somebody that's interested in how it's going to work with their three kids

in the back.

And he doesn't know how to fold the seat up so that they can get to the back row.

There's so many things, you know, I think it's just such a daunting task

to learn all the product, you know, on the Nissan Cypher.

For example, we have two franchises, Nissan and Ford.

And if you just start with the Nissan Versa and work your way all the way

through the entire product line until you get to the Nissan Armada,

that's a lot of products.

And there are common features between all of them, but there's a lot of different

features as well.

And so what I told him to do, I said, right over there is the Nissan keyboard.

And right over there is the Ford keyboard.

And what you need to do is get at least one product in the morning

and one in the evening, go find, go get the keys, pull it out of its spot

and just open it up, open the doors, the rear hatch,

open the hood, make sure you know where everything is from the dipstick to the

spare tire.

And once you know that, you can study all the product online as well.

Now, we do specific training on individual products in our educational

process. We do walk-arounds and things like that for the salespeople,

even the veterans, because folks, it's a complicated business.

Now, most salespeople don't know squat about the products that they're selling.

There are a few.

Like if you have 20 salespeople, five of them will be product knowledge

specialists.

And the rest are rank amateurs.

And you will find that most of the customers that come in, once they've

been shopping extensively online, they'll know more than the salesperson

does.

They'll even know what the dealership has in stock that the salesperson

isn't familiar with because they went online.

And that's sad. Whose failure is that?

Again, it goes back to the managers.

You know, if you could go into a car dealership and just come straight

to the headman's office and sit down there first and just say,

Mr. Lawson, for example, if you came into my office, say, I want to buy a

car from you and I don't want to have to go back and forth and all

this rigmarole that you have to go through with a lot of salespeople.

I want the guy that has the most product knowledge that's the

friendliest that won't harass me to death if I leave the dealership

and decide not to buy today, but, you know, might give me a phone call.

I'm not opposed to that.

And then when I buy, actually get me my floor mats that he promised,

my full tank of gas and my spray-in bed liner without a fight

and gets me my tags.

That's what I want, Mr. Lawson.

Can you get that for me?

But the problem is most people won't do that.

Of course they do it sometimes here, especially people listening to my radio

program and the tri-cities, this area, they come in and say,

I speak to Lenny and they say, sure.

And so they come back in my office, we sit down and we talk and I get

them started and then I will turn them over to my best salespeople

because I'm not going to turn a radio show listener over to my worst

because my worst is probably that new guy that I just hired.

And he doesn't need to be waiting on customers, does he?

But that's exactly who's waiting on you when you go to a lot of dealerships

is the guy who doesn't even know where the keyboard is.

OK, I'll be back in just one minute.

Well, I got my grandson's car insurance canceled.

Well, his truck insurance.

Yeah, you know, once you get canceled for not paying a bill,

it's hard to get uncanceled.

And I feel so bad.

I get this letter in the mail to my house and it says,

your insurance is canceled.

I said, well, that's not good.

Now open it, look and see, it's on my grandson's truck.

Only thing I have on it is liability.

And so because the Comprehensive is, I mean,

the Collision is so dad gum expensive for a 17-year-old.

And plus it's a truck that, you know, if he totaled it.

I mean, it's a really nice truck, but it's a 2005 model.

And if he totaled it, God forbid, the insurance company

would probably pay $5,000 or $6,000, so it's not worth it.

But I do want liability coverage.

So I called the insurance company or the agent and I said,

listen, I need to put insurance on this now.

What did I do wrong?

I said, well, do you not remember getting a bill?

And I said, no, I really don't.

And she said, well, OK, give me your credit card information

and I'll just go ahead and pay it for you directly

once they get it reinstated and I'll get a receipt

and I'll make sure that we get a copy that it is covered.

I said, thank you.

You know, it's one of the advantages of actually dealing

with a local insurance agency as opposed to one

of these big monsters.

So anyway, I got that taken care of

and yeah, I was off yesterday.

Got to play in a golf tournament.

And then I came into the office this morning

and I have this little, I have a little rabbit.

It's a little brass rabbit that's on the corner of my desk.

Under that are bills and things like that

that need to get paid.

So I just happened to glance over at it

and I picked up the rabbit, looked under it.

Oh, there's that bill.

Seems as though I hadn't moved that rabbit

in about a month when that bill was due.

The reason I use a rabbit is because you know,

rabbits are ruled, I don't know,

they're just kind of an urgent kind of an animal, right?

I mean, they're just so reactionary

and things got to be done quick.

You got to do it now.

And so obviously I haven't followed that rule.

It's been more like a tortoise.

So I am reprioritizing the rabbit from now on.

Okay, in today's automotive news,

sometimes I will cover this.

General Motors is scaling back EV production.

They're taking a $1.6 billion charge

on their financial statement.

It's a big whoops.

You know, I guess they just didn't anticipate

Mr. Trump coming in and saying, okay,

we're doing away with these tax subsidies

for people to buy electric vehicles.

We're using taxpayer money.

You know, people who wouldn't even think

about buying an EV are paying their taxes

and $7,500 of that money is going to anyone who wanted,

well, not anymore, but wanted to buy an EV.

And there was a mad dash at there at the end

before the end of September for people to come in and buy,

but now General Motors is saying, okay,

the free market's taken over, so we need to scale back.

Now there are certain EV makers that aren't doing that.

For example, Hyundai has kicked in a $7,500 cash incentive

because the other $7,500 went away.

On the 2025 Ionic 5, yeah, that's what their EV is called,

or one of them.

And so they also cut the small crossover sticker price

by up to $9,800 for 2026.

So what's Hyundai doing?

They're stepping into the void

and they're rolling the dice, taking a chance.

They think that EVs are still gonna be a thing.

And they may well be, but not in the foreseeable future.

Now General Motors and Ford had decided

where they were just gonna go report a bunch of deliveries

to the federal government before the end of the month,

or the end of September,

and go ahead and capture that $7,500

so they could pass it on to people

who bought vehicles that are still in dealer inventories.

Well, a couple senators balked at that

and they said, that is not right.

They were Republican senators and they said, no,

we're not gonna bulk the taxpayers any more

than we already have, especially for vehicles

that are sold after the deadline.

That's kinda like cheating.

So they decided not to do that.

And also in the news, apparently Americans

are falling behind on their car payments,

especially lower income folks who were,

I guess they were stretching anyway

to be able to make the payments.

And in order to even get close,

they had to do longer term loans.

And now they're not even keeping up

with the payments that they negotiated.

You know, this is no surprise.

How can I say this nicely?

Okay, payment buyers tend to be driven more by emotion

than logic.

How's that?

I'm not saying that they are ignorant

or anything like that.

They just don't know.

Which is what ignorant means, I think.

But they just don't know how to buy a car

and not pay too much for it.

And so they stretch and they stretch

and they try to get that payment

to where they feel comfortable.

And they end up paying hundreds more many times

than what they came into the dealership vowing

not to spend more than such and such.

And then they just rationalize it.

Say, okay, we can cut back on trips to Wendy's

and things like that.

And that's exactly what's happening.

That's why these statistics are what they are

because of payment buyers.

It's not people who pay cash or a negotiated deal

based on the selling price, the trade value,

the terms, making sure they get the right terms.

And then the aftermarket items, they're smart buyers.

You know, they don't care what the payment is.

I mean, yeah, the payment matters eventually.

But it's the last thing, not the first thing.

Listen up, young car buyers and older car buyers

with bad habits.

You are the problem.

You allow many car salespeople

and many car dealerships to be crooks.

And lenders really aren't helping the matter any.

These are the banks and really not so much

credit unions, but a lot of banks and a lot of,

especially in the subprime category, what's that?

Those are people, well, your prime,

if you can walk into just about any place

and buy a car with, because you have outstanding credit,

because you have a beacon score in the 700 plus range.

Anything below that is subprime.

And there are different levels of subprime.

You get low enough in a beacon score

and your credit circumstances are not good.

Then you're not telling the car salesperson

what you're gonna buy.

The car salesperson is telling you what you're gonna buy.

Because I'm sorry, Mr. Customer,

I know you want that nice new Ford Maverick,

but you can't buy that.

You can buy that 2014 Nissan Frontier

with 200,000 miles on it.

And you're gonna have to show up here once a week

with your weekly car payment.

Can you believe that, folks,

that some people have to pay weekly car payments?

And the interest rate is,

it can be anywhere from 25 to 35%,

depending on the laws in the state,

as far as how much interest you can,

or how high of an interest rate

you can charge to a consumer.

I mean, this is how bad it gets for a lot of people.

And for a lot of those poor people,

they were never taught any better.

They were never taught any kind of responsibility

when they were younger.

They watched their parents and all of their bad habits

as far as not paying bills and collectors showing up

and cars getting repossessed out of the driveway

and they just kind of continue in that legacy.

Not all of them.

I mean, some of them see it for what it is,

irresponsibility and they move away from it.

They just can't run fast enough.

And they want to do better.

They want to be able to have things

that when they wanna go out and buy a car,

they wanna be able to go out and buy a car.

They don't wanna have to be subject to somebody

telling them what they have to buy.

It's sad, but that's just the way it is.

So what do you do about it?

Well, if somebody's been in those kind of circumstances

and they've seen that type of behavior,

you gotta break the cycle somehow.

And I think the time to do that is when

the kids are getting ready to graduate from high school

because that's the point where they're either gonna go

to college or they're gonna go to a trade school

or they're just gonna jump into the job market.

And as soon as they get some money,

they're gonna wanna start spending it.

And so you get them in the 11th grade,

at the latest, the 12th grade

and you just coach them and you talk about credit

and you teach them how the system works

so that when they get into the system,

they're not abused to buy it.

They're able to use it to their benefit.

I think kids that are getting ready to go to college

and they're borrowing money, student debt and stuff,

they need to know that their ability

to pay back that student debt

is gonna be dependent on the type of job

they're able to get.

And I'm sorry,

but a lot of these degrees that people get,

never gonna pay them enough to be able to pay off

a $150, $200,000 student debt loan.

I'm sorry.

And you cannot count on the government to say,

well, okay, you're not gonna have to pay it after all.

You need to assume that you will have to pay it.

But that's not the kind of loans that I'm worried about.

I'm worried about when all of a sudden

they get some money in their pocket

and they start, you know, they get an apartment

and then they wanna buy a stereo system

and big screen TV.

And then they said, let's go out and buy a car.

And they go out there and they get abused

because they don't really know how to negotiate

or to deal with a professional sales person

who sees them as just an opportunity to make a big lick.

And so that's what this show is about.

And that's what my services are.

I mean, if somebody reaches out to me

and says, would you come speak to our graduating seniors

about credit responsibility and not do it in a way

that will put them to sleep?

I said, I volunteer for that.

So let me know 423-552-2020

or send me an email to LennyLawson2020 at gmail.com

and we'll get together.

We'll do some education.

I'll be back in just one minute.

Okay, I am back, you know, for these new salespeople.

Wish for them, pray for them that they are able

to take a hold of this as a career to be proud of

and to be, you know, treat others with respect

and therefore be treated with respect.

That's what I've found is also difficult

for a lot of new salespeople is that

it's not as bad as it used to be

because most people that come in to the dealership

to buy a car are pretty far down the purchase funnel,

as they say, they're really close

to making a final decision.

They've either come to pick up their car

or they've come to maybe take it on a test drive

because they've done a lot of their research online.

But there are still others that shop the traditional way

where they just, let's go look at cars, you know,

and they go driving around and they see something they like.

A salesperson approaches them and they just go from there.

They end up leaving in a new car or a used car,

new used car.

So there's no difference in doing that

and selling copy and machines or airplanes or whatever.

It's just that the car business

has a little slightly negative reputation

that's well-deserved in many circles.

But my goal is to train these people to do it right

and to live up to the promise

that we made them when we hired them.

You know, and you need to do that same thing.

You hire new people.

Don't hang them out there to dry.

You know, in the car business, they used to say,

show them the lot, show them a desk

and show them the keyboard and wish them good luck.

And that has proven not to work.

Not very well at all.

So hopefully when you go to buy your next new car,

you know, one of the ways to make sure that you get

the best salesperson is go up to the receptionist

and say, hey, who's your best salesperson?

She knows.

She's the one that gets all the phone calls

and knows who's getting most of the phone calls,

knows who actually returns phone calls,

knows which people are the nicest

and deals with the people in the nicest way

in the showroom.

Yeah, she's a great resource.

That is, if you can't walk into the dealer

and do what I said earlier.

Well, thanks for listening to this edition

of My Car Guru.

If you need me, text me, 423-552-2020.

Also, I'll send you the My Car Guru guidebook,

which pretty much summarizes a lot

of what we talk about on this show.

And it is a guaranteed way to save money,

buying, selling, trading, servicing,

whatever you need to do with an automobile,

the guidebook will help do it.

I'll email it to you, or I'll send it to you,

a hard copy, just again, send me your email address

to 423-552-2020, or call the dealership here

at Gateway Ford, 423-639-5151,

and talk to our operator.

She will give me your address

and I'll make a copy of the guidebook

and send it to you.

How's that for a deal?

Okay, I'll see you on the next edition of My Car Guru.

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22:44

Pay attention to the "rabbits" in your life

Nissan Versa

Nissan Armada

liability coverage

Comprehensive insurance

Collision insurance

2005 model

Volkswagen Rabbits

tax subsidies for electric vehicles

EV

cash incentive

Hyundai

Ioniq 5

Ford Maverick

Nissan Frontier

weekly car payments

About this episode

Original notes