Well, my comments of 10 days ago did the trick. Shortly after my insightful commentary the Senate took up the clunkers bill and approved $2 billion more for the program. OK, I know the program is flawed but so is our economy and I am back on the hunt for a new car.

Which brings me to car salesmen (and ladies)…We are at the beginning of the process but history tells us that something will go wrong with the negotiation at some point or I will be subjected to some outrageous fee or comment. You know the deal. I confess this is not my favorite thing to do. I am a no haggle kind of guy and there always seems to be alot of smoke in big sales.

Well, today I was told I would have to pay $1000 for them to search for the vehicle I want since they don’t have it on the lot. Hmmmm. OK, I get that they incur a labor cost to check the computer but I don’t think it is $1000. I also get they want me to be financially (and emotionally) committed to the car (which may or may not exist). I don’t get nor might I pay the $1000. The car I want is not easy to find but it isn’t rare either. Once I tell them the color and style they want $1000 to find it. I am not sure I like that. Of course it goes to the price of the car etc etc etc but it just seems like alot to pay for a bit of information.

So, here is the question for you today? Do your customers have a natural suspicion of what you do? Construction is always one of those adversarial businesses. How about banking these days? I am sure there are others.

What are you doing to ease the anxiety of the customer and make the sales and service process a hassle fee one?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.