A much-maligned species of motor person strikes back. Paddy Comyn has done his years on the forecourt. Today he describes the battle for a sale from the other side
You can call them sales assistants, sales executives, sales advisors or automobile consultants. Most people use shorter and slightly more graphic terms for them. We speak of course, of the car salesman.
Does the very mention of the term send you into a foetal spasm, fearful of the impending barrage of flashy smiles, clicking fingers, idle chit-chat and waffly sales babble? But are you being unfair? Is the life of a car salesperson - more and more women are joining the Dark Side daily - a pleasant one? Well, not really.
You see I've been a car salesman myself. I've experienced what sociologists call "frontstage" and "backstage".
Buying a car as a customer and trying to translate your frustrations as a buyer into a more pleasant experience as a seller is a noble aim, but not an easy one. There are a few reasons for this you see.
Just as Pavlov conditioned his poor dog to drool on cue, car sales staff and customers have conditioned each other. The showroom is not so much a retail situation as a game of psychological warfare.
Walking into a dealership is, by and large, a fairly intimidating experience. The average person might have a limited knowledge of cars, of how much their own car is worth and of what constitutes a good deal. They are thus at the mercy of someone who makes their money from commission and how little they can take in a trade-in at.
The sales assistant is, indeed, there to help but the average basic wage for car sales staff is pathetic. Earning the rest is not an easy thing.
The result is that some very bizarre transactions take place. I wasn't a natural salesman. I liked cars and I liked helping people and naively believed that this was going to make me a success.
Firstly, starting off as a salesman in a showroom is similar to joining the army: you will spend your initial days parking cars, making tea and learning, well, nothing to be precise. Enthusiasm is a dangerous and frowned-upon trait which will soon be sorted with a few trips to the tax office.
You can bring potential customers on a test drive, explain the cars to them, build up a great relationship and pretty much sell the car, only for your "senior" to snatch the sale from under your nose because you still haven't learned to fill in the sales form. Knowledge is power.
Should you graduate out of the parking-valet stage and take your first tentative steps into the gladiators' arena in your freshly bought, ill-fitting suit, you will soon notice the chasm between what the customer expects and what the salesperson provides.
Yes, being met by a customer is fascinating. The look on most faces is not unlike that of a heart-broken mother about to be introduced to the drunken driver who ran over their child - it's one of utter contempt in many instances.
The situation will not have been helped if the customer has wandered around the showroom for 40 minutes waiting to be seen while the sales staff chatted on a phone without raising their eyes. This is where the cheesy grin and charismatic codswallop that quite often pops out of the sales advisor's mouth merely adds petrol to already smouldering temper. So battle commences.
Lieutenant customer often throws all his or her front-line into battle in one big charge: "I want to buy a Mondeo - how much will you give me for my car?"
Oh dear! Poor old Colonel Salesman has to defend quickly: "Hmm . . . I'll have to have a look at it."
The colonel moves the battleground by means of the car evaluation. Standing by, while the sales advisor wanders around your pride and joy with a clip board and a mobile phone stuck to their ear, is unsettling. You hope that little things will escape notice . . . the scrape you got in Tesco's Car Park and tyres less than perfect.
Eagle-eyed Colonel Salesman will often bring in reinforcements. Not one, but two sales advisors may circle your car like vultures, looking for signs of weakness before attacking with sharp intakes of breath and hand written notes.
Back in the showroom, you retake your seats. Calculators tap furiously, performing imaginary calculation which serve to weaken your resolve. Colonel Salesman is quickly figuring how many troops he can afford to lose to win the war, while you're now hoping only to get out alive.
So why does this happen? Well, selling a car isn't easy. Customers try to fool salesmen as much as vice versa. If a salesman takes in a car which can't be sold on, he suffers. If you get too much discount, he suffers.
In many dealerships you begin to make money only after you have sold a certain number of cars. Luxury dealerships are different - one large executive car can keep you in Hugo Boss shirts for another six months.
The heady days of 2000 are gone. This was a time where you were lucky to get served. Sales staff became nothing more than order-takers as we threw all our newly-earned money into cars, the one thing that depreciates faster than almost anything else you can buy.
Now, with sales dropping, the sales staff must graft again. They need your money and will be as nice or as ruthless as they need to be to get it.
They are not all like that though. More and more dealerships are realising that, if a proper relationship is formed, you will have a customer for life. Psychologists and consultants are being employed to remould hungry sales sharks into listeners.
A salesman who asks simple questions about the customer's needs will be successful. One who explains how trade-in values works will gain respect and new business.
For our part, customers need to realise that sales staff have a right to earn some money from the transaction and that, for the most part anyway, they are there to help. Bear this in mind the next time you walk through the showrooms (trap)door.