Transcription
America's most successful car salesman was once asked what was the secret to his success. And he said, "Very simple."
He said, "Everybody who's in car sales tries to sell a car. When I try and sell a car, I'm asking myself a different question, which is, 'How can I be sure they come to me for their next car?'"
One of the ways you can do that is actually, in the short term, it's bad. If you down-sell people a bit and say, "Actually, you don't need this. I'd buy this slightly cheaper one because it's nearly as good and it's $10,000 cheap." Anything like that, by the way, establishes enormous trust and affection and a feeling of mutuality.
Great scene on Jay Leno's Garage where he completely trusted the McLaren company. He won't buy a Ferrari, Jay, because you have to engage in all sorts of weird, like strange, you've got to buy nine really boring ones before they'll sell you a rare one. And he doesn't want to play those games.
But the McLaren guy said, he said, "I quite like the, I think it's the ceramic brake discs." And the guy at McLaren said, "Um, are you going to track race this car? You're just going to drive it around the streets?" He said, "I'm just going to drive it around LA. I might take it on the track once." He goes, "Let me save you $20,000 straight off the bat. You don't want the ceramic disc brakes. They take ages to warm up. You'll end up driving into the car in front." Instant trust.
Now, the best car salesman in America probably looked like a mildly unsuccessful car salesman for the first three years of his existence.