How to Sell A Car – Part One

Before Ted Turner bought Montana and retired to shoot wildlife in a drug-addled haze, CNN’s founder had a sign on his desk that read “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.” Obviously, Captain Outrageous considered himself the leader; leaving everyone else to either follow his instructions or, as Ted liked to put it, f-off. And boy, did The Mouth of the South learn to work that strategy, building a multi-billion dollar empire on the back of championship wrestling and baseball. That’s because Ted Turner had an inherent understanding of his position in this world. He knew he was a born salesman.

It all comes down to testicle size. (For women, it’s the amount of testosterone in their system.) Men with larger testicles produce more testosterone than men with smaller testicles. The hormone makes them physically stronger, much more aggressive and far more inclined to take risks than smaller-balled men. As you might imagine, high testosterone or “alpha” males represent a minority of the total population. Well, if they’re not at the beginning of their life cycle, they are at the end– after competing alphas have killed each other off, died from taking stupid risks or found their way into a prison cell.

This, my friend, is you. You are a high testosterone male. Think about it. Who in their right mind would be a car salesman? There’s no job security. There’s no income security; your livelihood depends on your performance on any given day, with any given customer. If you want to know how you ended-up where you are, look down. Not convinced? Look around. How many of your male colleagues are tall/large? How many of them are losing their hair? How many played contact sports in high school? How many are cheating on their partner or just plain horn-dogging it? How many are always sweating? How many are team players?

These are your people. But they are not your customers. Car salesmen can’t get their heads around the fact that their customers do not share their psychology. You want a bigger house. A better car. A better suit. A better watch. A better wife. You were born to want MORE, and you’re willing to risk everything to get it and WIN. Your customers have smaller balls. Their primary motivation is to hang on to what they’ve got. They were born to sniff the air, follow the crowd, minimize risk and NOT LOSE.

This is why your customers fail to share your excitement about buying a new car. The majority see car buying as an endless opportunity to lose/squander their precious resources. In fact, the whole process scares them shitless. You scare them shitless. This is why car salesmen who are bullies do so well. We’ve all heard stories of burly car salesman who literally kidnap and/or physically force customers to buy a car. They do it because it works. The evil alpha salesman establishes dominance over the beta customer, who eventually decides they’d lose more by not buying a car (like, say, their life).

Again, this kind of bullying is not the right way to sell a car. But in the absence of a positive, coherent, logical and successful method to honestly and effectively utilize a salesman’s natural dominance to sell a car; it’s the most efficient. And please don’t go thinking about all the times this wasn’t or isn’t true. If you’re going to learn how to sell a car properly, you need to subvert your natural tendency to focus on exceptions to the rule. Alphas are born hunters, and hunters always look for the different thing: the old, weak or malformed member of an otherwise homogenous herd. Sales is a numbers game. Your goal is to sell cars to the majority, not the minority. So forget all the examples that illustrate that I’m wrong. Focus on all the experiences that tell you that I’m right.

Last paragraph? Wow. That went fast. There’s a bunch more practical stuff to come that’s gonna blow your mind and bring you bucks (YES MORE!). Meanwhile, a quick question. What if there’s a way to embrace your Alpha-ness that helps car customers make the right decision? And what is the “right decision?”