The first thing I do after I make a sale is to prepare a file on the buyer with everything I know about him and about what he bought. At the same time, a special thank-you letter goes out to the customer. I guess it’s a pretty obvious thing to do-to thank the customer for buying from me. But you would be surprised how many salesmen don’t do it. This means that my thank-you is noticed in that house, because it is so rare. I have a rule that I send out the thank-you on the very same day as the sale, so I never forget.
A lot of salesmen want to turn their back on a customer as soon as they have made the delivery. If something is wrong with the car and the person brings it in, some salesmen even hide from the customer. They consider customer complaints and problems as annoyances that will finally go away. But that is the worst attitude you can have.
I look at it this way: Service problems and other customer complaints are a normal part of all business, regardless of what you sell. If you handle them properly, they can help you sell a lot more in the future. I will go out of my way to help the customer and make sure the work is done right. That is part of my job. And if the customer has still worse problems, my job is to take his side and make sure his car runs the way it should. I will fight for him with the mechanics, with the dealer, and with the factory.
The value of taking the customer’s side is obvious. I become a friend, you come back to me for your next car, and you tell a lot of people about me if I stand behind you. That is one of the best ways to make customers into believers, believers in you and in your interest in their satisfaction.
I look at a customer as a long term investment. I’m not just going to sell him that one car and then tell him to shove it when he is not satisfied. I expect to sell him every car he is ever going to buy. And I want to sell his friends and his relatives. So when somebody buys from me, he is going to love that experience and he is going to remember it and remember me and talk about it to everybody he runs into who needs a car. I look at every customer as if he is going to be like an annuity to me for the rest of my life. So they have to be happy. They have to believe in me. All you have to do is turn your back on a customer once, and he knows he has been hustled and conned and lied to. I hope you understand that I do a lot of things that other salesmen don’t do. And I hope you understand that what I do works for everybody. I am good to my customers. They know I really care about them and they believe in me. And you make a lot more money by making your customers believers.
Photo Credits-Sixcentpress