I was recently laid off from a great job due to our sluggish economy. I registered on several job hunting sites and got busy finding another job. I came across an ad on careerbuilder.com for a sales position at an auto dealership. The ad was full of suggestions on how I could make $60-$100k a year selling cars. Of course I'm not so foolish to think I'd actually make that much money given the state of the auto industry, but people are still buying cars. The ad claimed that due to record demand new sales associates were needed immediately. After a couple of months of rolling snake eyes on the various job sites I figured I would give it a try. I mean why not? What do I have to lose? The answer is $625.
After multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE, interviews with various managers at three different dealerships I was offered a position. Now let me back up for a second and say that this was a two week process. I was told to start training on a Thursday and the training would run through Saturday. It was supposed to be a week long course condensed into three days. The truth is, it should have been over in one day.
Day one went well. The instructor, let's call him "Richard", was full of stories about the Army and being in the Special Forces and of course all the money he made selling cars. He told us we could make $30k our first year, contrary to his ad on careerbuilder stating $60k plus. As the first day rolled on I started to suspect Richard might be full of "it", minus the S and the H.
He had fantastical stories of being an Army Ranger, a Sniper and a Mercinary in Africa. He openly bragged about how much information he could get out of a prisoner straped in a chair with an ice pick. Yes he actually said that! How many Special Forces/Snipers/Mercinaries do you hear walking around bragging about their adventures? The answer is none. The real men and women in the special forces do not go around blowing their own horn or brag about torturing a prisoner. I know people in th millitary and they tell me this is not only frowned upon but could relsult in the offender recieving bodily harm at the hands of the real soldiers. These stories were most likely made up to make him seem larger than life. I don't think any one bought any of his "war" stories.in fact I'll go on record as saying the man is a LIAR. After all the stories and adventure he claimed to have been on, I'd estimate his age to be around 143 to 145 years old. I mean to do all the stuff he claims would take more years to accomplish than a guy in his mid fourties had lived.
Now back to the training. We finished day one around 4:00 PM and parted ways and went home. Friday starts once again at 8:30 AM again with yet more "war" stories interupted with a BS sales story or two. We get into the meat and potatoes of selling cars and at about 1:00 on we take a break and were told when we come back he would address our compensation packages.
First of all NEVER go to work for a dealership and if you're buying a car, please have some empathy with the salesman, after all he's getting screwed as much if not more than you are. We were told what out percentages would be for each sale and what our draw would be. For those who don't know a draw is a base salary. Mine was $1, 500 a month. Yeah, I know. Any way, he then proceeds to tell us about his "fee" for the training class we are taking. Let me stop here and remind everyone reading this that the class started on Thursday, it's now Friday around 1:00 PM so we are a little over half way through the course. Not to mention the two week process of interviewing at three different dealerships. Nothing was ever mentioned in the interview process nor was the fee discussed when the offer of employment was made. The fee wasn't even mentioned on the first day nor was it mentioned at the beginning of the second day.
At just over half way through the course he discloses his fee. Why? You may ask. It's because, at this point, you have invested too much time to turn back now. It's salesman 101 stuff. They got you to commit to buy in so then they hit you with the fees you won't walk away. It's too late to turn back at this point so you forge ahead and tell yourself "I will make up the money with all the sales I'm going to make."
You start to rationalize things because you don't want to admit you are a fool for falling into this trap. It's so funny how we go along with bad decisions because we are embarassed to admit, even to ourselves, we fell for a scam. The course itself is nothing more than text book techniques you can get at the Barnes and Noble for about $20 in any sales book. The problem is the techniques are old and dated and today's consumers usually don't fall for tricks anymore. The whole course was based on how to basicly trick people into buying over priced cars. Which is another reason I went along with the fee. I had been had and I did var.
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