Sales People Should Learn Their Product

If you don't mind a little bit of a trip, try Motorworld Toyota in Wilkes Barre, Pa. My salesman Bill was very knowlegable, got my Prius 2 days before it was supposed to come in. They are a good dealer to do business with.

 

I was exceptionally dissatisfied with both salesmen I worked with. I knew more about the car than either of them. And I still had not found this site yet. The people I did seemed to know nothing about the stock they were paid to sell. Granted that Toyota has many current models for sale. I sure would have put more effort into knowing the products better. I think it is just professionalism. I do think that there is a hierarchy of sales people at this dealership. May be all of them, I don't know. There are some that stand around outside like sharks waiting fr the next "customer" to feed on. They may not even make commission. There are others. Like the sales manager that seemed more informed. May be they had actually received some training on the vehicle.

In any case. I did not find anyone at the dealership that cared enough about this car to do a fraction of the research that I had done. Let the buyer beware. Do your homework. And never ever forget that t is YOUR money you are spending.

 

Don't expect too much and you won't be disappointed. I wish I had adopted that philosophy when I purchased my Prius. The only downside to the purchase was the sales persons indifference and lack of knowledge. All he cared about was the commission. Dealers don't understand the poor reflection that this type of sales people have on their business. I have told dozens of people about the poor experience.

I spent a lot of time completing the after purchase survey sent by Toyota. I gave credit where it was due and expressed my displeasure where appropriate. It took about two months for the survey to get back to the dealer. If I had owned the business and received that report about one of my sales people I would have called the customer myself. The dealer had the sales person call me. Fox watching the kitchen coup?

Waste of my time!

 

The first salesperson I spoke with at Toyota of Morristown, in Morristown, NJ, told me at least four times that the Prius fuel tank was six gallons and I could drive from Morristown to Niagara Falls without refueling. I went back to him so I could get a test drive but when I ordered my Prius I went to a different dealer (West Caldwell Toyota) whose salesperson at least knew the size of the fuel tank.

The second dealer's salesperson was upfront about what he didn't know (this was in October) and asked if he could make copies of all the materials I had downloaded and brought with me. I placed the order based on my paying MSRP and delivery after January 1. The sales manager has called me twice to keep me up to date on delivery. I'm happy with this dealer so far and hoping for the best when the car finally comes in.

 

Yes, I totally agree. I should be used to it by now, but it still amazes me every time. I know very little about cars, but if I'm going to spend $25k, I take some time to understand what I'm buying. How can a salesperson not at least know a little bit about the cars they are selling?

I have a 2005 and I'm on the waiting list for a 2006. I talked to a salesperson around a month ago ... the guy hadn't even heard about the $3k tax credit. Just think, he has a potential sale on the line and customers are on the fence about paying $500 to get on the 3-6 month waiting list ... and he doesn't even have enough knowledge to inform them of a possible $3,000 tax credit???

 

The dealership I went to had a Prius guy. He's not there any more, but if ANYONE asked about a Prius, they got introduced to Chris. He was in fact pretty knowledgeable about the car, but I didn't ask him about tax credits, etc. They have specialists for Fixing Prii, they should have specialists for selling them.

 

About half way thru our first test drive I asked the salesman if he'd ever even sat in a Prius before, and he admitted he hadn't. It seemed to me that he'd never sat in any car before the way he kept looking around, opening up the glove boxes, ect. I then asked him a couple basic questions that I already knew the answers to because of priuschat and he said I probably knew more than him already. Probably? My husband and I then drove an hour to the only other dealership we knew of that had a prius reserved for test drives, just to give it a fair chance (we were deciding between a prius and a civic hybrid). The second salesman was much more knowledgeable at least about the gadgets that come in a package 6, though he still couldn't tell me more than I knew from this site.

 

You see, this all goes back to a major problem in auto sales, across the board. Commission sales and extreme transience in the auto sales field (sales in general is that way, but auto sales seems to be the worst).

This is a comparison you can do if you have a little time or a little background experience. Compare the head shuffle at a commission sales dealership compared to a "fixed price" non-commission sales dealership. It is like day and night.

Car salesman on commission are working for money, and as much money as they can get and not much else. On top of that their management isn't interested in their competency with the product, or their ability to tell truthful facts to customers, only their ability to move the product. This is a pretty typical condition at a lot of commission dealerships, but is even worse at high pressure tactic commission dealerships.

On the other hand your salaried dealers at a lot of fixed price lots basically tell you how much they need out of the sale to keep the lights on and pay the employees and let you decided if that is fair or not. We have a Lincoln/Mercury dealer that has that kind of operation and they do very well. They have a lot of customer loyalty built up and never a bad story is told about them. On top of that they have the same dealers year in and year out. Tells you something about tho the company treats their employees even though they aren't working commission.

 

Wow, you got a call? It was back in April that I filled out that survey and let them know how unhappy I was with one issue and nobody ever called me.

 

hmm. where my husband works, he has been asked to give a seminar to all the sales guys so they quit going back to the shop to ask him questions for their customers. we are putting together a reference for them to use so he only gets interrupted for really complex questions.

so goes the life of the only prius owner who works for the dealer...

 

In the original post catskillsguy was thinking of ordering from more than one dealer. Many on this board have done so. Just as important as the sales department will be your relationship with the service department.

 

I originally planned on getting an '05. The night I put down my "non refundable deposit" I learned about the 06 Tax Credit and was very upset. I called my dealer the next day. They knew nothing about the tax credit but did refund my deposit with the understanding I would order later.

My sales woman is very pleasent and returns calls promptly. I have provided a good deal of information to her about the tax credit. She even called me on one occasion as another customer had a question about it.

My 06 is now ordered at MSRP and should arrive early January.

Oregon-Mica

 

Although the final outcome remains to be seen so far I have been happy with the knowledge of my sales person (mark keppel at tansky toyota). I as a whole do not expect a sales person to know as much about a specific car as I do because I research fanaticly before going into a dealership. Although I knew a few things that Mark did not, he knew more overall than I and was very enthusiastic showing me things I might not know. He has been a Prius owner for several years, and already had documents about the tax credits and other benifits in my area, I did go over some of the details about the credit that he did not know (but being involved daily in financial matters I was happy to share what I had learned). He has called every time any change has occured since I placed my order in early october and has been sending a news letter from time to time.

I guess the point is not all sales people are less than knowledgeable about their product, and I would have choosen not to do business with him if he knew less than I liked. I will still have to see how well he does the sale and customer service as delivery grows closer.

 

This thread has been idle for a long time, but it was the only one I could find that was related to this subject.

Is it just me or is this still a problem? In talking with different sales people most seem to know little about the Prius or hybrids in general. More than one sales person I talked with recently knew nothing about Toyota's plan for the 2010s re: plug-in or Honda's plan for the "new" Insight (or Hindsight) even though the "Auto-group" sells both Toyota and Honda. I would think by now that most sales people would know more about the Prius - even if it was just through osmosis. Granted, I learned 99.99% of what I know about the car through this site -- wish I would have found it when I first started looking at the car.

Why don't the dealerships do a better job of educating their sales staff. This is not meant as a blanket statement about all dealers or sales staff - I have found several that "know their stuff about the Prius". Maybe each dealer should have an expert sales person and direct customers to that person.

 

Car salespeople, in general, are not competent salespeople. If they were...they would have moved on to corporate sales or some other type of higher yield sales long ago.

Think of them as the people who work at Circuit City.

Its an extremely hard business, one thats its hard to make a decent living at anymore. Cut 'em some slack.

Now, there are car salespeople who are very competent salespeople and know how to build relationships and value-sell (knowing ones product is a part of this...) but anymore they have to sell high end cars to make a decent living...or they've moved on to other types of sales.

 

Neohybrid, read through www.carbuyingtips.com & stop talking to salesmen. Cut out some of the overhead by going through Internet Sales.

 

I can't help but wonder if some of their ignorance isn't due to the "plausible deniability" theory. They sell you X today and next week the X+ comes out and the salesperson is able to say "I did not know anything about that new model...."

 

You're assuming complexity where none exists.