Tales From Sales: Bounty Hunters

A wad of hundred dollar bills flew through the air, landing in the centre of the conference room table next to a yellowed Mitel conference phone. It was the start of a new month and the Dealer Principal was making what was to be our main focus quite clear.

“You’ve got an entire row of used cars out there that haven’t moved in far too long,” he thundered at the sales staff. Producing a sheaf of papers from his jacket pocket, a list featuring about a dozen vehicles that had been on the lot approaching 100 days appeared. “These are all in Recon as we speak, getting turned into cream puffs. That cash goes to the person who sells the most off this list.”

A bounty, then. Game on.

I enjoyed selling second-hand vehicles off the lot, if for nothing else than earning the favorable commission when compared to most equivalent new models. Knowing the commission percentage of gross profit for new and used was very similar, and there was often a lot more profit built into the asking price of something from the left-hand side of the parking lot, so I tended to sell as many used as possible. The smell of a new car is alluring; the smell of money even more so.

In fact, one month the Sales Manager inexplicably purchased from auction several used examples of a compact sedan when we already had a plethora of the exact same new sedans sitting unsold up in the back lot. Logically, the sales staff latched onto the used models like a newborn latches onto its mother. Equivalent car, more profit, more commission – what wasn’t to like? Predictably, a cease-and-desist order was issued by way of a bounty on the new models, causing all sales staff to gravitate towards those cars in search of extra cash.

This particular month, though, there would no easy way to earn the extravagantly offered bounty. From the list, I recall a wretched station wagon in a horrible shade of green. A plain, no frills hatchback with mismatched side mouldings – different textures from the factory. A sorry looking minivan whose interior appeared to have been previously inhabited by an angry lynx. Whatever the Sales Manager was smoking when he bought these cars to create this fiasco, he should have shared; it must have been good.

Recon, by the way, is a short term for reconditioning – the wash bay, in less glamorous terms. At the dealer, nearly everything looks nice and shiny. Those dozen cars on bounty? They all just got sprayed down by the pimply faced, minimum wage teenager in the wash bay before going up on the 3 foot high display overlooking the main road. Every one of those vehicles had languished on the lot for a reason. As a customer, it pays to look at and study used cars with the same care as if they are plutonium filled tax forms.

Three of the twelve was enough for me to earn the bounty. The wagon went to a local delivery company who mercifully painted it in their livery colours. The base model penalty box was pawned off to a new college student who was over the moon to simply have wheels. I vividly remember selling the mechanically sound but tattered minivan to a very nice family who apparently cared not one whit about the shredded interior. Perhaps they had a pet lynx of their own.

When shopping, go ahead and open the hood. Open the trunk. Open the doors. Look at everything in between and then take that used car to a third party mechanic for an objective opinion. I took pride in being as up front as humanly possible with those customers because referrals and repeat customers are the key to being successful in this business.

Treated incorrectly, buying a used car can end up as an automotive ex-girlfriend parallel: fantastic initial performance, quickly degrading into a neurotic evil bitch with transmission problems and $1000 worth of unexpected maintenance. In both cases, an ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of cure.

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Find Matthew Guy on Twitter @matthewkguy (Matthew the Car Guy)