Car Buying. What’s trust got to do with it?

So after 15 years, my old car has just about given up the ghost. It’s a sad time for me, I’ve grown very fond of my car and its eccentricities. It’s done over 170,000 miles and in all of the time I’ve owned it, it’s let me down twice that I can think of. However, like pretty much everyone I need a vehicle that’s reliable, safe and economical. My old vehicle was reliable and safe, but it could never have been described as economical at about 25 miles to the gallon.

So I’ve spent a lot of time car shopping, which is probably my least favourite activity. But it did give me the opportunity to take a critical look at the sales processes Car dealers have in place to sell us a car.

The other month I wrote about the five main reasons why people don’t buy “No need, No Desire, No Money, No Hurry and No Trust” that Zig Ziglar spoke about. (click here to re-read the original blog). Now when thinking about my situation with my car hunting, you can pretty much rule out three of these reasons.  I had the need, my old car is on its last legs and I still need to get around. I’ve got a budget for the new car (so I have the money) and finally I have a deadline (I’m in a Hurry), knowing that my car has an MOT (Vehicle inspection) due at the end of the month, which it’s unlikely to pass.  So all of these pretty much make me what you might call a motivated buyer.

So off I go to the first car lot and have a good look around. It’s not long till I see something that I think really fits the bill, it’s in my price bracket, extremely economical and rather sporty at the same time. So all is good and I arrange to take a test drive the next day. I turn up 10 minutes before the appointed time and to my surprise, they’re not ready for me. They’ve not bothered to move the car (it’s at the back of the lot and they have to move quite a few other vehicles to get to the one I’m going to drive) and I have to wait 15 minutes before its ready.  

The test drive experience wasn’t much better, a rather bored salesperson sat in the back playing on their mobile phone paying little or no attention to me or my questions about the car. When we got back to the car showroom it got even worse, the salesperson couldn’t answer most of my questions and had to keep referring to their manager. So you can guess that I didn’t make an offer on the Car, which by the way was rather good.  

Here’s where I was, I was ticking four out of five of the boxes. I liked the Car (Desire), I’d the budget (Money), I was in a rush (Hurry) and I definitely had the (Need), but they had failed on perhaps the most important issue of all (Trust). I couldn’t bring myself to trust them if they showed so little interest in me when I was a motivated buyer how would they deal with me once I’d bought? My guess is that when the sales manager asks the salesperson why I didn’t buy they’ll say something like “he was just a tire kicker”, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.

At the next car lot I soon spied a car that again fit the bill. This time I could take it for a test drive straight away. The salesperson was good and attentive and had great product knowledge, the car was good apart from a few minor flaws (which I could overlook for now) and the price was right. In fact all was going really well and I made an offer for the Car, which was rejected because they’d sold it to someone else and hadn’t taken it off the market or told the salesperson.  The sales person tried to get me interested in something else but I couldn’t bring myself to ‘trust’ them that they wouldn’t do the same thing again.

I did go to a couple of other car lots and have test drives but I didn’t have the same ‘desire’ for the cars, you might say that they just didn’t float my boat.

So what happened for me to finally buy a Car?

Well, I saw the same Car I’d made an offer at Dealer number 2 at another dealer who I’d heard good things about. I enquired about the Car online and a rather nice salesperson called me and told me all about the Car and suggested I book a test drive for the following day. When I turned up for the test drive they were ready for me, the Car was waiting and I could pretty much jump straight in and take it for a spin. Back at the showroom, the salesperson could answer all the questions I had without having to refer to their sales manager.  So all the conditions for a successful sale were in place.

1. 1. Need. My need for a new Car was obvious to me.
   2. Hurry. I am working on a definitive timescale of the end of the month.
   3. Desire. I’d driven the model I bought several times at different dealers. I’d convinced myself that this was what I wanted.
   4. Money. The money was in place for the new Car right from the start. Whatever I chose had to fit the budget my wife had set.
   5. Trust. This was the biggy, did the dealers I saw develop that feeling of trust I needed to do the deal. Obviously only the last one did.

Of all the factors that were in play, there was only one that the dealers could really control which was trust. By doing the simple things right, like having the Car ready and being able to answer the questions I had, the final dealer could generate enough confidence for me that I could trust them. The others failed miserably on that count.  So what’s trust got to do with it? Everything!