Are Car Salespeople Too Agressive?

What a weekend! There is nothing better than a weekend full of fun things, meal's out, bike riding, attending events, buying a new car! Okay, well maybe not buying the new car part. Let me back up a little bit, my wife Donna is thinking about purchasing a new car, her current car has over 130-thousand miles on it and it's time for her to get a new car. She has been talking about this for months now, finally this weekend she said to me "let's go test-driving". She had a couple of vehicles in mind that she wanted to try out, one of them being a small SUV.

We ended up driving 40 minutes to the nearest dealership that sells this kind of SUV, a dealership I am familiar with, I purchased a car there a few years back. When we arrived on the lot we started walking around and like all dealerships we were approached by a friendly salesman or so it seemed. After asking a few questions we happily answered, that is when the pressure started! We told him we were on a fact finding mission, Donna was looking for a new car and wanted to test drive a few and make a decision on what she liked and would go from there. Then came the questions we did not want to answer, "how much do you want to spend"? "What payments are you looking for"? When we told the salesman we didn't want to talk money yet, he kept hounding us in the parking lot, Donna told him, "all I want to do is look right now", he continued with the badgering, finally she had had it and told him, rather loudly, "Stop Following Me", he then got the message and said "Oh, sorry, there's no pressure with me" and walked back to the showroom and let us look for ourselves.

We made our way around a couple of cars, then like someone playing hide-n-seek we see the salesman's head pop out behind a tree! I couldn't believe it! We chuckled and kept on walking, when we passed him by the showroom door there he was dangling a set of keys in front of us saying, "Here's the keys to the car you like, no pressure". "No Pressure", really? There you are dangling key's like we were cat's looking to play with the jingling keys, we told him we were still looking and would let him know if we found something we wanted to see.

As we walked around the lot a little more we came across another salesman, after having the experience a few minutes earlier, we told him we were talking to someone else but weren't happy with the way we were being treated. He understood and was totally professional and did not ask the money questions, he asked the right questions, what car do you like, what are you going to use it for and took us for a test drive in the model she wanted to try. I felt bad for the original salesman, we gave him the chance but could not handle the pressure he was putting on us.

Turns out the car Donna did drive she loved and that is the leading choice for her right now! If she decides that is the one she is going with, we will buy from that dealership and the second salesman we saw. I know times are tight and that's how they make a living, but do salesmen really need to put on so much pressure? My answer is no! We all know the image of a typical car salesman and that's why we all dread buying a new car.

I'm sure you feel the same way, let's hope dealerships take advice and stop beating the consumer over the head trying to get them to buy, be nice and answer the questions and maybe you will get the sale and have a customer for life and one who will recommend friends looking for a car to shop there as well. Sounds so simple, yet it's so difficult to find.