Rick Lee

For years I have had a repressed fantasy of selling cars for a living. I have been in sales (in other fields) for about seven yrs. now and came minutes away from leaving my current job a few yrs. ago to be a service adviser for Audi. My boss gave me a 20% raise on the spot to keep me. The other night I was surfing Craigslist and came across a sales opening for a local BMW/Audi/Porsche dealer (ad didn't say which one). So I fired off an outdated resume, a one paragraph cover email and voila - they just called and I have an interview there tomorrow.

I like my current job a lot and am the top producer here. My boss is good to me and I work in a very cool environment, never past 5:30pm and never on weekends. BUT....I will probably never make much more money here than I currently do and I know plenty of car salesmen make a LOT more than I make here. So I figure I'll either put this car-selling fantasy to rest for good or jump on it by going to this interview. Anyone have some experience or advice here? I'm all ears.

24FPS

damn... tough job unless you've got the gift. gotta' produce or your out "."
(kinda' sounds like you do) check it out.
i've got an uncle who sells (top @ his dealership)... made a healthy 6 fig. income for quite a few years. now it's pretty much return & ref. clients he services. (keeps him out of the politics & other day2day b.s.) he's in his early 50's now & on his feet all friggin' day... he loves it.

anyway, can you try it out for a weekend or two? (keep the day job)

never forget that "curb your enthusiasm" where larry david tries to sell toyotas. (too funny.

cheers


btw: happy to hear the 993 is back! congrats.

Rick Lee

YES! I was thinking exactly the same thing about when Larry went to sell Toyotas. That episode always gets me thinking. The minor difference is that Larry is worth 9 figures and I'm a few digits below that. I can't starve for a paycheck for 6 mos. and probably wouldn't be happy in any job where I wasn't producing results pretty quickly. The nice thing about my current gig is that I have some phat big name clients here and they give me a good cushion for the mos. when I'm slow on new revenue.

BobbyT

A former GF sold Porsches in LA in her early 20s. She looked so hot guys would come in and buy cars hoping to get closer. According to her, it was a horrible job. Long hours, doubling back from evening shift to early morning, back-stabbing "co-workers", everybody coked up. One slow month and you're gone, with maximum embarassment to "motivate" the other salespersons.

GratefulJED

The amount and velocity of money in the car business has been very good to a whole lot of people, people who have been in it for a while. If you are going to work it with the idea of moving up the food chain then go for it - you have to start somewhere. Good Luck - I think the idea of taking it on as a second job to start with has merit...

Phil

If you did take the job, you would be working for a "STEALER" but you knew that, right?

97Targa

Can be a pretty cut-throat job depending on the particular dealership, sales mgr. and GM.
And don't forget FNG always gets the shi77y hours. Weekends, evenings, etc.

Texas993

I would think that evenings and weekends are the best time to work in a car dealer! That is usually when I go to look at cars.

But those hours would suck if you want a real life.

Just don't pull these stunts that were events that recently happened to me, in both cases looking to buy a '05 BMW 545:

- "We need credit card deposit of $1000 in order to give you a price." I refused. Then later the guy calls me and says: "Good news! We met your price on the trade.... but we are $3000 off on the price of the new car." I ran away from that guy. He later called me asking what was up.

- Different dealer. I had just worked the number for the $60,000+ 545. I see a '02 M5 on the lot. How much? $50,000. Can I drive it? We don't let people drive the M5. But wait, it is cheaper than the car I was originally looking at. Needless to say, I did not buy a BMW.

The Mecedes place was happy to take my money for the E55. And, they did not mess around. In fact, they let me take the car home for a day so I could decide.

Lessons to be learned!

zwoobah

I worked as a lot monkey for a summer at a dealership. It was a blast, and I learned a LOT from watching/working with the sales staff. If you're considering this dealer, and assuming they haven't met you yet, I'd go in there and just try to test drive/buy a car. See how they run their operation before you even think about getting involved.