Ya know, i totally forgot about word of mouth and how that can affect a salesperson. I know i was promoting my salesman for quite some time after i bought my Scion. Granted, i knew more about them then he did, but he learned and was honest and straight forward when i did make my purchase. Unofrtunatley he had to quit because of family issues, and the guy who replaced him didnt know the first thing about selling Scions.

 

I think at my dealer they just grab the incoming customers on a rotation basis. My salesperson didn't know anything, but luckily the sales manager stepped in and was more help. He also had a better, less sharky personality. But during my car search I found that I knew more than the sales people did at times, and I'm a chick! This one guy rolled his eyes at me when I corrected him. I just think that if I could learn enough about several cars with just a few hours of research online, someone who's living depends on it should do the same. I can't imagine doing my job and not showing a little more interest in it.

 

It could be worse...I got a letter from my dealer, asking to buy back my 2005 xB so they could trade it for a 2007.

I still have it. I should scan it, just for laughs.

 

I dont work with Scot. I dont talk to him. I say hi at events when I see him and thats about it. And yeah, I got fired from the dealership I worked at. So what? Just because I got fired doesnt mean I didnt have the highest accessories per vehicle numbers in my district. Corporate Scion also asked me to host the executives from Southeast Toyota Region in my dealership to give them a seminar. I was great at what I did. The reason I got fired had nothing to do with my output or performance. Im not going to tell you the reason because its personal. I wasnt trying to start trouble. You were stating incorrect information so I corrected it. Nothing wrong with that. Why don't you take Jennay's advice to the MA region and stay on the NRG boards...

 

But you were trying to start trouble, thats what you do. Remember the incident where if you werent invited to the Smithtown meet last year you were gonna come and crash it anyway? I was re-reading over that last night, that and the comments you had made directly towards Scot and Sean. I think its time i pass those along.

And FYI .. Scot did require some Scion Sales Staff to attend these events.

Why dont you take your own advise ... wait, then you would get confused as to which side of your face to listen to. LOL When you become a MOD here, then maybe ill take your advise. Last i checked, these are still public forums.

 

^^^ You can pass along whatever you want Chris. I honestly dont care. I have no idea what I said a year ago in a PM or an email. If youre still holding on to that stuff then you need to find more hobbies. The things you and Jennay said to me during that incident were just as cruel and hurtful if not worse but you dont see me threatening to send it to people. I didnt save it cause thats just ridiculous. You have some serious issues Chris. Maybe you shouldnt listen to me but you should listen to all of the NRG members who were chanting for your removal a few weeks ago. Every single one of them said the same thing about you. Take their advice since you claimed to be their vice president friend....

 

unfortunately there are many salespeople who do not know the current cars on their lots , the ones coming in soon , or ones that were previously they can still sell cars , they do and still have a job.

but this is both a person to person occurance as well as a dealer to dealer difference , some dealers make it a point to make their salespeople go to different events and then actually make sure that they learned , if they didn't learn the first time they should have the salesperson somehow show in the future that they since have learned it .


it's not a toyota problem it's an individual dealer problem or it's an individual salesperson's problem .

sorry you've had problem , have you tried using internet/fleet sales ?

I know I have personally been sent to two dealers just to teach the salespeople about the 07 Tundra that they were trained on less than two months before I was there.

they had all been through the "toyota Tundra prove it' class , involving literature , price comparison books , features lists with all systems explained , they were able to drive the tundra versus the competion and many other great learning experiences , even told different approches to try and sell the vehicle to people who like domestic only vehicles.


I was quite frankly dumbfounded by how little most of the sales staff could remember about the Tindra.

a good amount of them knew a lot , a decent amount took what i was telling them as a refresher and seemed much improved afterwards , and still about 7 of the 20 or so people I talked to at one dealership seemed as though they knew nothing , didn't pay attention to me , and didn;t seem to care.

 

wow..you guys went from salespeople not knowing their stuff to how much they make in a year. The 32/mo guy making $220k/year is probably full of it, though. Especially if he's selling Scions along with those Toyotas...just how hard is he smacking people in the head to have a $572.92/car average?? Oh, and to CBSIMONSEZ, no matter how much a customer adds to their car, I still make the same flat commission. I had a customer add over $4100 to their tC and still made the same $75 as if he did nothing to it.

but at any rate, I'll get back to the issue at hand: salespeople not knowing their stuff.

I am one of the people that DOES know their product. Along with knowing Packages on Prius and Sienna, how to set-up Bluetooth (I swear I'm about to charge $10 everytime I do it for another guy b/c they honestly don't seem to care how to do it themselves!), the differences b/w each trim level, I stay up-to-date on everything Scion. I am the Scion Champion at my store, and it is part of my job.

Now, unfortunately, not every store has a Champion. In the Pittsburgh area here, there are only 3 out of about 8 stores. As a Champion, I keep my sales force updated as to what changes are being made , when certain models are expected to hit, what the new colors are, etc. Now to sell Scions, the salesperson must be Scion certified. If you are talking to someone who is not certified, and therefore cannot sell you the car, can you really expect the person to know what they're talking about? Ways you can alleviate some of this are by calling in advance and asking if the dealership has a Champion, if they don't... ask for Scion sales and set an appointment. Yes..the appointment thing came back! But if the person impressed you with their knowledge of Scion enough to get you in the door, don't you want to make sure you see them when you come in?

And the Backstage thing is for dealers and the Scion community to learn about the new product at the same time. It does qualify as a product launch for Certification, but each dealership is only allowed to send 2-3 people. If you don't go to the event, you have to take the online classes/quizzes to make up for it.

And to cover VIP events before I take off here...if you are an owner or someone that is interested in Scion and you attend these VIP events LOOK AROUND! The salespeople that are there don't have to be there...they are there because they care about the product and the people involved with Scion. They are the ones that are going to know the most about upcoming changes, can answer any questions you have, and aren't going to jump from dealer-to-dealer. The people there are the people you want to do business with...just ask them for a card ;)

 

^^^ Well said! And yeah, that 32/month guy is insanely full of himself. All in all a decent guy though. Very funny and often lightened the mood around the dealership....

 

Well said I stopped at a dealership out here in Vegas to look at the new 08 xB the first weekend it was released and this would be sales guy was filling me in on info but informed me that they were jacking the price up about 2k when they would put it up front...and proceeded to raise his voice at me or some other matters. Long story short they had an investigation put against them for messing with prices but the guy was just flat out wrong and not even Scion certed...he was training

 

that sucks. but each region/and dealer differs.

I know at a few different stores here in nor cal they get 150per car /divided between two guys so 75 each , and they get 20% of all accessories sold.

but that differs.

 

Well i'm not a salesman or anything but don't you guys think we are all being too critical of this. We also forget that most salesmen don't live and breathe cars like we do. Yeah we do know all of the specs on the New XB TC or XD that's why we obviously bought the brand we are enthusiasts we have to squeeze every last bit of information because it's our passion. However I work for Fed Ex and I guarantee you that I sure as hell don't remember packaging prices off the top of my head for certain size boxes. Let's just be nice ask to speak to a rep and share the love.. lol

 

true , BUT with brands that sell a lot of it's cars to enthusiasts it's in the dealers best interest to hire knowledegable people or make sure their regular salespeople that are going to sell scions know their stuff? by means of classes , launches or the internet forums and such themselves?

 

It's the Scion way!!! We hope the customer knows what they want cause our sales people really only know stuff about Toyotas. They aren't real car people!
It's funny to see some things haven't changed!!! Remember back in 04" when they didn't know squat about the xB's?

 

I was gonna say the same thing. All those add ons and only $75? Kinda makes it hard to sell cars for a living and love doing it if you dont get properly rewarded.

 

I thought the same thing when I got my commission slip from it! I thought there had to be a mistake. I have my GM looking into to see if parts/service is jacking up the price internally or something. Oh, well! I still love what I do regardless
Our '08 tC's started rolling in yesterday...I think I'm going to become an owner myself ;)

 

Years ago I use to sell for nissan. I learned if the sales staff is crap and every time you go to the dealership you see new faces it is due to poor mangament. They are the ones that hire these bozos. They are the ones with the poor pay plans. My brother use to work for a ford dealer in the late 90s. He was the first new guy they had hired for sales in 2 years and it was a big dealership. The pay plan was great and he never made less than 80k and that was with 2 days off in a row every week. Top salesman of the month always got a free all expenses paid trip to vegas or a some tropical location depending on the time of the year. All sales staff had expense accounts to send their customers flowers or some other gift on their birthday and the sales staff made all of their customers service appointments. It was a classy gig that my brother would have never left had the owner not have sold the dealership to a corporatation that ruined it. I worked for a horrible dealership with a azzhole sales manager that loved to treat everybody who worked for him liked crap. He was a micromanaging ***** who always required a TO. So the next time you go to a dealership and get treated poorly or the staff does not have a clue about the product, write a letter to the GM and tell him/her that they need to get their sh*t together because ultimately it is their fault. And don't worry about the retard sales rep. He will be working at some other crappy dealer next month.