Persistence Wears Down Resistance

By: Alan Ram

I said this before and I'll say it again, I have learned so much about selling by being a customer. Here's a saying that we take for granted that you've heard a million times, “Persistence wears down resistance,” as a matter fact, I invented it.

That’s not really true, but it's a great saying that you need to apply to your mindset daily when you sell cars.  Let me tell you what happened last night, I got a call from a Wells Fargo mortgage broker, Greg, who is following up with me from back in my San Diego days, in fact he's been following up with me for about five years; he called me about refinancing my house as well as a couple rental properties I own and I asked him to put together a proposal for me because I had recently been thinking that I should refinance to a lower rate, now is the time, and Greg's going to get the deal! This story probably doesn't sound unusual to you until I tell you that our previous conversation (or lack thereof) when Greg called me probably about three months prior and I was sick, grumpy, and I really blew him off. I probably shouldn't even have been answering the phone that day, but he had been calling me for years now and leaving me messages most of the time, but today he happened to follow-up with me at a perfect time when I was ready to do something. That’s what you get when you're persistent!

For so many salespeople, follow-up is a one and done proposition; you follow-up with a customer, you don't get the answers you're looking for, and you're done with them.  Well, that's a huge mistake!  Everybody is going to be buying a car eventually, so sometimes you just have to be willing to follow-up long-term.  What I didn't realize over the years of Greg following-up with me, was that Greg was in fact secretly building up a little bit of rapport with me.  Every time you follow-up with a customer, whether they come down and buy or not, you should be building up a little bit of rapport with them so that they feel like they owe you as soon as the time is right.  You can't take things too personally when you sell cars.  You don't know what's going on in this person's life when you're following-up with them. I’ve been blown off hard by customers before and many times I suspect it's just because they’re in a bad mood about something that has nothing to do with me, they’re in a fight with their spouse, their boss has been yelling at them, or they are hungry and cranky, who knows, but the next time I call them, they are usually a completely different person and I get the result that I am looking for! The bottom-line is this, I don't think that 90% of car salespeople would've been as persistent as Greg.  After the call he had made to me three months prior, and my angry response, most salespeople would've deleted me from their CRM. His persistence wore down my resistance, and I suspect my commission will be making his house payment for the next few months.