A friend of mine asked for my help in leasing a new SUV the other day, she had settled on a Toyota.  I coached her to look up a car on buyatoyota.com.  There she found the 4runner she wanted and the next day went to the dealership that had it in stock.

The lease payment shown on the website was $348 per month for 42 months 12k miles per year with $2000 down, pretty straight forward.

She called me from the salespersons office telling me they had quoted her $502 per month.  After putting the salesperson on the phone the following conversation ensued.

Me: Hey, how are you, just trying to help a friend.  Online for this car, last six of the vin 064901 it show’s $348 per month with 2k down.

Him: Hi, uhm…which website were you on.

Me: setf.com, which takes you to buyatoyota.com

Him: What’s setf.com???

Me: Southeast Toyota finance…you’ve never heard of that?

Him: Oh, yea.  Just didn’t know they had a website

Me: (is this guy stupid or just playing?) Ok, well go there

Him: Ok (time, time) ok, there, now what?

Me: Just look up the VIN # of the car you have her on.

Him: Ok (time, time) yea, I see, so.

Me: So why the difference in that payment and the payment you quoted.

Him: Well I’m not sure where they get their information (ok he’s stupid not just playing).

Me: Hand the phone to Carol please.

So you get the idea, after a while the manager came in blah, blah, blah.  She called me back a few times and leased the 4runner for $380 per month; they added leather and a $799 dealer fee.  The deal was good enough so she took it.

The take away from this story isn’t how they worked the deal, there’s a bigger story there that I’ll write about another time.  The question is how did that salesman not know of those two websites?  And if he did, why was he not more adept at navigating them?

Why when we were on the phone did I have to say, “ Ok now look about three quarters of the way down the page, on the right. See where it says vehicle search?   Yea, click on that.”

He had never been to a site that his customer’s shop regularly.

Is that true of your sales force, your managers….you?

I mean, the most conservative statistics show that 75% of customer’s shop online before they call a dealership.

Shouldn’t your staff know what your customer’s are looking at online?  Of course they should, so they don’t look dumb like the guy at the Toyota store.

Make shopping online a regular part of your sales-meetings.

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