The Disaster Audi Sales Experience & Key Sales Take Aways For Your Business

“If you don’t take care of your customers, your competition will.”
Bob Hooey

One of the worst sales experiences I have ever had was buying a new car.

That’s probably not much of a surprise for you to read!

I had done all my homework online to research the kind of car I wanted and had settled on an Audi Q7. A decent-sized SUV that could handle everything a Northern winter could throw at it, but with a plush interior, a lot of room, and sports car handling. I decided that this was the kind of car I wanted – I just needed to test drive it to confirm it.

Going to an Audi dealership is a different experience than shopping for, say a Chevrolet or a Toyota – or at least it should be given it's a luxury vehicle. That was not the case in this instance.

From the minute I pulled into the lot, I had salespeople swarming around me like flies.

In the space of 60 seconds, I was peppered with about 20 questions, and upon hearing I wanted to test drive the Q7, one of the salespeople sprinted back to the office to grab a set of keys, as he did so yelling back over his shoulder at the top of his lungs, "Is your husband going to come take a test drive too?"  

Game over.

There was no way I would buy a car from an idiot salesperson who assumed I needed a husband's permission to buy.

Over the next three weeks, my email and phone were blown up by the Dealership trying to get me to come back in.

But it was too late.

The next day I bought my Audi from a different dealer who was a lot more professional and respectful. I took the car for a quick, pain-free test drive where the salesperson didn't even accompany me – he just handed me the keys over and said, "have fun."

And so I did.

I returned 30 minutes later, paid cash, and the next day they delivered my new car.

There are many great sales lessons in this debacle. A few are blindingly obvious, and others are more hidden but equally important.

First, the blindingly obvious sales lessons:

1)    Never make assumptions about your prospect and their ability to buy your goods or services. There's a big difference between tactfully asking someone if they're the only decision-maker versus assuming that they’re just a minion who’s not a real buyer.

2)    Appearances can be deceiving. Would I have been treated differently at the first Audi dealership if I had shown up in a Porsche instead of my mud-splattered Chevrolet truck that I’d just used to pull our horse trailer?

Very likely. 

3)    Don’t inundate your buyer with your sales message. Being surrounded by so many salespeople is the digital equivalent of spamming your prospects with your sales message. The best and most powerful sales messages are not those that look or feel like sales messages at all – but instead are welcome communications that in some way add value to the prospects buying decision.  

For example, I would have appreciated reading something about the Q7 stacks up against its two top competitors or winter driving tips to stay safe in snow and ice in a luxury SUV, etc. You get the idea. Blowing up my phone and email only made me run faster from them.

Now for the less obvious sales lessons:

1)    If you're selling a high-priced product or service, you need to ensure that every piece of the buying experience is meticulously choreographed to provide an exceptional experience. Letting me test-drive a vehicle alone without having to sit next to a strange guy spouting sales information was sweet relief. As was the speed and ease of the sales transaction – there wasn't an inch thick worth of paperwork to sign – just a few simple clicks on a screen, and the process was done in minutes instead of hours.

2)    The after-sale experience was just as important as the actual buying experience. The Dealership delivered my vehicle even though I lived an hour away. Incidentally, they also came to pick it up and give it back each time it needed servicing, at no charge.

The takeaway of all this for your business is this:

However, you choreograph your sales process, ensure that the experience itself leaves your prospect wanting to learn more, not heading for the hills.

Using sales pressure to try and get someone to buy is an awful and outdated marketing strategy that will only tick-off and alienate your prospect.

Instead of making the sales process focused on your product or service, make it about the prospect and their needs. That’s where the quality – and quantity of your marketing comes into play.

Is your marketing useful to your prospect? Is it something they can get value from? Or is your marketing so focused on making the sale that it's just plain annoying?  

Switching to using marketing that adds value is a small pivot that can swing very big doors.