Transition Past Objections

Beginner car sales professionals often struggle to get customers all the way to the end of the sales process. Each step of the sales process is important, but if you cannot transition to the demo, the write up, or the close, you will have an extremely hard time selling cars. So, once you start to gain some experience with each step of the car sales process, the next area to turn your attention to is transitional one liners. Powerful one liners help keep your car deal moving through the steps of your sales process and help you handle car sales objections.

The majority of a car salesperson’s job is just to keep the deal moving through the sales process step by step. Therefore, one-liners serve as a quick and effective way to handle car sales objections and keep your deal progressing to the next step. Objections repeat, so having these pre-prepared lines will help you continue all the way until you sell a vehicle! This blog will discuss transitional one liners that help you move the conversation along, handle car sales objections, and ultimately help you sell more cars!

Handle Car Sales Objections: The Greeting

The greeting, or meet and greet, is a prime time to hear objections from buyers. So, it’s important to be prepped with transitional one liners that allow you to move past objections and keep the deal moving. Remember, objections this early in a deal usually aren’t serious. It’s just something that customers do because they feel that they have to be defensive. One liners during the greeting should aim to take any pressure out of the deal, keep things friendly, and simply move to the next step. Here are some example situations and one liners:

Customer: “I’m just looking.”

One Liner: “Fantastic! Most people come here just to look, anyway. You’re probably not going to buy a vehicle in one day and that’s O.K. My name is (____). Nice to meet you!"

Customer: “I only have 30 minutes”

One Liner: “Excellent! Thirty minutes is more than enough time for me to give you all the information you need, show you some vehicles, and quote you some prices.”

Customer: “My vehicle is in service”

One Liner: “Excellent! Thank you for using our servicing department. What type of vehicle are you driving? Oh, that’s a great car and we are always looking to buy vehicles like that.”

Car Sales Training for Beginners: Demonstration Drive

Once you have the buyer interested in a vehicle, next up is the test drive. This is typically the buyer’s favorite part of the car buying experience, so an upbeat attitude and grabbing the keys is usually enough to move the deal along. However, if you find yourself struggling to put customers behind the wheel for a test drive, be prepared with one liners that help you handle car sales objections. Here is an example one liner that almost always works:

Customer: “I don’t want to drive the car.”

One Liner: “I understand. This is a brand new car, so you already know it will run smoothly. Let me get the keys and pull the car around so you can walk around it and take a look inside at all the bells and whistles. Sometimes, what’s inside makes a big difference in the price.”

Once you have pulled the car out for the customer, there's now a running vehicle right in front of the buyer. Show the customer all of the exciting interior features and then say,

“You know what? It’ll probably take the sales manager 10 minutes to put all of the numbers together. So, we’ve got some time to kill. Why don’t we just go around the block?”

If you're able to get the customer to agree to you pulling the car out, the demo will come naturally. Once the car is in front of buyers and running, it is far easier to succeed at getting the demo. This works like a charm to get customers to agree to a test drive nearly every time!

Car Sales Training for Beginners: The Write-Up

After the demonstration drive, you should ask the customer how it went. However, regardless of how the customer answers, you need to find a way to get them inside the building so you can write them up. No write-up = no sale! So, even if the buyer seems totally non-committal, it is still better to have an uncommitted buyer looking at the numbers than no buyer at all. A common mistake in the automotive industry is when a salesperson does not want to show numbers unless they feel that the buyer is committed.

Question: How do you know if somebody is committed to buying a car?

Answer: Trick question! You know the person is committed to buying a car if they are at the dealership. So, just write the customer up and see what happens.

Customer: “I don’t want to see the numbers.”

One Liner: “No problem! I know you’re probably not buying a car today and that’s alright. Let’s go inside so I can show you the numbers and you can use those figures to compare while you’re out shopping.”

Customer: “I’m not buying anything today.”

One Liner: “No problem. Come on in. You don’t have to buy a car. Let me just show you what it costs.”

Car Sales Training for Beginners: The Close

Once you have them looking at the numbers, it is time to go for the close. The most classic, yet cliché, close when struggling to get the buyer to pull the trigger is “What’s it going to take to send you home in this car right now?” This close absolutely works, but you probably should save that line for the very end. It creates a lot of opportunity for customers to make large objections to things such as pricing. So, be prepared with multiple different one liners to use and save that one in your back pocket for when you need it. Some examples of other one liners to use when you keep getting hit with objections and hesitancy in the close are:

One Liner: “You know what, Sir? This vehicle has leather, the sunroof, navigation, and everything else you're looking for. C’mon, sign right here.”

One Liner: “I don’t want to have you waste any more of your precious time at car dealerships. You’ve been to two places already and have spent 10 hours shopping around. This is the best value for your money that you’re ever going to receive. C’mon, sign here.”

One Liner: “You’re spending $600 a month on your current car. The monthly payment for this new car is $700. That’s like $3 a day to get out of your old car and into a brand new one. What part of $3 a day isn’t worth a new vehicle?”

Try to come up with 5 to 10 of your own closes and master them, refine them, and know them like the back of your hand. Just like a comedian practices his routine 100 times before hitting the stage in order to make it seem candid and organic, you want to practice your closes so that your flow is absolutely perfect and does not sound like a canned response.