Not Selling, Most of the Time

The car salesman. The type of salesman I told myself I’d never turn into. The type that uses pressure and misdirection to make every sale. Aggressive. Determined. Sleazy. The hustler.

These days, I spend most of my time not selling. I didn’t turn into the car salesman. I had been aiming, instead, to turn into a different kind of car salesman I had heard rumours about, way back.

I was still studying at the University of Ottawa when I had this gig to create an illustration for a car dealership. My roommate got me this gig. He was much older, already out in the world with a full-time job, brought me to his place of work, this car dealership. He told me that there was one salesman that consistently made more sales than all others on the show floor.

This car salesman spent most of his efforts by… not selling.

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Let’s side quest into what happens when people buy. Let’s look at the purchase timeline.

The purchase timeline has four parts: passive looking, active looking, deciding, and post-purchase.

If you interact with the buyer who just made the purchase, the post-purchase phase on the timeline, you’re not supposed to be selling. The sale was made. No selling required here.

If you interact with the potential buyer who’s in the passive looking phase, it’ll be too early to sell. You can tell because there’s no urgency. There’s no energy in the speed, no momentum. It’s not time. Don’t waste your time selling.

If you interact with the potential buyer who’s in the active looking phase, they’re still not quite there yet. They’re weighing options, but there wasn’t an “enough is enough” moment. If their need for progress has a “from” position and a “to” position, they’re just starting to imagine what a jump to a “to” looks like. No need to try to convince anyone here.

If you interact with the potential buyer who’s in the deciding phase, then you become a facilitator to the process of purchasing. There’s almost no need to be convincing anyone about the merit of your product, because they’ve got their trade-offs worked out. There’s a feeling of calm from having worked through the grieving of the old way, and they’re open to the new way.

Throughout the process, where have we been selling? Well, let’s go back to the story of this top-selling salesman.

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This car salesman spent a lot of time on the phone. He invested a lot of time getting to know previous buyers, and he’d call them up. “I see here that you’ve been with your Camry now for 2 years. How are things? Are you still enjoying the ride? I remember that was what you told me last year that you enjoyed about it.” He made personal connections. He had human conversations. He had his ear, throughout those calls, for signs. Signs of where a person was in their timeline.

Sometimes he would hear signs that they’re in the active looking phase. “Hey, how about you come in on Saturday, I’ve got a model here I think you’ll like, in your color, just to give it a try.” Or maybe he’d ask a pointed question: “What other models are you looking at, if I may ask?”

Curiosity. Curiosity over convincing.

He’d have a posture of assistance, of service, of interest over self-interest.

And when the deciding phase came into view, he had earned so much trust, there was no competition. Those customers came back to him. And he just facilitated the sale. “Oh hi! Yeah I still got that model for you. Okay, see you tonight.”

In the end, he spent most of his time not selling. He would just help his customers make progress.