Here are three car dealer manager catchphrases I both love and hate as a salesman. You won’t hear them in every dealership. But when you do, you can guess that dealer experiences some unhappy customer experiences and lost sales. 

Recently, Yelp informed me I’d become an “Elite” member. Being an Elite’r means that not only am I writing reviews for the businesses I visit, I’m also reading reviews of those I intend to visit.

Over the years, I’ve developed a few quick methods to ascertain what to expect at a business beyond what their overall star rating suggests. Usually, I find that looking beyond the surface has its rewards. For instance, if I’m reading reviews of a dentist and I see one complaint about the waiting room amongst great reviews for the dentist himself, I’ll pay less attention to the waiting room review. After all, I’m looking for a great dentist, not a great waiting room.

Here’s some tips on finding the right dealership for your new car purchase, whether you consult reviews from Google, Dealer Rater, Yelp, or Yahoo. 

The most important person you can hire in your dealership right now isn’t another 30-unit Internet Sales Manager (though, they are nice to have) or a 175-call-per-day BDC Rep who’s as good on the 175th call as he was on the second call (…actually, you’d better get that one) or a rock-star Service Advisor from a nearby competitor who’d connected with 868 service customers on Facebook (Hmmm… I’d lure that one, too).

What’s so important about finding the right car dealer? Aside from helping you score a great price, the right dealer positions you for the best possible experience during and after the sale. But it’s easy to lose sight of all this when we’re reviewing offers. Here are some tips to help you find the right dealer.

When you get into your car these days, you slide a big piece of your life in suspension. That life is your mobile one, and what’s in your pocket is probably an iPhone or an Android. You probably stare at it in intersections, elevators, meetings, and even in bed. When your date excuses herself for the bathroom, she’s probably engaged in her mobile phone while you do the same at the table. And when you see her approaching, in goes your phone, and you both smile. There’s a sigh of relief – not because she came back, not because your drinks were refilled, or because your salad came, but because you’ve both checked in with your mobile lives. There’s a momentary high. You’re all caught up again. As the next hour goes by, your anxiety builds again. Your phone receives 15 notifications before your date finishes telling you about her days as a roller derby girl. 

In Part 1, a sampling of 18 dealers and 1077 Yelp reviews revealed that customers were 26% more likely to have a positive experience at large dealers versus small ones. If you’re like me, you neither expected nor hoped for this result. In Part 2, we’ll look into possible reasons for this, drawing from my experience working for small dealers.

I was a child of the 80s. That meant I wore a spiked bracelet, always carried a roll of quarters in my pocket for the video arcade, and spent countless hours in school auditoriums chanting that I’ll just say no to drugs. But I also remember, at the start of each new school year, looking around and pondering whom I’d team up with in the event of a Soviet invasion. Surely it was only a matter of time before an overwhelming force of Soviet soldiers would come parachuting from the sky. And in no time, my classmates and I would be a fully armed force peppering them with machine gun fire and living in forts in the woods behind school. As the year rolled on, I became more convinced that our small class would someday be war heroes. That war never came, but the idea of a small group refusing to be crushed by a larger force stayed alive.

Perhaps this is why, when I became a car salesman, I picked the smallest dealers I could find. My dream of fighting an overwhelming force was still possible. Smaller dealers would have to outperform larger competitors in one of the only areas they can: The treatment of our customers. Right? Or have I just imagining things?

Because I work at a dealership, I follow a lot of industry consultants. And lately, I’ve noticed that many of these consultants used to be Internet Sales Managers at dealerships. Why is that? Why don’t ISMs just move up to become Desk Managers or even General Sales Managers instead? Is it because many Desk Managers and GSMs have never fully understood the ISM due to never having worked as one themselves? And this poses another question: Does this lack of understanding prevent dealership leaders from understanding today’s internet-savvy customer? And what will happen to these dealers if their internet apathy continues? 

As an Internet Manager at a dealership, I receive 3-5 price quote requests every day. I try respond as quickly as possible, but I have to remember that people are simply requesting a price quote. The vast majority expect no more and no less.

Is up-selling bad? No, every business up-sells. In fact, every good waiter or waitress up-sells. A friend of mine is a waiter at a 10-table restaurant in Los Angeles. If he doesn’t up-sell his tables, that small restaurant might struggle to stay in business. Or at the very least, they’d quickly replace him. 

As you might have guessed, dealers make less money on new cars now than they have in years passed. As a result, many dealers will take marginally profitable deals – or in some circumstances, negative deals.