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?
Let’s look at the tale of the tape.
If you’ve read my posts before, you probably know I’m a big Yelp fan. I’m not opposed to Google or other review sites, but until the non-Yelp sites make it harder to write a fake review, I’m sticking with Yelp as the best measuring stick.
Let’s take a look at the “Average Star Rating” on Yelp for some of the largest and smallest dealers in the Los Angeles Area.
The big guys:
One Elite Yelp Review reads, “A car-buying experience is only as good as your research and your salesmen. Alan was a rock star, not some sleazebag used-car guy that made your skin crawl..”
And now for the small fries:
One Elite Yelp Review reads, “He was cocky and smug. His tone of voice was condescending, a know-it-all…When I told him my budget, he shrugged, grumbled and said ‘You leave me no way out.’ Shortly after, I showed myself out..”
What does this mean?
According to this small sample, you’re likely to have a positive experience at big dealers 68% of the time, compared to 42% at a small dealer. Keep in mind there will be exceptions everywhere. Surely there are big dealers out there that deliver a less than average experience and smaller dealers that deliver a stellar experience to car shoppers. Still the question lingers; Do large dealers have some advantage over their smaller competitors in creating more favorable customer experiences?
In Part II I’ll dig deeper into reasons why.
