He’s got cars, but few buyers
Jerry Wright hadn’t slapped the flesh all day. Not that he’s an in-your-face kind of guy, but it is his job to meet people and make them feel comfortable. And then sell them a Chevrolet.
That’s a lot easier when people are actually coming through the door.
It’s late Wednesday afternoon, near the end of a long day. Another one. When you’re selling cars these days, they all seem long. Prospective buyers are wary; banks seem nervous about lending. It doesn’t help that it’s also December, a nice month for tinsel but a traditionally lousy one for car dealers.
“We can’t wait for Dec. 26,” Wright says, wryly.
The problem goes beyond a month on the calendar. The state and country are in a recession, and Wright fears it may be a protracted one. He’s been averaging seven sales a month lately; he used to sell that many on a good weekend.
But if he should be panicking, he isn’t. Part of it seems to be personality. He’s got the easy manner of a cool jazzman. At 56, he’s been around the block a few times. A former carpenter, metaphysical minister and longshoreman, he came to the car business 15 years ago, not knowing how to change his own oil but optimistic that he could relate to people and close a sale.
He found out he could. Just a few years ago, he was hot. “I might come in at 9 in the morning, leave at 11 at night and might have sold three or four cars that day and made a thousand, two thousand dollars,” he says. “You go home and you’re all jacked up, like an adrenaline rush. I’d tell myself, ‘I’ve got to get some sleep, because I’ve got to be back tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock.’ It wasn’t something you ever wanted to see end.”
He suspected it would, though. He saw all businesses as cyclical and actually thought the downturn would come sooner than it did. For that same reason, he fully expects this economic slump to end, but perhaps not quickly.
Because Wright hadn’t talked to a single person on the DeLillo Chevrolet lot in Huntington Beach or in the showroom Wednesday, he spent the day at his desk working the phones.
He doesn’t mind it, because many of the calls are to the 3,000 people in his computer file who have bought cars or SUVs or trucks from him in the last 15 years. You never know, he says, when they might need a new one.
Although Wright doesn’t have the wolfish bearing of one who’d pounce on a customer, I assume he misses the thrill of the hunt. I ask what it was like when the place was crawling with potential buyers. Did he think he could sell anything?
“That confidence is always there,” he says. “It’s just second nature. Or maybe it’s first nature. I know why people are here, whether they’re looky-loos or they want to buy a vehicle today. They’re here to investigate purchasing a vehicle. I don’t care what comes out of their mouth, that’s why they’re here. If they just wanted to look at cars, they might go down to a Best Buy or somewhere where there was a big parking lot and all kinds of different cars and look at them. But they don’t. They’re considering purchasing a vehicle.”
The salesman begins to ply his trade. “Is this a green orange that’s going to take four months to ripen on the tree,” Wright says, describing what the salesman tries to deduce quickly, “or is this something that’s going to turn into something today, tomorrow or next week?”
Knowledge, instincts and experience then kick in. Before he took the job, Wright says, he didn’t think he fit the image he had of the car salesman who’d work a customer to death. Good, the manager told him, because if you’re that kind of salesman, we don’t want you.
So, Wright brought a more low-key approach to the job, thinking he’d rather sell something the customer wanted than something he didn’t. Yes, commission was king and it was a coup to win over the reluctant buyer, thaw the ice cube. But Wright determined early on that he wanted to build a client base that fanned out from the immediate customer to his circle of friends and associates.
Nowadays, he might see two or three live prospects a day. Just a few years ago, that number might have been 10. The math is obvious.
There’s something poignant about the salesman who can’t get the business he needs, but Wright doesn’t fit the role of the forlorn figure. He’s saved money over the years, a necessity for a husband and father of two children, one in college and the other ready to go next year.
Beyond that, he sees car dealers as being in the same stew as everyone else. “I have friends in various occupations and they all are extremely concerned with what’s going on,” he says. A friend who’s a bartender says business is way down. A successful businessman making six figures asked Wright several months ago to let him know when the new Camaros would be available, but now says he’s not in the market.
People aren’t buying. The future isn’t especially bright. How does the car salesman stay on his game? How does he keep his spirits up?
“I give myself a pep talk every day,” Wright says. “You can’t be depressed, because if you as a consumer come onto the lot and walk into someone who’s just a little bit above death warmed over, you’re going to feel intuitively that you’re not going to get the help you’re looking for.”
He knows that other salesmen are anxious, needing to close deals, worried about losing jobs or homes if they don’t. Still, there’s precious little time in the showroom or on the lot for crying in your beer.
In a way, Wright says, it’s like the performer who must bound onto the stage and do his thing, even if he’s got the weight of the world on him.
“It’s just a sense,” Wright says, “that OK, there’s someone here. It’s a fresh start for them, a fresh start for me. Let’s put our best foot forward.”
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