How to be a good car salesman

To be a good car salesman, you need to ask the right questions of your customers, build a relationship with them, and engage in active listening. Here are some details on these strategies and others to be a good car salesman:

• Ask the right questions of your customers

Asking the right follow-up questions is even more critical than your initial question to a customer who has just walked onto your floor.

After your customer answers your first question of "What brings you in today?" or "How can I help you?", you should follow up with something like:

• Is there a particular car you are interested in seeing today?

• What is most important to you in terms of a car's features?

• Would you be the primary driver of your new vehicle?

Questions like these help to provide context for what your potential buyer is seeking, and make it easier for you to help them hone in on a vehicle, and possibly make a sale.

• Build a relationship with your customers

As a car salesman it is important to build a rapport with your customers and clients. Don't be too pushy with too many sales-related questions, especially if they seem to be on the fence.

Instead, try to get to know them. You can ask them:

• What do you do for work?

• How do you spend your weekends?

• Where are you from originally?

This tends to put customers at ease, making it a prime opportunity to shift back into sales mode. You might also get some useful information from these types of questions as well.

• Engage in active listening

As much as you can let your customers speak more than you. You should be listening to your customer's thoughts and opinions, rather than just rattling off too much information about specific cars.

Each customer is different, so what might push a sale through with one, may not work on another. That's why you have to actively listen to each customer.

• Avoid being pushy

• What do you think?

• Do you think you are ready to buy?

• Are you thinking about purchasing this vehicle today?

Instead of asking overly broad or too direct questions, make them more personal, like:

• Could you see yourself driving this car?

Let them come to a decision as organically as possible, without you forcing the sale.