bigdogger wrote:
I have been around the auto industry for 30 plus years, in many capacities. Selling a car or truck pretty well equates with selling an RV. While it sure would be nice if everyone selling a vehicle knew everything about every rig, it is really not possible. While it would be nice if every time a quality sales person made a quality presentation to a prospective buyer, that buyer honored that salesman's professionalism and knowledge, that doesn't happen either. I can't tell you the number of times I have seen a professional salesperson give a quality presentation. Take hours of their time to answer every question, do everything right, negotiate a fair price and have the customer say, "Everything is great, I need to think about it overnight and I'll call you tomorrow" Well tomorrow comes, the salesman follows up and the customer has bought elsewhere, often the same vehicle. When the salesman delves in further, the customer paid the same price, nothing else was different. When they question why they chose to buy where they did, the buyer says "well I just stopped in to check your price and was only there for a couple of minutes, you deal was very fair, but I bought from the other guy because they agreed to match your price and I was tired of shopping."
In the end, what the salesperson learns from these types of deals is selling is really a numbers game, talk to more people, sell more vehicles. So they no longer spend hours with one customer in a day, instead they try to spend 20 minutes with 15 and they make more sales and hence, more money.
While I understand it would be impossible to know everything about every RV on the lot, sales people need to know the basics. Things like when they open a compartment and see some big metal appliance in it, they should be able to tell you what it is. They should know about things like inverters and what you can run on them and that those big white things on the roof are not storage compartments, but air conditioners. And I am exaggerating a little, but I have run into salesman who couldn't answer basic questions about RVs.
