Are Dealerships treating women fairly?
News Flash - More women are in charge of car purchasing decisions! Yep. That’s right. Read it online somewhere. Maybe even heard it on the news. Also read that more women buy cars then men. Hmm? Isn’t the ratio of women to men higher?
When I was in college I took a statistics class. I believe I was taught that some surveys question as little as 100 people to draw statistical data. Doesn’t seem like enough if the end result will be applied to millions of people. And what about the questions and the people answering them. Ever heard of a survey being done for one group of people and then being applied to another group?
It comes as no surprise to me that more women are either buying cars or being the one in a marriage who makes the decsision. This is 2008 afterall, not 1958. Women have come a long way in the last 50 years. There are more women in the workforce and less stay at home mothers. And what about those women who have a job (or two or three), take care of the children and the house, run errands, take the kids to soccer practice or ballet or whatever. Seems obvious that these women are in the car a lot so why wouldn’t they be the one buying the car they need.
Yet there is still a problem with women buying cars. Or more specifically, a problem between women and car salesmen. Seems that women are intimidated by those slick, aggressive sales guys. In fact, one article stated that 77% of women plan to bring a man with them the next time they buy a vehicle. While another states that men prefer a women salesperson and women prefer male a salesperson.
As more women buy cars is it no surprise that dealerships should start to change their habits and try to attract more women buyers? In yesterdays tellinitlikeitis.com blog, the author gives some advice on how to sell a car to a women. Advice like, “Ask for and use my name”, “Use direct eye contact”, “Listen to me carefully”, and my favorite, don’t disrupt the conversation to answer your cell phone. That’s one a lot of people should follow if you ask me. But truthfully, aren’t these rules that any good salesperson, male or female, should know?
Maybe, and I’m just speculating here, but maybe it’s actually the salesmen who are intimidated by the women. We all know that todays buyers are more informed when they walk onto the sales floor. In fact, according to this Ask Angela article, women spend an average of forty-two hours researching a car, whereas men spend only eight hours. Seems to me that anyone who would spend that much time researching a car certainly knows what they’re looking for.
With the downturn of sales recently, doesn’t it make sense for salesmen to finally wake up and realize that women expect a different sales experience than the average male buyer? If not, well it’s time to wake up! If not, all of your female buyers will be rushing to smartwomenbuycars.com, where they won’t have to deal with any aggressive salesmen.
June 14th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Since I’m not a man, I don’t know if women want a different car buying experience than the average male buyer, of if women want the dealership salesman to remember it’s a Business Transaction and to treat it as such.
The cell phone usage appears to be a problem for male car buyers as well, so perhaps the salesman need to be required to take a How to Sell Cars to Women (and men) Course rather than simply learning the basics of making deals and doing the “hard sell”.
A female co-worker of mine bought a new car last year and it’s since had to go back to the dealership service department because of some Recalls that affected her vehicle. She purposely sought out a saleswoman when she was looking to buy a car, and my co-worker specifically mentioned to the saleswoman that because of how she was treated with the utmost respect and patience by the saleswoman, she has referred others to the dealership (as long as they request to speak with that particular saleswoman).
Car commercials often talk about building loyal customers, customers that will stick with them and buy their cars from them for many years. It’s laughable to me, because I haven’t seen any evidence that car dealership salesman (or the big bosses) have any clue of how to go about building loyalty amongst customers. It always comes down to the “bottom line”, how quick the customer can be pushed into buying a car, at a “reasonable” price. Hmm.