Today we learn how to sell like the opposite of a used car salesman.

We are learning to sell like a Mercedes Benz dealership in the 80’s.

With class.

Let’s get into it.

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I was scrolling on Youtube recently and was recommended this sales training video from the 80’s from Mercedes Benz. Tape hiss, shoulder pads, guys in a showroom talking about the 190 and the 300E.

For some reason, I stopped to watch it.

The frame they open with holds up. On the floor, you're an improvisational actor. You know the product cold, there's no script, and the customer is going to throw oddball suggestions at you. Your job is to work with whatever they hand you, while still steering the conversation.

Here are 5 things worth stealing from this training

1. Kill the canned opener.

"Hi, may I help you?" gets "just looking" every time, because it's a script and they have a counter-script loaded. One of the reps on the tape walks out, looks at what they drove in on, and says “that's a pretty white 280Z, how long have you had it?” Off guard. Talking. He also mentions he sometimes doesn't get the customer's name for half an hour.

If your opener sounds like an opener, they already have the rebuttal ready.

2. Three questions, in order.

What's your number one priority in a car? What do you mean by that? Why did you pick that one?

The first gets you a word. The second gets a definition. The third gets the reason underneath, and the reason is the actual sale. Guy on the tape says "dependability," then explains his current car strands him and he can't get to patients. He's not actually looking to buy dependability. He's buying one less inconvenience that eats away his time.

You must do deeper than surface level desire.

3. Build the whole presentation on that one answer.

The tape is blunt about the standard walk around. You're telling them things they didn't ask to hear, so they've tuned you out and they're thinking about something else. If the answer was performance, then the seats are about performance. The gauge placement is about performance. Everything ties back or it doesn't get said.

Same with your demo. If they told you reps lose an hour a day to manual entry, every screen ties to that hour or you skip it.

4. Move first, ask second.

On getting a hesitant buyer into the car: "Come on, let's take a drive" then turn around and start walking. Don't wait for a response. One rep says 99% of the time they're right behind you, and if they're not, you hadn't earned it yet anyway.

Ask "would you be open to" and you've handed them the no.

5. Shut up on the demo.

Best line on the tape. A rep says that on the test drive, he gets the customer off the subject of the car entirely. The trees. The weather. Who do you know on that street. Five or ten minutes of nothing. Then: how does the car feel?

They're relaxed. And they've already been driving it, in their head, the whole time.

We narrate the entire demo because silence feels like failure. If you don’t give them silence, how are they supposed to picture themselves owning it?

The tape closes with customers talking. They mention the salesman filled the gas tank after the money was already collected. Another got flowers a few days later. One says flatly he wouldn't switch dealers to save a thousand dollars.

Hardly anyone is talking about the car after the sale.