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NPR Thoughts

Thursday 30 March 2006

A couple of thoughts for which NPR was a catalyst today:

We are financing both sides of the war on terror. Of course through our taxes we’re paying for the United States’ military operations. But through our consumption of oil, we’re financing the terrorists. We’re providing funds that eventually make their way back to terrorist organizations every time we fill up our gas-guzzling SUVs.

Is Iraq a country that can only be ruled by a strong-armed leader? In other words, is Iraq as it is today because Iraqis have various emotional and political scars due to almost decades of dictatorial rule, or has Iraq been ruled dictatorially for so long because of the national temperament? I’m not suggesting that Iraqis are somehow genetically prone to violence. Rather, think of how Iraq was formed — cobbled together by imperialist powers without regard for ethnic and religious differences. These differences — Sunni versus Shi’a, Arab versus Kurd — are now pushing the country toward civil war.

With both points, we have an almost appropriately ironic situation: the West creates its own problems.

Stepping Up to the Plate

Wednesday 22 March 2006

I recently wrote about the disappearance of Federal funding for autism support programs.

To its credit, the Asheville city school system refused to let Bush’s tax cuts harm students under its care. They have hired several of the individuals who provided one-on-one support for more severely autistic children so that their education is not disrupted by Bush’s idiocy.

How to Sell a Car

Monday 20 March 2006

Welcome to the MTS Online, Interactive Automotive Sales Super Results course. By merely following the steps outlined below, you will increase your sales, raise your profit margin, sell more cars, and generally make more money at the very minimal expense of your customers.

Showroom Salesman

The first thing you must remember is never to allow the most fundamental truth of the situation enter into the minds of your prospective customers. Certainly, tell them you’re not into pressure sales; tell them you’re only interested in them getting the best car that for their needs; say all this with a smile – but never forget you’re there to sell them a car. Bottom line. Your boss’ bottom line, and therefore your bottom line. The customers’ bottom line is someone else’s problem.

Next, it’s good to try to give the customers a feeling that you actually have more power over the car’s price than you actually do. Never use “we,” as in, “We could take good bit more off the price.” That encourages the obvious question: “If the whole sales staff is in agreement about this, why not just lower the price in the window to begin with?” (The last thing you want is a cheeky customer, so choose your words carefully.) If, however, you say, “I can lower this price,” then it sounds like you’re more than just a cog in someone else’s economic machine, that you and you alone add the personal touches of chatting about your kid and asking about customers’ future family plans. Added all together, this will give the customer the feeling that you’re on his side and that you indeed have the power to looking for the little guy in the Big Bad Car Business.

Third, because we’re selling a large time, we can’t put it in the customer’s hand like a TV salesman can do with a remote, but we want to accomplish the same effect: the thought that this very TV (rather, in our case, ha, ha, ha, a car) could be his! To that end, it is essential that you herd your customers into a “test drive” as soon as possible. But don’t use the term “test drive.” Just tell them you’re going to back the car out for a little better view, then when you get back in the car, tell, sort of off-handedly, as if you’ve just thought of it, “Come on – we’ll go for a quick ride.” Viola – you’ve got them in the car, and they’ll start thinking, “Imagine this is our car!” Drive to some place you can turn around, then jump out and ask, “Who’s driving back?” And there’s your test drive, without even using the words.

The next step is a tricky one, and it’s something that separates the men from the cliches in our business. You have to get them in to see a finance officer who’s also skilled at subtle, sales-encouraging chit-chat. This gets them teetering on the legal brink of actually buying the car, and from here, your job is finished. But the real trick here is to get them into that office without ever asking them if they want to buy the car. Let the customers assume what they will, but if you can implant in their mind that you’re just taking them to get some fiscal ideas, to get some notion of how the payments might fit into their budget, then you never have to ask them if they actually want to buy a car. Why, they’re talking to a finance guy — it’s obvious they want to buy it!

Finance Officer

When the salesman delivers customers into your hands, it is a critical transition. It is imperative that you do or say something that will immediately take the customers’ minds from the fact that they’re now dealing with a different person (and more importantly, the significance of that). For this reason, it is absolutely critical that customers not wait in your office alone. They can sit at the showroom salesman’s desk all day long, but any time alone in your office will lead them to thinking thoughts you don’t want them to have.

It is also important to say something personal and reassuring to the customers that also distances yourself from the cruel realities of the automotive sales industry. An example might be:

Before we get started, I just want to make sure you folks understand what motivates me. Do you know why I got out of bed to come to work this morning, every morning? To make people happy by providing them with the perfect car to meet all their needs.

Improvise from there.

The importance of this fact arises from the simple reality that, when the salesman delivers customers into your hands, he may or may not have gotten a verbal agreement to buy. Never mind! Your role is the same, regardless.

If the customer is indeed going to buy the car, your set. Occasionally, though, you might get to this point and hear something like this:

We’re not actually going to buy this car. We didn’t even come here with the intention of buying a car. Rather, we’re just orienting ourselves to the market, because it’s been such a long time since either of us has looked at a car. We were interested in talking to you about the potential cost.

When you hear these words, savor them, because they represent the hardest challenge in your industry: the ten minute turn-around sale. Sure, these people are saying they’re not buying a car, but you can make it seem like there should be a battle raging in their minds as to whether or not to buy it. Some tips:

  1. Make sure you boil it down for the customers to the real issue: money. Establish that the car they looked at meets their needs. In a perfect situation, you might be able to get them to admit that it’s almost perfect. Then it’s just a matter of highlighting the lower pricing options and you’re home free.
  2. Once you get them to admit that the car would fit in their lives very well, make it sound like the difficulty is on your side of the table, that perhaps you don’t understand something. After all, you’ve established that they like the car, that it meets their needs, and you’ve shown, by highlighting the lower pricing options, that it fits into their budget (Don’t worry whether it actually does or doesn’t). Once you’ve established all this, you might ask at this point, “What then is holding you back?”
  3. Shame and embarrassment are always a good sales technique, and this point in the process it might be worthwhile to try to introduce a bit of both. Tell them that you were working under the assumption that they’d decided to buy, with an infection that makes it seem like you could have been doing more important things, like helping other people fulfill their automotive dreams. Make it seem like the earlier salesman could get in a bit of trouble for handing off someone who wasn’t really ready to buy. The shame can be torqued a little by very indirectly suggesting that it was a miscommunication on the customers’ part.

If you’re still meeting resistance at this point, it’s time to bring in the head man himself. He’s the only one than can save the sale now. When you head out the door, make sure you tell the customers something designed to make them think you’re handing the sale off to someone more knowledgeable. Since you’ll never be coming back into the room while these particular customers are there, it’s good to add in a pre-excuse at this point. Here’s an excellent opportunity to use the shame technique again by concluding with something like, “I’m going to go out to the shop and make sure they don’t have the car in detail.”

At this point, you’re likely to be furious. Go ahead – have a cigarette. You’ve just been through a very stressful experience. You deserve it!

Showroom Manager

When your financial officer comes in to get you, the hope of a sale is diminishing rapidly. It is important to remember this, and not press too hard, lest you cast a hue of desperation on your co-workers’ previous efforts.

Also realize that if you’ve been called in, it means that all possible excuses have been covered except one: the customers were never intending on buying a car that day to begin with. When you realize this, relax. It means your salesman and financial officer have done their jobs and either the customers realized the whole time they were being swindled and simply went with it out of curiosity, or the customers are slow and it just took them a little while to catch on. We know this, because if the customer had been an idiot, you’d already have a car sold.

Addendum: Final Contact

At this point, the customers are probably standing alone in the finance officer’s office, waiting for him or the showroom manager to come back. You of course know that both have exited the drama permanently, but there is still a small ray of hope. Make the most of it. Approach the customers in the office and accompany them to the door. Small chit-chat here constitutes your final chance to make a future sale.

If, however, your clients have half a brain, they will not be back again.

The Blue Chair Crisis

Friday 17 March 2006

Children, it seems, sometimes like to have things just so. Everything in its place — as they deem it — and everything arranged just so. Perhaps that’s why Rudyard Kipling named his book of children’s stories Just-So Stories.

What happens when things are not just so? If the child has autism, she might have difficulty explaining how things are not just so, and once that’s explained, might have further difficulties accepting the fact that things must remain as they are, just so or not.

Imagine a child — we’ll call him Samuel — is sitting in a blue chair at a table, working on an art project in his free time. Another child — we’ll call her Jen — is getting ready to do her math work with me. She starts heading over to the table where all the materials are laid out: the worksheet for answers, the manipulatives (in this case, plastic blocks) to help with counting, and a few horses because, well, Jen just likes horses.

But her blue chair is not there. Who knew she had a blue chair? I didn’t. When did she get an attachment to this particular chair? No idea.

Still, she needs her blue chair. The one Samuel is sitting in.

Who knew Samuel could so quickly develop an attachment to that very same chair? I didn’t know, but would have suspected it’s possible.

Who knew this would all to amount to crisis for Jen? Once I saw where things were heading, I did.

The thoughts running through my mind then: Whom do I upset? If I leave the chair under Samuel’s bottom, Jen is not going to do any work and will in fact only scream at me for trying to work out a compromise with her. If I try to get Samuel to relinquish the chair, he’ll go ballistic because he’s having a go-ballistic-at-everything day. Besides, it really isn’t fair. He was sitting in the chair long before Jen decided she had to have it. And it will be more difficult to work while he is in crisis than it will be to try to get Jen to compromise, so I left the chair there, got Jen to go to the quiet area for calming down, and waited.

“I’ll give you two minutes to calm down,” I said, then walked away, set the timer, and waited.

“Are you ready for some math, Jen?” I asked when the timer’s bell finished ringing.

“No!” came a shriek. “I hate math! Stupid math! I want blue chair!”

“The time is not ripe,” I thought.

Eventually, Samuel finished with his project and moved on to another part of the room to do more work. I grabbed the blue chair while I had the chance, put it at the table where I’d set everything up, and walked quickly over to the quiet area. Tapping Jen on the shoulder, I said quietly, “Look what I have for you over at the table.” She hopped up, virtually bounced to the table, sat down, and we had a truly delightful time working together on math.

Protesting Protesters

Monday 13 March 2006

Here in Asheville Saturday we had what one blogger called a “Hatefest.” It was, in short, a rally to support family values — in other words, condemn homosexuality.

With his Bible tucked under his arm like so many others around him, Jim Ballard stood in the middle of Pack Square to stand “for what the word of God stands for… not against anyone, but against sin.”

Ballard joined a crowed of more than 200 assembled downtown on Saturday to support Wolf Laurel Ski Resort and other businesses that defend their right to choose not to employ homosexuals.

Wolf Laurel fired a lesbian couple after they placed a wedding announcement in the local paper upon returning from Massachusetts. Apparently the proprietors of the resort a “good Christians” and fired the wretched, evil lesbians. Sparking a protest. Which in turn sparked a protest.

“They are trying to make a statement so we as Christians are trying to make a statement,” said Wendell Runion, president of International Baptist Outreach Missions Inc. and organizer of the event.

Runion, who also spoke at U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor’s prayer breakfast earlier the same day, said the rally was not meant to debate the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage, but to make a declaration solidly against it.

Taylor, R-Brevard, said he was supportive of “Christian businessmen trying to be Christian in their work lives as well as in their personal lives” when asked about the rally. Taylor did not attend the rally. (Citizen Times)

That sort of talk — “We’re not here to debate it, but to oppose it!” — makes me think of, say, the Taliban.

Doubt that?

Combine it with the dominion theology of Rod Parsley and others, and it’s clear to see that a theocracy is their ultimate goal.

As the cliche goes, “God, save us from your followers.”

See Citizen Times article and BlogAsheville for more info.

Autism

Monday 6 March 2006

Here’s a story about an autistic teen — worth the read, and make sure you watch the embedded video to the right.

Knockin’ on Heaven’s [Car Door Window]

Thursday 2 March 2006

Last night at two, Kinga and I were awoken by extremely loud music coming from the parking lot behind our building. Unable to go back to sleep, I went out to the car to ask them to turn the music down. I knocked on the driver’s window. No response, and no wonder – he had his tongue down his date’s throat. I checked the license plate and headed back in.

In the meantime, the music became not-quite-so-loud – don’t know what happened – and I decided not to make an issue of it.

I got back into the apartment, slid back into bed, and suddenly the volume jumped up again.

Putting my sweatpants back on, I mumbled a curse and picked up my cell phone. If this guy causes problems, I think, I’ll just call the police while I’m standing there.

I go back out to the car, and knock on the driver’s window. This time, it’s a girl in the driver’s seat. Facing the rear of the car. With her head pressed against the roof.

Wonder what was going on.

She looks over at me, and slides off the guy to the passenger seat as he powers down the window.

“We’re done,” he says softly.

“Doesn’t appear that way, but whatever you say,” I think, but instead, simply point out the time and the proximity of our bedroom window.

“We’re all done,” he repeats, with an embarrassed grin.

“Why are you telling me this?” I think.

I turn to go and he calls out an apology.

The music ceased, but I never heard a car engine start in the half hour or so it took me to fall back asleep.

Un-spinnable Proof

Wednesday 1 March 2006

Now that there exists video proof that W knew before Katrina that there was a serious risk to the levees, how is he going to try to spin his way out of this?

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

That outright lie should make any thinking person sick.