Two assumptions that lose a sale

June 4, 2015

Questions are critical to tire sales and automotive service sales, and if you or your employees are asking the wrong questions, or asking them in the wrong way, the result might be fewer sales and fewer satisfied customers.

Modern Tire Dealer’s popular monthly columnist Wayne Williams is writing about questions in a multi-part series. “I’m amazed at the questions I hear sales staff ask. I can only assume that all too often sales staff approach the customer with mistaken assumptions.”

One of those assumptions is every customer wants his or her vehicle back immediately. Another is a customer isn’t willing to invest in a diagnostic charge as part of fixing the problem.

“We spend too much time talking about time and money,” Williams says, describing his own recent trip to the mechanic. The sales person “asked unimportant questions based on mistaken assumptions. The result? They almost fixed my problem.”

To read more about the mistaken assumptions you can’t afford to make, and how to ask your customers better questions, read the May edition of Williams’ Counter Intelligence column: “Asked and answered? Questions that drive sales and satisfaction.”