Recently, I decided to buy myself a new car.  Actually, truth be told, my wife decided to buy a new car, and after spending a day shopping for her car, I decided that my old car was no longer good enough (funny how that happens    ).

Anyway, in the process of shopping my car, I was taught two interesting business lessons that I thought I would share:

You are What you appear to be

I started looking at all the usual brands you would expect for a business car – BMW, Audi, Mercedes, Volvo.  I really (really!) liked the Mercedes – it looked flash, it looked expensive (it was), it looked sporty, it looked…. like the car I wanted.

But my wife took me aside in the Mercedes showroom and asked me a question… “If somebody you were doing business with turned up in that car, what would be your first thought before they stepped out?”.    That was easy – that they had too much money that we would be overpaying them!   And the penny dropped.

Yes, I could go for a really nice car, but what would that say to my customers.  Yes, appearances can be deceptive, but they can also be telling.   So in the end, I went for a sensible Volvo.

Be Responsive and Have What They Want

So after agreeing that a flash Mercedes was over the top, I then narrowed it down to 2 or 3 ‘sensible’ cars, and went around to the showrooms.   None of them had the models I was interested in.

Now I am a reasonable man, I don’t expect them to have every model available in a showroom.  But I would expect them to make some form of effort.  For instance, if I wanted a convertible 3-series BMW, they may not have one, but what they may be able to do is either (a) find one from another dealer for me or (b) show me 3 alternative cars where this car is a 3 series but not convertible, but you can see the styling, and that car is a convertible but is a series 5 but you can see how the top works, and this other car has the same finish as the one I was interested in.

But nope, very few of the ‘dealers’ were interested.   Most promised to call me when they had found cars to show me.  2 weeks on, only 1 did, with a demo car he had pulled in from another dealer.   Guess who just made a sale?!?

The point being, if somebody emails or calls with a business enquiry, don’t delay – call or email them back, find out what they need and find some way of showing it to them.  You may not have everything they want available to show them, but can it be pieced together?

After all, they will have contacted other people, and if you don’t help them, somebody else will.