New Age Car Buying

Recent conversation over coffee with former car sales associates (and current friends) was centered on our weirdest customers. My contribution.

Woman in her fifties, overweight, I’m not interested in sex hairstyle, and clean but not stylish attire was shopping for an Escort. After the test drive, we sat down to negotiations. She took a crystal on a chain from around her neck and held it over my proposal.

This crystal was a raw, jagged natural appearing stone. She closed her eyes. Soon the crystal started swinging left to right with no apparent movement of her hands. She closed her eyes again. Soon the crystal started swinging front to rear. This went on after every discussion of each part, or question, of the proposal. My response was complete silence but my thought was WTF?

She decided to lease the Escort and the sale was made. After all the paperwork but before the delivery, I asked her about the crystal, which I knew was part of her decision making process.

She explained the first question she “asked” the crystal was, “Does 2+2=5”? She then looked to see if the crystal swung left to right which signified “no”.
This was her “quality control” check. Back and forth signified “yes”. Damn, if I had that prior knowledge, I would have been blowing on the rock.

She had a much longer explanation, which I didn’t understand, but didn’t matter to me so long as one more Escort went down the road with a happy tag in the window and my name on the deal folder.

My outlook was always toward making a sale in whatever manner made the customer want to buy. More sales are lost by salespeople talking too much and asking stupid questions. People come to a dealership to buy a car. Let them! Sheesh.