Confessions of a Car Salesman

Find out what happens when an investigative journalist goes undercover as a salesman at two new car dealerships in the Los Angeles area. Edmunds.com sent Chandler Phillips first to a high-volume, high-pressure dealership and then to a smaller “no haggle” dealership to find out what really happens in the back rooms of car dealerships across America.

Phillips got the first job after telling the sales manager, “I want to make a lot of money.” After 10 weeks as a car salesman, he made the following observations:

I know for sure I’ll never look at car salesmen and women in the same way. I used to hate and fear them, to lump them all in the same category with sweeping generalizations. Now, I had some insight into the waters they swam in. I sympathized with them, I pitied them, and — in some cases — I admired them.

I saw that many car salesmen and women, like myself, were just moving through the dealership experience, on their way from one point in their lives to another. Most of them didn’t have college degrees and were trapped in lives that they thought offered few chances for advancement. The car business offered them a way to use a lot of hustle and little book learning to make money. I admired anyone who was trying to improve his (or her) life, particularly through hard work. But making big bucks in the car business wasn’t the slam-dunk it was made out to be.

Previously, I had known car salesmen from the outside, as I encountered them while buying a car. Now I had worked alongside them. I had been rejected by customers and bullied by sales managers. I had been excited by a big sale and disappointed when a sure thing fell apart. I saw the same dream they saw: big commissions from easy sales. All you had to do, as my assistant sales manager Michael told me, was get “right in the head.”

The rest of the article is long, but entertaining. You can find it at Edmunds.com, or watch the video here. Also, be sure to check out our Car Buying Tips resource.