When you are a professional car salesperson, your job is to identify customer needs and to meet or exceed those needs. Before you get the job in car sales, you have to ‘sell’ your prospective employer and how effective you ar at doing that will be determined by how well you understood the first sentence.
Dealerships and their managers have diverse needs. Possibly, those needs are not quite as diverse as those of your retail customers 
! However, similar pitfalls apply if you are not mindful of the dealerships’ needs or fail to meet those needs. From my experience, the most common employer’s needs are to 1. Minimise Risk and 2. Maximise Return. Think about the specifics of these needs from the employer’s point of view and think about which of your characteristics and achievements will highlight your ability to meet those needs.
Some ways to specifically reduce the risk for your potential employer include:
1. Show a Stable Work History
If your work history is unstable, you are unlikely to stay long term. The candidates I have seen whose résumés are filled with roles of 3-6 months usually blame their employers for their and try in vain to convince employers that this will be the job (the first ever) where they will stay long term. If you cannot show at least one job where you’ve stayed for more than two years, you are most likely wasting the dealership’s time as well as your own.
2. Experience in Similar Fields
Unless you have actually tried sales or similar roles (e.g., frontline hospitality) and like the work, the odds are against you. Most dealerships have had far too many inexperienced candidates promise that “I’m a good worker. I learn fast.” etc. I saw one salesperson with a year’s Real Estate experience, with no car sales experience, pester a dealership every day for a month to get a job and he lasted less than two months once he got the job. He showed more determination to get the job than he did in doing the job. If you don’t have experience, then lessen the risk by getting car sales training and/or getting some unpaid work experience helping out at a dealership, even if it’s only weekends. Make sure that you really want the job and prove it by getting at least some experience.
3. Speak the employer’s language
Research the employer’s company and history. Read and re-read their website. Read and re-read their advertisement. What words and phrases do they use? Make sure that you use at least some of these words and phrases in your application, and keep those phrases in mind for your interview. Don’t force them into the conversation if the right opportunity to use them doesn’t come up, but if you can naturally use them in the interview’s conversation, then do! Using the employer’s own words is a good way to reduce the employer’s risk that you do not understand them.
4. Invest in yourself
Most applicants don’t invest in themselves, so by investing in yourself, you not only put yourself ahead of the pack, you further reduce the risk for your employer. So many candidates say and/or think “When I get the role, then I’ll buy a nice suit and some new shoes. When i get the role, I’ll read some sales books. When i get the role, I’ll seek out some good training.” Now that’s a bit like looking at an empty fireplace and saying “When you give me some heat, then I’ll put some firewood in.” It doesn’t work. If you can sit in an interview wearing a great suit and new shoes, tell the employer the best five things that you learned in each of the last three sales books you read and can show a certificate of some relevant training that you invested in, you have removed almost all the risk from the employer’s mind. I remember my Dad had a book of proverbs when I was a kid and the proverb on the front cover was “Throw out a sprat to catch a mackerel.” This means that you forego or sarifice something small to gain something larger or better. Investing a few hundred or few thousand dollars to get a job that pays you $60K, $80K or over $100K a year is not a waste of money. It is an incredible investment that gains you a massive competitive edge.
5. List your achievements / results
Poor or inexperienced applicants tend to list their responsibilities rather than their results. This shows a focus on simply performing tasks, not in achieving results. Sales jobs require results. Even if your résumé does not include car sales, or sales, find a way to word all of your previous work in terms of achievements and results, not list your job description. This will show the employer that you understand and can focus on results, not just turning up and doing the bare minimum of your job description.
If you can do these things well, you’ll probably get straight onto your prospective employer’s short list. Once you get to that point, you’ll have to have something extra to offer to beat the other candidates who have read this article! Good luck!
Remove risk to get the right Car Sales Job!
