513: 129 Cars

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Speaker 2 A quick warning, there are curse words that are un-beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org.

Speaker 2 Hey everybody, Ira Glass here.

Speaker 2 So, for this Thanksgiving weekend, we're bringing you this episode that when people ask me what my favorite episode is that we have ever made in all the years of doing the show, this is the episode that I say, because it is such a fun immersion in a very specific world.

Speaker 2 And when you do stories like we do, you go to all kinds of places and situations and hope something interesting is going to happen. And in this case, as you'll hear it, so much happened.

Speaker 2 So, in other words, a perfect fun show for the holiday weekend. We first broadcast today's show in 2013.
Hope you like it.

Speaker 2 Freddie is the general manager of a car dealership these days, but he used to be a car salesman, and he was a good one, partly because he's got what he calls the gift for the gab.

Speaker 2 His go-to move in lots of situations is to finish a sentence and then laugh, even when the sentence is bad news. Like, here he is assessing his chances of making his sales goal for the month.

Speaker 2 I'll give it a 50-50 right now because it's early.

Speaker 2 Or this is him talking about a month when the car dealership did not make its sales goal. And I'm strictly commissioned, so I make nothing.

Speaker 2 So when Freddie is not laughing, you know it's bad. In mid-October, Freddie did not laugh much at his weekly meetings with the guys who sell cars for him.

Speaker 2 All right, good morning.

Speaker 2 All right, in the beginning of the month, I went through the room and I told everybody where they had to be.

Speaker 2 Jason, you have 16 cars out. You need 10 more for the month for 26.
I want to see you there. Bob Lender, you have six out.
You need nine more.

Speaker 2 Scotty, you're at 10 right now. You need to be at 18.

Speaker 2 Last month, they didn't make their sales goal. That was September.

Speaker 2 First week of school is always bad for car sales in the suburbs. They were supposed to sell 127 cars and trucks.
They sold 82.

Speaker 2 So they have to make October. And when I say have to make, this is not some sort of abstract, feel-good, compete with the dealership down the block just for fun kind of competition.

Speaker 2 The part of Chrysler.

Speaker 2 And if they sell 129 cars and trucks by the end of October, Chrysler will pay them a bonus that's pretty much the difference between the dealership being in the black or being in the red for the month.

Speaker 2 Somewhere between $65,000 and $85,000, depending on which models they sell. Different cars are in different amounts.
If they sell 128 cars, fall just one car short, they get nothing.

Speaker 2 That's the worksheet that Chrysler sends us to show us what money we can earn by how many cars we sell. And there's a new one every month? Every month.

Speaker 2 In the middle of the month, the owner of this dealership, a sweet-faced guy named Mark Broadweeb and Freddie, show me the document where Chrysler set their October sales goal. No, no, this change

Speaker 2 every month. At their whim.
At their whim.

Speaker 2 And that's another frustration. We have no idea what the number is going to be and

Speaker 2 really how they compute it. We've had numbers as high as 159 and we fight and we go crazy.
It's kakamimi if anyone knows what that means. Because basically they shift around the ground rules on you.

Speaker 2 Every month. What makes all this tricky is that there are four other Jeep dealerships within 10 miles of Mark and Freddie.
And Mark says that most customers will shop price at two or three of them.

Speaker 2 So to stay competitive, Mark and Freddie do what pretty much everybody else does.

Speaker 2 They set lower prices, knock hundreds of dollars off the price of the cars, sometimes sell them for less than they pay Chrysler for them, with the hope that they're going to hit their sales goal and get the bonus to make up the difference.

Speaker 2 But there's no guarantee we will hit this number. So the pressure is huge because we have already given away the money to the consumer using that to sell a car.

Speaker 2 So I need a big day today.

Speaker 2 I need a big day. No bull.
I really need a big day today. So with 12 days left to go in the month, numbers wobbly.
Freddie laid it on Thick during his weekly meeting with the sales team.

Speaker 2 He told him he sees them over the dealership security cams. You know, I look through the video, I watch you guys in there

Speaker 2 all on your computers, going to different websites, chilling.

Speaker 2 Dude, get on higher gear. This is no joke.
I got to be at that number. Or I'm telling you, not going to be a nice guy.

Speaker 2 So put your nose right to the ground and come out shooting today.

Speaker 2 Everybody. I want balloons in all the departments.
I want the radios down on. Put the convertible tops down all over the place.
I want tons of balloons in the showroom.

Speaker 2 I just don't want one balloon to a car. Balloon the whole freaking place so it looks like a circus.

Speaker 2 Make it seem like we're having a monster sale and it's a party.

Speaker 2 Because we got to be at the big number by the 31st midnight. Period.
No ands, ifs, and buts.

Speaker 2 So everybody grabs balloons. Grown men inflate and tie and decorate.
It's truism in their business. Balloons sell cars.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 nobody shows up

Speaker 2 for an hour two hours three hours

Speaker 2 four hours

Speaker 2 Saturday should be one of their busiest days and it's empty

Speaker 2 hey Freddie how's it going today so far shit really bad really slow really really slow early afternoon Freddie told one of our producers Brian Reed that it was way slower than usual I don't know if you can catch this but try to notice the song that is playing over the radio in the background as they talk.

Speaker 2 What do you think it is? What's going on?

Speaker 2 Not a clue. With all the advertising's out there and everything else, we should be swamped.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm stressing.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm distressing.

Speaker 2 Here's a little song I wrote.

Speaker 2 You might want to sing it note for note. Don't worry

Speaker 2 to be happy.

Speaker 2 Mark, who owns this dealership, and Freddie, who runs it,

Speaker 2 both know that most people do not trust car dealers. Most people think that they're ripping us off, throwing on extra charges, milking us for every dime.

Speaker 2 And they say if you and I only knew the reality, we would see that in fact, the dealer is not making a killing off us. In fact, the dealer is often squeaking by with a very thin profit margin.

Speaker 2 They say it is all very different from what people think. And to prove their point, they let us watch.

Speaker 2 A bunch of us from our radio show re-recorded them as they headed towards the end of the month, trying to make their goal, trying to sell 129 cars, which,

Speaker 2 you know, you would think that would be very straightforward, very businesslike.

Speaker 2 But if what we saw is typical, What that means is that hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity and nearly 2 million jobs exist thanks only to millions of messy seat-of-the-pants deals, many of which barely come together as salesmen sweat out their end-of-the-month quotas.

Speaker 2 It is way more chaotic than we expected. And we saw some things, it's true, we think will surprise a lot of car buyers.
From WBEC Chicago, it's This American Life today.

Speaker 2 One car dealership tries to sell 129 cars. We get to know the resolute men and women who try to pull that off.
Stay with us.

Speaker 2 Support for this American Life and the following message come from Dignity Memorial. When we think about the people we love, sometimes it's not the big things that we miss the most, it's the details.

Speaker 2 What memories will the people you love cherish and remember once you're gone?

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Speaker 3 With Grammarly, Mail, and Coda coming together, you get proactive help across your workflow so you can outsmart the chaos. Experience AI that proactively helps you go from to-do to done faster.

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That's superhuman.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 2 This is American Life. So I wish I could pretend that we got interested in this subject at our radio show because we realized what an important part of the economy car sales are.

Speaker 2 And I wish I could pretend that we did a huge survey to find the most typical dealership out there.

Speaker 2 But in fact, we got interested in this topic and this particular dealership, Town and Country Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram is what it's called, in Levittown, New York, on Long Island.

Speaker 2 One of our coworkers here at the radio show, Robin Semion, bought a used car there. Here's how that happened.

Speaker 2 A friend of hers who knows all about cars told her that the only vehicle that she should even consider for her young family is the Honda pilot.

Speaker 2 And so she went looking online, she saw one listed on cars.com. It was at Town and Country.
And she called and she had no intention at all of going to look at the car.

Speaker 2 But a salesman convinced her, oh, you know what? You should come out today, right today.

Speaker 2 talked her into it, which meant an hour-long ride on a train from Brooklyn with her husband and her four-year-old. And then once she got there,

Speaker 2 they upsold her to a newer, more expensive vehicle, a Jeep Liberty, which she drove off the lot 24 hours later. Robin told me this story in the car in question on our first ride out to the dealership.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, the Honda pilot, I think, is

Speaker 4 across the board, like less problems,

Speaker 4 lasts longer, better gas mileage.

Speaker 2 I know,

Speaker 6 I know, I know.

Speaker 6 Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 I know, but I love this car.

Speaker 6 You got that?

Speaker 2 These people are such good salesmen.

Speaker 2 Not only did she pay more, not only did they put her into a Jeep, which meant that since they are a Jeep dealer, they could sell her a warranty, which they also did for a few thousand dollars.

Speaker 2 She came out of this loving her car and loving them.

Speaker 2 How do they do this? Well, before we go any further, I think I should give you a quick primer on the basic setup and cast of characters at this dealership.

Speaker 2 New cars are sold at town and country, and we're going to be spending most of our time with new cars today, by seven men and one woman, who, by the way, constantly make fun of each other in this raunchy way that we cannot play you over the radio, just know that that's happening.

Speaker 2 Plus, there are two guys in the finance department, and then overseeing all of them, there are the general manager, Freddie, who you already met.

Speaker 2 And then out on the showroom floor all day, every day, are two managers who you're going to be hearing from a lot over the course of this hour. These are Mike Perez and Sal Lanzalata.

Speaker 2 Of the two, Sal is the more complicated figure. Balding with a gray goatee, he's got this vibe that is halfway between Ben Kingsley in Gandhi and the laconic hitman, Mike from Breaking Bad.

Speaker 2 When Sal gets up to speak at the Wiku sales meetings, the meeting, by the way, is in the middle of the showroom, he paces around a red convertible as he talks, reminding everybody of the basic tenets of car sales.

Speaker 2 Customer says they're not ready to buy a car. They're all not ready to buy a car.

Speaker 2 Let's go over it again. They're in a car dealership.

Speaker 2 They got in their car, drove through hell to get here, looked for a parking spot for 10 minutes, parked, got out of the car, and walked into a car dealer. Not because the coffee's good.

Speaker 2 We went over this, because the coffee here is not good.

Speaker 2 They came here because we sell cars and they want to buy one. Nothing's changed in 100 years of selling cars, he tells them at one meeting.
The customer wants to pay as little as possible.

Speaker 2 We want to make as much as we can. You guys know the job, right? We've all done it before.
Be aggressive. Be aggressive.
ABC, Bob, what's ABC? Always be closing.

Speaker 2 Always be closing.

Speaker 2 Okay, so these guys, the managers, Sal and Mike, sit near the front door of the showroom at this elevated platform that everybody calls the podium or the desk and they oversee all the terms of all the deals.

Speaker 2 And okay, if you've ever bought a car, maybe you've wondered what really happens, you know, when the salesman leaves you and they go back and they talk to their manager, they talk to the boss.

Speaker 2 Okay, what do they do? Well, what they do is, we were told, they load their lips. Here's Freddie.

Speaker 2 We tell them what to say to the customer and we load their lips, send it back to the customer, and see where we can commit.

Speaker 2 So for instance, when one of the salesmen wants to get a woman to bring her husband in today to test drive the the car that she's chosen, they huddle at the desk, a bunch of them, and Freddie starts to improv some lines for the salesman to say,

Speaker 2 listen, if you can take this car by Monday, what happens if I can? I'm not sure if I can do it. I have money for the weekend that I'm giving away from Chrysler.

Speaker 2 As long as you purchase it by tomorrow and pick it up by Monday, you win. He's totally making this up.
There's no weekend money like this. Got extra money over the weekend through Chrysler.

Speaker 2 I want to use it. I want to give it to you.

Speaker 2 Get your husband in here.

Speaker 2 And with that, the salesman heads off. That's loading the lips.
You've just seen it.

Speaker 2 Loading your lips.

Speaker 2 But before the managers can go to their lips, they have to figure out what price they're going to ask for and the terms of the deal and all that.

Speaker 2 And this works differently, I think, than the way that most of us imagine is happening when we buy a car.

Speaker 2 We assume that the managers and the salesman are a unified team, and it's, you know, us versus them.

Speaker 2 But in fact, managers and salespeople are often at odds with each other, and they spin information and they lie to each other.

Speaker 2 Here's Peter Pasas, a very experienced salesman, who at the time of this recording was three cars shy of the 18 that he was supposed to sell in October.

Speaker 2 And what he's doing here is he's asking a couple what they want their monthly payments to be on a new car.

Speaker 2 What if I can get you the same payment you're at now?

Speaker 2 $199 for 39 months, something like that.

Speaker 2 Okay, hear that? $199 a month.

Speaker 2 Then Peter marches over to talk to the managers at the desk and listen to the number that he tells Sal that the customer wants.

Speaker 2 She wants to be about $150 a month.

Speaker 2 $150.

Speaker 2 Not $199.

Speaker 2 As soon as Sal is out of earshot, Peter turns to the reporter who's trailing him, Sean Cole. Did you see what it did?

Speaker 2 Well, you saw what she told me she wants to be at $199 a month. But I'm telling him $150 because I got to work him too with the same time level.
So you're going lower with him.

Speaker 2 Why do this?

Speaker 2 Well, later, when the negotiations get tough, the manager, Sal, may ask Peter to squeeze the customers for a lower number on their trade-in or maybe a higher price for the car, something it might be hard to talk the customer into.

Speaker 2 But Peter now has wiggle room. He knows he can push the couple up to $199 a month in payments because they already said yes to it.
He can make up the difference there.

Speaker 2 In fact, as the deal proceeds, it runs into a problem. The desk, the couple, and the salesman cannot come to an agreement about how much the dealership should pay the couple for their trade-in.

Speaker 2 Sal says that it's worth one price. The customers say that another Jeep dealer offered them a lot more than that for the trade-in, but of course, that may be a lie.

Speaker 2 There's a saying in the business, buyers are liars. Or maybe the other dealership is lying to the customers.

Speaker 2 Maybe the other dealership told them an unrealistically high price that they never intend to pay. That happens too.
Everyone is playing everyone.

Speaker 2 Sal at the desk tells Peter, the salesman, that the customer cannot be getting that trade-in price from the competitor. It can't be true.

Speaker 2 Stop believing what the customer's telling him.

Speaker 2 That card does $16.50 at the auction.

Speaker 2 There's no way they're paying him $20,000 on a car that they could sell at auction for $16.50. Then I guess he's a better negotiator than I can.
He's just a better liar and you're buying it.

Speaker 2 That's the difference.

Speaker 2 So to summarize, the managers and the salespeople are playing each other. The customer's playing them both.

Speaker 2 Each dealership dealership is playing the other dealerships, and the manufacturer is playing all the dealerships with its quotas and its incentives. Chrysler sold 140,083 cars and trucks in October.

Speaker 2 This is what it took to sell one of them.

Speaker 2 Like I said earlier, several of us came and recorded at this dealership, and each of us chose different salespeople to follow. Robin, Semeon, chose Bobby Tantello.

Speaker 2 A warning to listeners, somebody uses a word in an offensive way in her story, and we're going to leave that in because we're trying to document what really happened.

Speaker 5 Robert Tantillo, Bobby T around the dealership, is in last place. He doesn't like talking about it.

Speaker 6 How many cars have you sold?

Speaker 2 I can't keep track.

Speaker 5 I know someone here is keeping track.

Speaker 2 Well, then you'd have to ask them.

Speaker 5 I didn't have to ask them. Freddie makes it clear in that weekly speech he gives every Saturday.

Speaker 5 Remember that meeting? He goes over everyone's individual sales, gives them new goals.

Speaker 2 You need nine more.

Speaker 5 Bob's there that morning, too.

Speaker 5 Freddie is keeping track.

Speaker 2 Bob T, you're at three.

Speaker 2 Thanks for stopping by.

Speaker 5 Bob doesn't flinch.

Speaker 5 He sits poker-faced in a chair. A couple of guys look down or stare at their hands.

Speaker 2 I'm at 15, Bob. 12 more.

Speaker 5 Bobby T's new here. Before this, he was in the wholesale food business for for three decades.
Became a car salesman a few years ago after he retired.

Speaker 5 Bob says last month he had the most sales for a couple weeks. But last month was last month.
Freddie needs this month.

Speaker 5 Bob says the issue is there's just so much about selling cars that's out of his control. He says his biggest problem this month is a lack of leads.
One way salesmen get leads is from the internet.

Speaker 5 Town and Country lists all the cars it has online. When people see one they like, they usually call before they come in to make sure the car is really there.

Speaker 5 But those calls go to guys in the back, in the internet department.

Speaker 5 Then, when the customers show up at the store, they meet whoever they talk to on the phone, and one of the bosses at the desk hands them over to a real salesperson, like Bob.

Speaker 5 Except that Bob says he's never been handed one of those leads.

Speaker 2 They gotta give it to a guy that they know is,

Speaker 2 you know, that's been here, and they feed him the deal. That's pretty much how it works.

Speaker 6 You have to really be tight tight with the desk.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 5 Bob's not tight with the desk. But Freddy, in an attempt to help out, gives Bob exactly what he wants.

Speaker 6 His first internet lead.

Speaker 5 He tells Bob, go on back, get Dan.

Speaker 5 Dan works in the internet office. So these words, go get Dan, that's the signal for taking over an internet lead.
Freddy raises his eyebrows at Bob and nods his head slowly like, you got that?

Speaker 5 Bob misunderstands the cue. He gets Dan from the internet office, who comes up to the desk to greet the customers and hand them off to Bob, who has suddenly disappeared.

Speaker 5 No one knows where he went, so Freddie gives the customers to another salesman. A bewildered Freddy calls over to Dan.

Speaker 2 And I sent Bob T over there to get you or whatever, and then come back. Where'd he go? He was.
I said, are you busy come on? He kept going to the office.

Speaker 2 He's like, retired. He's retired.

Speaker 2 I know. I told him, go get Dan, come right back.

Speaker 5 Bob walks up minutes later.

Speaker 2 The whole idea was to get Dan and come back and then take over the sale. That's what Dan does.
He just wanted me to get him. That's what I thought.
Well, that's what Dan does.

Speaker 2 He comes in, he gets the sale, and then he gives it to the salesman. So instead, now Manny got it.
I'm sorry, I was talking to Chris about the else. Yeah, exactly.
Three cars out. I would.

Speaker 5 It's hard to watch someone with a lot of experience berate someone with much less experience for not knowing better.

Speaker 5 There's a line from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. You never never open your mouth till you know what the shot is.
When you don't know the shot, it's not like you don't want to know the shot.

Speaker 5 Bob doesn't know the shot, but he's trying.

Speaker 2 He didn't say there's a customer here, take care of the customer. He said, Go get Dan.
So I went and got Dan.

Speaker 2 I'm supposed to know what he's thinking.

Speaker 2 It's hard.

Speaker 2 You get bullied. You get pushed around, but you let it go.
Move on.

Speaker 2 It's a tough job. It's not for everybody.
I told you that. You know, you got to be thick-skinned.
You got to be able to take a lot, absorb a lot. He said, well, now I gave it to the other guy.
Okay.

Speaker 2 What do you want me to say?

Speaker 2 So there actually is a place a town and country where they keep score of who has sold what. It's in Freddie's office, the general manager's office.

Speaker 2 It's a whiteboard with each person's sales for the month to date on it. Every car or truck that they've sold is represented by a little magnetic rectangle that's roughly the size of a 9-volt battery.

Speaker 2 Everybody calls these chips, and the different colors of the chips stand for different models of cars and trucks.

Speaker 2 And throughout the day, salesmen come and they hover around the whiteboard, seeing where everybody stands. And generally, everybody is shooting for at least 15 sales a month.

Speaker 2 At 15 sales, your commission for the next month jumps from 20%

Speaker 2 to 30%.

Speaker 2 There's also a bonus of $600 when you hit 10 cars, $250 if you sell seven cars in the first two weeks of the month.

Speaker 2 There's money you get directly from Chrysler, and that can be anywhere between $50,000 and $250 per car.

Speaker 2 Mid-level salesmen here at Town and Country make around $60,000 a year. Top performers are closer to $100,000.
Most of that is commissions and bonuses.

Speaker 2 The number one salesman at Town and Country is always the same. Some months he has twice as many sales as whoever's in second place.

Speaker 2 I've been doing this 28 years. This guy's like one of the best I've ever seen.
The salesman Peter Pasa standing at the board, it's the middle of the month. Look, he's got a 1,294

Speaker 2 pending, 17 cars. Unbelievable.
This guy's

Speaker 2 a born salesperson. All the veteran sales guys of town and country say these things about this guy.
He also happens to be the youngest salesman of the dealership. He's 28.

Speaker 2 Jason Masilla.

Speaker 2 Reporter Sean Cole followed him around.

Speaker 7 Jason stands out from everybody else on the sales floor in pretty much every way. He's taller than everybody else and way more focused on his appearance.

Speaker 7 Always a full suit and tie, double windser knot, gelled hair. He's handsome.
And he isn't just the best seller at town and country.

Speaker 7 He's one of the best sellers of Jeeps, Chryslers, Dodges, and Rams in America.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 I'm going to go on

Speaker 2 my login here.

Speaker 2 And then boom.

Speaker 7 He showed me this internal Chrysler company website that ranks all the salespeople.

Speaker 2 Talking thousands of people. You see this national number? There is 29,000 salespeople in the whole entire country.

Speaker 2 And you were... I'm 108.

Speaker 7 108 out of 29,000.

Speaker 2 You have a shocked look on your face. Because I look at it and I say, that's freaking crazy.
You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 You would think a guy that's in this business for 15 to 20 years should be doing that stuff.

Speaker 7 Jason's barely been in this business for four years.

Speaker 7 When I met him in the last weekend of October, he had already outsold everybody for the month, including a guy who's been doing this since Jason was a toddler but he says he's not competing with the others he's competing with himself you know I'm trying to excel I have my own goals that nobody would even know about

Speaker 2 you know what I mean so like I just I'm like my own little celebrity in my own little body

Speaker 7 As we're sitting there talking, he pulls out a piece of paper and starts writing down everything he's saying as he says it. He always does this.
I have 10 pages of notes from this interview.

Speaker 7 His notes. So most of the salespeople at Town and Country are shooting for 15 to 20 sales in a month.
That's considered a solid performance. And Jason is not satisfied with a solid performance.

Speaker 2 There's a number that I really want to hit.

Speaker 7 He writes down that number and circles it and then moves on.

Speaker 2 And I would love to just achieve. I've achieved 30 cars several times.

Speaker 7 Writes down 30 underlined several. That is 30 cars a month.

Speaker 2 All right, so I've done that enough to say I could do it. You know, now I'm trickling.
Writes down 30 plus sign. You know, 30 plus.

Speaker 7 For October, hoping to finish the month in the mid-30s somewhere. But Jason's own personal Olympic goal.
I'll just say what this number is that you wrote down.

Speaker 2 This is 40.

Speaker 2 40 is a big number. You know what I mean? If you can hit 40 cars, that's more than a car per day.

Speaker 2 That's sick. That's crazy.
Especially when you're selling cars. You know what I mean? It's not like I'm selling suits

Speaker 7 What took me a while to understand is how Jason sells so many cars or what he's doing differently than everybody else.

Speaker 7 And we asked pretty much everybody else this question, but their answers were kind of generic. He's a good-looking kid, good personality, got the gift of the gab.

Speaker 7 Even Jason sort of defaults to truisms when you ask him what his secret is. Says he treats every customer like he would want to be treated.

Speaker 7 But as much as you can figure out anybody in less than a week, I think Jason's success is due to three basic attributes, three characteristics he has that have propelled him to the top.

Speaker 7 So I'll go through those now. Number one, constructive delusion.
Now, Jason knows that a certain percentage of customers, depending on the month, will walk away from him without buying a car.

Speaker 7 Of course that happens. And yet, paradoxically, he enters every negotiation full in the knowledge that it will not happen.

Speaker 7 As we're sitting there, he drew a picture of a very lopsided hourglass with a line across the skinny part.

Speaker 2 Pessimistic. Pessimistic.

Speaker 7 To Jason, the glass is not half empty and it is not half full.

Speaker 2 You know, me, I'm always at 100.

Speaker 7 It is 100% full. Yeah, it's full.
And you're like, what the hell? No, it's not. There's only half of the water there.

Speaker 2 No, no, no, no. No, it's full to me.

Speaker 7 But for someone who barely possesses the word pessimistic in his vocabulary, that's not always how he seems on the sales floor. More than any of the other sellers, Jason's anxious.

Speaker 2 Going crazy right now. Bite my nails.
Bite my nails off, cause I'm stressed.

Speaker 7 Biting his nails, hovering around the manager's desk. It's like the dealership making its quota is personal to him.

Speaker 7 Jason, and this is number two on our list of attributes, Jason doesn't just want to sell cars. Jason needs to sell cars.
Case in point, I watched him work this one deal, a lease on a Jeep Liberty.

Speaker 7 He played it totally cool at first, but when the haggling started, it was like someone had clamped a set of jumper cables to his ankles.

Speaker 2 And between 375 and 329 is 46 times 39 is another 1700. But you got to put the value point on it.
You now have a sunroof, and you have the money.

Speaker 7 The guy insists for an hour that he can't leave a deposit without talking to his wife.

Speaker 7 And then

Speaker 7 he leaves a deposit. Jason wins.

Speaker 2 Anthony, I really like you.

Speaker 7 I really do. He runs outside to chat with another customer that he's already closed.

Speaker 2 We're getting there.

Speaker 7 And at this point, he's completely dosed up on adrenaline, jabbering like a speed freak.

Speaker 2 I just, I just, I just, I just closed one. I just closed one that I didn't think I was gonna close.
Really? The guy was like you on the fence. He's like, my wife, my wife, my wife, my wife, my wife.

Speaker 2 Like, I threw something at him, and he was like, and you know, those intense moments where you're like, fuck is we gonna do it, and we did it.

Speaker 2 So exciting. It doesn't matter how many cars you do.
It's like the first deal of your life.

Speaker 7 Two hours later, he's already crashed. It's like that deal never happened.

Speaker 2 Oh, I'm struggling right now to get these deals out, man. I'm really strapped.

Speaker 2 I feel like I told you, I'm back on that feeling. I'm back on that grind again.
I feel like I need another 10 cars. The high is fleeting.
The high is gone. I'm ready for the next deal.

Speaker 7 You're ready for the next one.

Speaker 2 So that's two.

Speaker 7 And then the third and final attribute that I think has led Jason to being the top seller at town and country, ABC.

Speaker 7 Always be calling your girlfriend to say, baby, I just have a couple more things to take care of and then I'll be home.

Speaker 2 We got into an argument about it last night. Oh no.

Speaker 7 This is Jason's girlfriend, Gina. She stopped by to say hi to him at the shop one of the days we were there.
The night before that, he had come home too late and screwed up their dinner plans.

Speaker 7 Gina says they're always running into a store five minutes before it closes.

Speaker 7 She's imposed a no-work talk over dinner rule, but Jason always has just one last thing to tell her about something that happened at work.

Speaker 7 They've only been together a year, so they can both still laugh about it, at least with me.

Speaker 7 But of course, working long hours can threaten everything else in your life, and the entire business of selling cars is built on working long hours.

Speaker 7 Working weekends when more customers come in, coming in on your day off when the store needs to meet its quota. And the damage that can do is all around Jason.

Speaker 7 The sales guy in the cubicle next to him, Peter Posas, told me managing a sales team at a dealership in Florida is what led to his divorce.

Speaker 2 Yeah, of course it did. I was never home.
I missed all functions and stuff because, you know, like, I married my job.

Speaker 7 Manny, who sits next to Peter, is separated from his wife partly due to the business. Therese in Finance said her job caused her divorce.

Speaker 7 Sal, one of the managers you heard from before, says the job was a factor in both of his divorces.

Speaker 7 Still, Jason and Gina wouldn't even be together if it weren't for the job. They met at the dealership when she was buying from another salesperson.

Speaker 7 And now, now, here they are, both driving the exact same kind of car.

Speaker 2 You know, it's funny, we both got white Jeeps. We love them.
She has a 12, I got a 14, and we just, we have a good time. And they're great trucks.

Speaker 2 They got everything you need, all the luxury, the right size, and they last forever. It's like you're trying to sell me now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and if you've ever been, yeah, you're gonna go out and buy a car before the end of the night. You're gonna be like, Ira, Ira, you know what? I'll be back at the office in about two hours.

Speaker 2 I'm picking up my new Jeep. All right, I mean, this product is like on fire.

Speaker 2 In the second half of October at Town and Country sales stay slow and going into the last two days of the month they still have so many cars to sell that when Freddie sees me arrive in the morning on the next to last day of the month Knowing what it is that I'm about to ask him, he starts laughing.

Speaker 2 Oh boy, here we go. We're behind 16 cars for the month so far, and that's not good.
That means I need 16 cars between today and tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Here's how hard that number is.

Speaker 2 Freddie tells me that he only expects 15 or 16 customers to show up in the store each day, which means that to get to his number, he's going to have to sell a car to every other person who walks in the door.

Speaker 2 And what my fellow radio producers and I witness over the next two days, Okay, some deals do go through, but it's almost a catalog of all the ways that a car deal can fall apart.

Speaker 2 There are the obvious ways. A young woman doesn't get approved for her car loan.
A father and son promise to come back tomorrow to sign the papers and take the car. They never come back.

Speaker 2 But there turn out to be all sorts of other ways that a car deal can implode that we had never imagined or conceived. For instance, Bob T.

Speaker 2 You remember Bob T, the salesman with the lowest sales of anybody this month. Okay, a deal of his starts to unravel after the paperwork is signed, after the deposit is paid.

Speaker 2 Basically, what happens is he told a couple that their new car is $2,000 cheaper than it actually is.

Speaker 2 They found out the truth while talking to Rich, the finance manager, and kind of hit the roof.

Speaker 2 Why am I thinking I'm getting screwed here?

Speaker 2 Bob T was also surprised. He himself thought it was $2,000 cheaper.

Speaker 2 The finance manager, Rich, tells Bob T that Bob T should have, okay, first, better understood which rebates the couples qualified for. That's where the mistake was.

Speaker 2 And second, he should have explained it to the couple. You left the middle out.
You left the meat of the sandwich out. That wasn't told to me.

Speaker 2 It was that we were going to give him the same discounting. That's where I understood.

Speaker 2 I gave him the numbers and he signed it.

Speaker 2 It was started with 28,9960.

Speaker 2 Rich manages to save this deal, but barely.

Speaker 2 Then around 7 at night on the next to last day of the month, one of the salesmen, Scott Froelick, gets some weird news about one of his sales.

Speaker 2 He tells one of of our producers, Jonathan Menhevar, that some customers that he had just sold a car to were now coming back to the dealership, but not to pick up their new car and take it home.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. They have to pick out another car.

Speaker 2 Because the other car was sold and nobody marked it.

Speaker 2 It was sold.

Speaker 2 That's right. They accidentally sold the same car twice to two different customers.
Here's how it happened: Scott had sold a red Jeep Gran Cherokee to this customer, this guy who came in with his dad.

Speaker 2 They'd left a deposit. But another salesman, Mike Lester, everybody calls him Mike L, had already sold that same car the day before.

Speaker 2 The customer hadn't picked up the car yet, and the little magnetic chip that they used to keep track of the sales, the one for this car, nobody had put it on the whiteboard in Freddie's office.

Speaker 2 The board that keeps track of who sold what.

Speaker 2 Scott is not happy. I want a drink.
You're welcome to come over for a fucking drink. Or maybe this does a better job capturing his mood.
God, I want to shoot myself right now.

Speaker 2 An hour later, the customer is back on the lot with his dad, and Scott walks up to him.

Speaker 2 And maybe this is the time to tell you that Scott moonlights as a mortician, which means he's used to handling all kinds of situations with customers.

Speaker 2 And so even though he did absolutely nothing wrong, here's what he says. I fucked up and I sold a sold car.
I'll admit it. Broke my heart, Fredo.
Broke my heart.

Speaker 2 Hope you caught the customer's godfather reference there. Scott tells him that if the other sale falls through, the car is his, but the other deal does not fall through.

Speaker 2 So Scott and the guy go wandering around the lot in the dark, looking for another Grand Cherokee. Red, the guy is set on red.

Speaker 2 And they find one. What is this one? Yes, it is another red Grand Cherokee.
Scott writes down the stock number, runs to the desk to check it out, and

Speaker 2 it has also been sold. Scott's only hope is that that deal will fall apart and he can sell the car to this customer, who he sends home.

Speaker 7 Fingers crossed.

Speaker 2 The night, however, is still not over. And around quarter to eight that night, something happens at the desk that really, really

Speaker 2 ticks off the manager, Sal.

Speaker 2 The amount of stupidity that just happened far exceeds anything I have ever experienced in the car business. Okay, here's a short version.

Speaker 2 Stephen Brown, a computer engineer from New Jersey, has come in to finalize a deal on a new Dodge Challenger coupe. Sal greets him.
How you doing? I'm all right.

Speaker 2 Stephen is Lori's customer, the one woman on the sales team, but Lori is out sick. Stephen tells Sal that she texted him that somebody else was going to be taking care of the deal.

Speaker 2 She didn't tell you who? No, she just sent a text message about. Alright, give me a few minutes.
If you want, you can grab a seat in the waiting area over there. Stephen's at Zown.

Speaker 2 Sal gets Lori on the phone. I have a customer of yours yours here who says someone else is supposed to take care of him.
Who's supposed to take care of him?

Speaker 2 Good. Mike Lester's gone for the night, so now what do I do?

Speaker 2 Well, he's gone too. Sal pages Scotty, but he's not around.
Peter's around, but he's working another deal.

Speaker 2 And then, you know how in every shop of every kind, everywhere, there's that one team-playing, late-staying, extra-go-gettery kid you can turn to who will always help clean up whatever weirdo mess just erupted one hour before closing?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 In this case, that would happen to be.

Speaker 2 Jason, what are you doing right now Jason comes over to the podium Sean Cole who is trailing Jason picks up the story from here so Jason comes over to the desk and Sal explains what's going on here's the rundown you ready

Speaker 2 this is Lori's customer the customer came in to see Lori Lori's not here today so she set it up with Mike Lester Mike Lester went home Mike Perez knew about the deal Mike Perez went home TK's a finance manager on a deal he's off today

Speaker 2 So now I'm supposed to piece this together. What are we doing? I'm not quite clear.
Is the thing billed out? I'm not quite clear.

Speaker 2 Okay. So what am I doing right now? He's not quite clear.
He's not quite clear. I know the call was ready last.
How you doing, sir?

Speaker 2 Good, I'm Jason.

Speaker 7 Now, this isn't a situation where Stephen just needs to sign some papers and pick up the keys to his new car. There are still a lot of steps to march through.

Speaker 2 I have other things to do.

Speaker 7 He finds the folder and learns that Stephen and Lori never got to a final, final offer for his trade-in.

Speaker 7 In order to do that, the car has to go up on the lift for a full inspection in the service department, which is inexplicably closed.

Speaker 7 On this, the second to last day of the month, when they need absolutely every sale they can get.

Speaker 2 Nobody, they didn't call me to see if they could leave.

Speaker 2 We're going to lose this deal.

Speaker 7 With no inspection, there's no trade-in. And with no trade-in, there's no deal.
Somebody finally does a cursory inspection on the car without the lift in the dark.

Speaker 7 All the while, Stephen is getting more and more anxious that no one seems to know what's going on.

Speaker 7 Jason tries to get him in with the finance finance guy to work out the terms of the deal, but the finance guy's busy. Jason explains this to Sal, which sets Sal off again.

Speaker 2 He needs to sit with that customer. Okay.
This is a

Speaker 2 no, don't worry, don't get excited. Don't get excited.
Dude, I'm about ready to walk the fuck out. No, don't get excited.
Like, no bullshit. No, don't get excited.

Speaker 2 Okay, I've never been in a store this fucked up in my life. Don't get excited.
I don't want you to get excited. I want you to just remain calm.

Speaker 7 This is actually the third time Stevens made the trek out here from New Jersey. It's a two-hour drive he does not want to make again.

Speaker 2 I love the car, but if they don't get if

Speaker 2 they're gonna have to get it done.

Speaker 7 They cannot lose this deal. They're still 10 cars short of their monthly goal.

Speaker 7 When Stephen does sit down with the finance manager, he can't get the interest rate he wanted, 3.3%.

Speaker 7 They finally resolve that, but then he doesn't have insurance for the new vehicle, or he hasn't called Geico to transfer the policy from his old car. He takes care of that too.

Speaker 7 But then, as he's transferring his stuff from the trunk of his old car into the new one, the billing office notices a glitch. Something's wrong with the new insurance card from Geico.

Speaker 7 Stephen's address isn't on it, and the date on it says October 31st, even though it's October 30th. That means Stephen won't be able to legally drive the car until the following day.

Speaker 2 Tiffany, good evening. This is Jason.
I'm a sales representative at Town and Country Jeep.

Speaker 7 Jason gets on the phone with Geico, thinking maybe it'll be an easy fix.

Speaker 7 It won't be.

Speaker 7 We all stand around and watch him work this thing.

Speaker 2 I'm sitting with a client of yours and he's purchasing a vehicle picking it up tonight. I have the ID card and the bike.

Speaker 7 It's quarter past 10 at this point.

Speaker 2 But it's not like he's opening up a new policy. So what are we doing here?

Speaker 7 Then it's 10.26.

Speaker 2 Well, we got to try to make an exception if you can. Please talk to your supervisor one more time if you can.

Speaker 7 Finally, Tiffany comes through.

Speaker 2 Oh my god, you're the best.

Speaker 7 Geico says it'll email a new insurance card. Jason keeps Tiffany, the operator, on the line until everything is squared away with the billing office.

Speaker 2 How long have you been working for Geico?

Speaker 2 You sound like you really got a lot of enthusiasm for what you do.

Speaker 7 Billing gives the all-clear.

Speaker 7 We all follow Steven out to the parking lot. It's about 11 o'clock at this point.

Speaker 7 Jason, giddily, watches him tear out of the parking lot and hang a right.

Speaker 2 Jersey's that way.

Speaker 2 He went east. Jersey's west.

Speaker 2 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 So coming up, Car Talk continues. That feels really weird to say.
But it's true. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

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Speaker 2 This is American Live from Ira Glass. Today's program is a rerun.

Speaker 2 We did all the reporting for today's show a few years ago during a month, October 2013, when car sales were strong, 1.2 million new vehicles sold that month.

Speaker 2 But that doesn't mean that every dealership in every town had an easy time of it.

Speaker 2 And today in our program, we watch one dealership, just one, on Long Island, Town and Country Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram is what it's called, as they try to make their sales goal of 129 cars for the month.

Speaker 2 If they sell 129 cars, Chrysler is going to pay them a big bonus, and they need that money to be in the black for the month. If they just sell 128,

Speaker 2 Bubkiss.

Speaker 2 So it's

Speaker 2 9:15 in the morning.

Speaker 2 On the 31st, how many cars you got to get? Nine.

Speaker 2 That's Freddie, the general manager here. Nine more.

Speaker 2 And what do you have to say about that?

Speaker 2 God help us.

Speaker 2 God help us.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 It's going to be hard.

Speaker 2 On a good month, he would start the last day with just two or three cars to sell. Nine.
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 And it's Halloween, which means that lots of potential customers are going to be out with their kids today.

Speaker 2 Everybody is so tense that it's not even 10 in the morning, and a customer walks out without buying a car. No, we're done.
Sorry, we're done.

Speaker 2 I came in to make a deal, and that's not what I was expecting. Thank you.
Have a good night.

Speaker 2 And one of the managers, Sal, has this edgy little conversation with the salesman who let him walk out. What happened to that guy you were working?

Speaker 2 You left.

Speaker 2 You gotta stop doing that, bro. I stopped doing it.
You don't help guys. You don't gotta meet us.
You didn't even come up here. How am I supposed to help? Where's my crystal ball? In the shop?

Speaker 2 Do it again. You're following him.

Speaker 2 Let's do it. Let's do it right now.
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 Pack up, go.

Speaker 2 He doesn't go.

Speaker 2 Fucking real.

Speaker 2 The morning's still young when I find Freddy in his office selling a car to himself.

Speaker 2 A loner car for the maintenance department to lend out to customers who are getting their cars repaired. He's allowed to count that in his sales total.
So now we only need eight more.

Speaker 2 See, it's starting to come together already. By mid-afternoon, he'll buy a second Lerner car for the dealership.

Speaker 2 Back in February, Freddie bought a Durango for his wife to make the number that month, replacing a car that he had just bought a year before for her for the same reason.

Speaker 2 Joe!

Speaker 2 What's the story with your cars? Freddie is calling Joe Monty, one of the guys who runs the used car side of the business at Town and Country.

Speaker 2 Joe has got his own goal to hit for the month that is separate from the new car goal. 70 used cars.
That's the number Freddy set for him. Is any of them going out yet or what? What are we doing?

Speaker 2 Yuri's delivered the Chevy Trailblazer. Hold on.
While we were at Town and Country, we asked everybody what it would mean for him or her personally if the team did not make it Sal's goal.

Speaker 2 And it was actually this guy, Joe Monty, over in Used Cars, who gave us the best picture of that. Sarah Koenig hung out with him for a while.

Speaker 6 Joe's particularly stressed out this month. Half the time I'm with him, it feels like he's fighting, even with customers.

Speaker 2 Nobody's giving you a runaround, Jessica, okay? Yelling and screaming and being rude and threatening is not going to get you anywhere. The car, the car, the car is a great car.

Speaker 6 Next fight, he calls a woman in the back office who he thinks ratted to Freddie about a deal she didn't like.

Speaker 2 Teresa,

Speaker 2 well, can you pick up the phone? Nails could get them later.

Speaker 2 Why did you run to Freddie? Why did you run to Freddie and tell Freddie about a Chrysa 300?

Speaker 2 What whose conversation?

Speaker 2 Why were you talking to Eddie?

Speaker 2 First of all, if a manager writes off on a deal and signs it,

Speaker 2 it's an old car.

Speaker 2 She hung up the phone.

Speaker 6 I'm sort of surprised anyone would have the balls to fight with Joe. He's a big man, 350 pounds, large and in charge.
The day I meet him, he's wearing a gray tracksuit.

Speaker 6 But what I quickly find out is that he's wearing a tracksuit because it's his day off. He's supposed to be at his son Mike's football game against Malvern.

Speaker 6 He hasn't been able to catch an away game all season and he took this one Sunday off to do it. It was important to him.
For so many years, he wasn't around enough for his kids.

Speaker 6 He's working all the time. Joe knows Mike will be looking for him in the stands right about now.
And he's not going to be there because he's here with the car lot.

Speaker 2 We're a little shorthanded, so I got to be here, which is not a problem. Listen, if I'm making money, making money.
Just

Speaker 2 catch 22, you're missing a game.

Speaker 2 But that's the car business.

Speaker 2 That's the car business.

Speaker 2 I'll make it up to him later.

Speaker 6 Yesterday, Joe was late to his mother-in-law's surprise 70th birthday party. Last week, he was late for his own mother's 60th.

Speaker 6 The used car side of Town and Country is supposed to sell 70 cars by the end of the month. That's Joe's version of the 129 on the news side.
When I first met Joe, used was at 35.

Speaker 6 At stake is Joe's big year-end bonus. Joe wouldn't tell me the amount of the bonus, but he made it clear it's very, very nice.
Down payment on a house nice.

Speaker 6 Since he fell so behind the last couple months, this month, October, is make or break for Joe. He's got to get to at least 70 cars if he wants any hope of reaching that bonus by the end of the year.

Speaker 6 And it's not looking good. 20 years in the business, Joe's never seen a stretch this slow for this long.
Joe blames it mostly on Hurricane Sandy.

Speaker 6 A year ago, tens of thousands of people lost their cars all at once, and they got new ones all at once.

Speaker 6 So now, a year later, tens of thousands of people are out of the used car market who normally would be buying and selling right now.

Speaker 2 We had two weekends in a row, we sold one car. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 Two Saturdays and two Sundays, and we sold one car.

Speaker 6 Between the whole weekend.

Speaker 2 The whole weekend. The whole two weekends.

Speaker 2 We sold one car.

Speaker 2 There was days we didn't see a customer.

Speaker 6 Joe goes outside to do an appraisal on a Nissan Quest. This also gives him a chance to have a cigarette, one of about 40 parliaments he'll smoke today.
His wife and kids get on him about the smoking.

Speaker 6 He's got six kids, six kids. Two are grown, four of them still at home.
Joe's the only breadwinner in the family, always has been, so it's all on him.

Speaker 6 Even in the best of times, Joe's a worrier, like his grandmother. He's 42 years old, but he looks older.
In the past year, he's gained about 80 pounds.

Speaker 6 In the parking lot, Joe throws away a half-smoked cigarette and then looks over the Nissan Quest. Tires are so-so, need some detailing.

Speaker 6 It's got a cracked taillight and a bad Carfax report, meaning it's been in an accident. $2,000 is fair for this car, Joe says.
It's what these are going for at auction.

Speaker 6 He tells me the customers are going to want at least $2,500, but there's no way he can do that. $2,500 is just too much.
He heads back inside.

Speaker 2 $2,500. That's everything.

Speaker 6 Instantly caves.

Speaker 2 That's what I will do.

Speaker 6 He needs the deal. They shake on it.

Speaker 6 Joe is about 22 when he started in the car business. He had a baby at 18, his son Joseph, and then four more kids, Dean, Chris, Michael, and Adriana, plus his stepson Louis.

Speaker 6 Joe himself was one of five kids. His mom raised them by herself, no dad around, no money.

Speaker 2 They moved around a lot.

Speaker 6 With his own kids, he's the uptight parent, the one who doesn't laugh enough, the one who hammers them about consequences. He wants his kids to fear his wrath, but also to know he loves them.

Speaker 6 Sometimes it's tricky for him to balance that or even to talk about it.

Speaker 2 I have a good relationship with my children. Not as I didn't have a father, so

Speaker 2 it's hard to

Speaker 2 do something when you don't know how to do it.

Speaker 2 Sometimes you don't know how to...

Speaker 2 I'm like a manly man, so I love them very much, but I don't know how to sometimes show it to them. I kiss them, I hug them, but you know what I'm saying.
You don't

Speaker 2 something that I have to adapt to. But that's it.
They're good.

Speaker 2 They're good kids.

Speaker 6 Joe wants his kids to have more stability than he had growing up and a better standard of living. For 16 years, they all lived in a big house in Smithtown, in a fairly wealthy neighborhood.

Speaker 6 And Joe says there was pressure there. Some other kids at school had fancy clothes and extravagant vacations, blowout Sweet 16 parties.
He didn't want his kids to feel less than.

Speaker 6 So he made sure, within reason, that they had what the other kids had. But three years ago, he left town and country for another job at a Toyota dealer, and it didn't go well, at all.

Speaker 6 He lost, well, he says he lost everything, but in any case, it was a lot of money.

Speaker 6 They sold their big house in Smithtown and moved to a smaller house in Levitt Town, about five minutes from the dealership. And in a lot of ways, Joe's glad about that.

Speaker 6 It's made them closer as a family, he says. But he's also trying to work his way back up.
He'd like to be able to buy them all a bigger house, give everyone a little more room.

Speaker 6 That's why he's so worried about this bad stretch of business and about getting that bonus.

Speaker 6 Toward the end of the day, his son Mike calls.

Speaker 6 Joe's already spoken to the coach about how the football game went.

Speaker 2 Two sacks and two tackles. That's great.
Okay, uh, boy, guys.

Speaker 2 What?

Speaker 2 Do you think Elon goes to his job?

Speaker 2 You can go to somebody so you can go get something to eat.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all right. Um,

Speaker 2 I'll be home in probably like, uh, hopefully, like 20 minutes, and I'll give you money to go out to eat.

Speaker 2 Okay. All right.

Speaker 2 All right, but

Speaker 2 every one of them.

Speaker 2 And it's hard to say no when you try your best. When you're doing well, it's no big deal, and you can take care of them.
And then there's just doing well to where

Speaker 2 you're making it by.

Speaker 2 What is it? Today's October. What's going to happen in a couple of months when my son's getting ready to leave for college? Am I going to have the money?

Speaker 2 It's mid-afternoon on the new car side at Town and Country. So what do you do all day on the last day of the month when you need to sell everything you possibly can?

Speaker 2 Well, instead of waiting for customers to come into the store, you call up any lead you have and try to close deals right over the phone if you can.

Speaker 2 One of the salespeople, Laurie, does this with a previous customer. Jason also sells to a guy he knows over the phone.
Peter gets a lead from a cop upstate that he sold a Durango truck to.

Speaker 2 The lead is a friend of the cops, also a cop, who wants the same deal his friend got. Peter gets him on the phone and says they'll give him the deal for two reasons.

Speaker 2 One of them, you were referred, and the other one is you're an officer of the law and we'll respect that over here, big time, just so you know.

Speaker 2 All right, Chris leaves out the third and main reason for the great deal that he's getting. They need eight more sales by nine o'clock.

Speaker 2 And the cop ends up buying his Durango for $2,214 less than the dealership paid for it. Even after finance charges and holdback and all the other ways they make money, they still lost on this one.

Speaker 2 Ditto this guy, Richard Misana. He was going to get an oil change this morning and stepped in on a whim, and they showed him numbers way lower than any other dealer that he'd been to.

Speaker 2 Richard called up his wife to let her know, hey, surprise, we're getting a new truck. On his test drive, he still seemed amazed at what was happening.
Who would have thought Halloween buying a truck?

Speaker 2 I never thought it would happen.

Speaker 2 His payment will be $4.25 a month. The salesman says later that it should have been $5.25, but it's the end of the month.

Speaker 2 Turns out, yes, it is true that you do get a better deal at the end of the month at Town and Country. At least any month that they're struggling to make their goal.

Speaker 2 When you actually look at the numbers, the cars that they sell in the last two days, the average deal actually loses money versus the deals that they make at the beginning of the month, where they made about $900 per car.

Speaker 2 Okay, for car people, I'm not going to say these words.

Speaker 2 I am factoring in everything they made on financing and warranties and extras and holdback and the 1% they get from Chrysler in every car when I make that statement.

Speaker 2 I am not factoring in any money that they would get if they hit their number and get their bonus from Chrysler. That would add about $500 per car.
which still does not give them a huge profit per car.

Speaker 2 It used to be a lot higher. But today, because people research prices on the internet, profit margins on new cars are lower than what they used to be.

Speaker 2 Not just here at this dealership, but everywhere in the car business. The owner of Town and Country told me that he used to make $500 more per car, and each salesman made more per car.

Speaker 2 Now, they all have to make it up in volume. So it's more of a grind, a harder job with tighter deals, and less reward.

Speaker 2 And if you're wondering, Car dealerships make less profit than other businesses.

Speaker 2 A study by an outfit called SageWorks found that car dealers end up with less than 3 cents on every dollar they make as profit, which is less profit than furniture stores, office supply stores, restaurants, lower than pretty much everything but grocery stores.

Speaker 2 When car dealers say that they are not making a killing, on average, it's true.

Speaker 2 At some point during this last day of the month, one of the deals that they had been counting on falls through. Mike Lester's sale of a red grand Chernkey.

Speaker 2 But turns out that's no problem for the dealership because Scott has a customer who wants that exact same truck.

Speaker 2 You remember that deal the day before where two salesmen sold the same car to two different customers? The mortician?

Speaker 2 It's that salesman and that customer, and the salesman Scott is very, very happy. And the only bad news about all this is what it does to Mike Lester's sales total for the month.

Speaker 2 That drops me down to 14.

Speaker 2 14 sucks because, like I said earlier, 15 is the magic number. 15 is where the serious bonuses and commissions kick in.
Most of the guys count on getting those. It'd add up to big money.

Speaker 2 But then, Scott, whose customer is now going to get the red Grand Cherokee, Scott realizes what this means for Mike and says to Mike, Wait, is that your 15th car? Yeah, you take the chip.

Speaker 2 Give him the chip. Switch it around.

Speaker 2 Okay. And split it with me.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Now Mike will get the credit for the sale. He's at 15 again.
Okay, good.

Speaker 2 Love you, Scott.

Speaker 2 Scott kisses Mike on the cheek. Producer Brian Reid witnesses all this.

Speaker 2 You're at 15 now? Yes.

Speaker 2 Did he owe you one, or?

Speaker 2 No, but we always help each other out, especially on the last day of the month.

Speaker 2 How do you feel?

Speaker 2 Excited.

Speaker 2 So amidst anxious salesmen and salesmen literally running to the desk or to finance, there is one salesman who is a model of calm. Even his cubicle is different from everybody else's.

Speaker 2 There's no swag, there's no pictures of family, there are no good luck charms. It's bare.
The salesman, his name is Manny Rosales, says he doesn't like the distractions.

Speaker 2 One of our producers, Brian, who you just heard, got to know him. Manny is 58.
Born in Peru, he has gray hair and glasses.

Speaker 2 One morning at the showroom, he gestured cryptically for me to come over to his desk, as if he had a secret to tell me. Turn that off, he said, pointing to my tape recorder.

Speaker 2 I explained that I was a radio reporter and I needed to record whatever he was going to tell me for it to be useful. But he wasn't having it.
He seemed unimpressed by our little radio story.

Speaker 2 He said my colleagues and I were like fishermen who had no idea what we were angling for. We had no focus.
We were just casting blindly. Manny, I soon learned, is a man of many metaphors.

Speaker 2 I put down my recorder. The thing you need to be paying attention to, he said, is the negotiation.
The salesman is the tiger. And the customer is the deer.

Speaker 2 The tiger has to eat, and you can't eat if you don't kill that deer. He moved his right hand up, and then clamped his fingers around his own neck.
You have to go for the neck, he said.

Speaker 2 But if you try to kill him too early, the deer will wake up and run away.

Speaker 2 As the day went on, I kept trying to get Manny to let me record him, but he wouldn't.

Speaker 2 Instead, he'd come up to me while I was interviewing someone else, point to his head very deliberately, presumably to his brain, give me a knowing look, and then walk away.

Speaker 2 At one point, we found ourselves facing each other at his desk. He asked me if I had read the greatest book ever written about car sales.
I don't think so, I told him. What is it?

Speaker 2 The Art of War, he said, by Sun Tzu.

Speaker 2 Sun Tzu, as you maybe know, was a military general and strategist in ancient China. The art of war is his magnum opus, where he lays out his tactics for how to succeed in conflict.

Speaker 2 And though Sun Tzu was writing about actual war, the book has become well known in business and sales circles.

Speaker 2 It's kind of like the seven habits of highly effective people, if that had been written in the 5th century BC, on individual strips of bamboo.

Speaker 2 So I went to the bookstore and bought a copy, and then headed back to town and country. Manny.

Speaker 2 How are you, sir?

Speaker 2 Can I show you the homework I've been doing? Please. I handed him my copy of The Art of War, which I'd marked up with notes about its relevance to car sales.

Speaker 2 I could see why Manny felt that it spoke to his profession. Lines like, draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion, seemed especially on point.
How far are you?

Speaker 2 Uh, I finished it. You finish it?

Speaker 2 Okay, I want to ask you a question. What did you learn?

Speaker 2 And I was in.

Speaker 2 For two days, Manny took me under his wing with my recorder running and became my sales sensei.

Speaker 2 Manny's kind of an unusual car salesman because he has no affection for cars at all.

Speaker 2 If a customer asks him how much horsepower a car has, or how quickly it can go from 0 to 60, usually he has to look up the answer or go ask a co-worker. He has no interest in that stuff.

Speaker 2 So instead, Manny developed a way to sell the customer using a different approach.

Speaker 2 To help me understand this, how to penetrate the brain of one's opponent, Manny showed me a couple of movies on YouTube.

Speaker 2 One was a reenactment of the Second Punic War, in the 3rd century BC, Hannibal's campaign against the Romans.

Speaker 2 Manning wanted me to pay attention to one battle in particular from that war, the Battle of Cannae. One of the bloodiest ever fought.

Speaker 2 At Cannae, Hannibal's troops were vastly outnumbered. He had about 40,000 men versus Rome's army, which had roughly 85,000.
The Romans will have the confidence that comes only with greater numbers.

Speaker 2 We'll present them with the unexpected and watch them fall apart. See, that is a secret.
The presented unexpected. Our forces will be arranged like this.

Speaker 2 The details of Hannibal's strategy are a bit complicated to go into here. Manny had to draw me a diagram to help me get it.

Speaker 2 But let's just say it involves an unusual troop formation that made the Romans think they were gaining ground, when really, they were at Hannibal's whim.

Speaker 2 At this point, the Romans will think they have won.

Speaker 2 Let them taste victory.

Speaker 2 We're watching this, remember, on a laptop on the showroom floor.

Speaker 2 Customers are milling about, checking out the new cars, as Hannibal's mercenaries and cavalry encircle the Romans and trap them for good.

Speaker 2 And now,

Speaker 2 the killing has started.

Speaker 2 So how does Manny use this to sell Dodge chargers? Well, just like Hannibal would, he presents the customer with the unexpected.

Speaker 2 What they expect is for the salesman to be pushy and try to coerce them into buying a car at a certain price. So Manny does the opposite.
He acts as if he doesn't even want to sell the car.

Speaker 2 He agrees with the customer, uses a similar tone, repeats words the customer says.

Speaker 2 If someone comes in and says he's just there to browse, not to buy, that's totally fine, Manny will say, and he'll back off.

Speaker 2 The idea is to make them believe that he's doing everything from his point of view.

Speaker 2 So he's thinking he's playing his game.

Speaker 2 But he's really not? Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 What game is he playing in reality? My game.

Speaker 2 Simple.

Speaker 2 Simple.

Speaker 2 Manny gave me an example of this that he'd executed a few days earlier with a customer named Julio, who was looking for a Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Speaker 2 Julio runs warehouses for a living and negotiates for his company, so Manny knew he'd be a formidable opponent.

Speaker 2 Julio told me later that he'd already visited seven other Jeep dealerships by the time he got to town and country, and was calling and texting with another three.

Speaker 2 When he sat down across from Manny, Julio made the first offer, $36,000.

Speaker 2 The Jeep was listed at $45,000, so Julio's offer was absurdly low. Julio knew it was unrealistic.
He expected Manny to say no way, that he could never give it to him for that price.

Speaker 2 But then listen to what Manny did instead. I say, all right, if I can sell it to 36, are you ready to do it right now? Show me the money, where's the credit card?

Speaker 2 Where's the credit card? Manny says this was the key move. the unexpected move.
Because I never thought I would say yes.

Speaker 2 Suddenly, they don't know what to do or what to say. They get confused.
He cannot back up because that's what he said to me. If you give me a 36,000, I buy the car.

Speaker 2 At this point, the Romans will think they have won.

Speaker 2 Let them taste victory.

Speaker 2 He pulled his credit card out? Absolutely, he gave it to me. And I said, all right, let me take the offer to my manager.
Even though I knew that we cannot do it.

Speaker 2 After days of negotiation, Manny ended up scoring this deal. Julio paid $40,000 for the Jeep, which was low.
The dealership lost money on the car.

Speaker 2 But after it was all over, Julio told me that this move, when Manny pretended to take his low offer seriously, he said without that, he would have walked out of town and country immediately, which would have meant no sale, nothing towards the monthly quota.

Speaker 2 By 4 p.m., the hustling in the showroom is paying off. Chips are going up on the board in Freddie's office.
Even one of the guys in the back rooms is pitching in. A finance guy, Terrence Kelly, TK.

Speaker 2 He's reaching for the phone. So basically,

Speaker 2 the numbers are down. They need all the deals.
So they made me call my niece in Las Vegas, believe it or not.

Speaker 2 She's been trying to buy a car anyway.

Speaker 2 Hello. Hi, Katie.
Hey, how are you? I have you on the speakerphone. Okay.

Speaker 2 TK's got 34 nieces and nephews. Katie is his goddaughter, though, so he keeps a special eye out for her.

Speaker 2 At the time that this was recorded, the rest of the family didn't know that she was pregnant, though he did.

Speaker 2 Even though he did not know until he picked up the receiver and started filling out the forms for the car sale, her fiancé's last name.

Speaker 2 Okay. Charles

Speaker 2 Parker

Speaker 2 getting married to somebody with the last name of Parker.

Speaker 2 Oh, Barker. Oh, is he related to Bob at all?

Speaker 2 Oh, what does he do, by the way? I never asked you.

Speaker 2 Oh,

Speaker 2 HA HVAC company? Nice, I like that.

Speaker 2 You're in the right area for air conditioning, I guess.

Speaker 2 The dealership is selling the car to to Katie below cost at a $900 loss. And TK is going to end up spending $1,200 of his own money to ship the car out to her in Las Vegas.
And this?

Speaker 2 This is the sale that puts him over the top. This is the 129th sale of the month.
Just a few minutes before 5 o'clock, right after this happens, I stop by Freddie, the general manager's office.

Speaker 2 Nobody is running into high five. There's not even a staff announcement on the PA saying they made it.
I gotta say, it's weirdly anticlimactic. There's no hurrah.

Speaker 2 There's no balloons falling from the ceiling. We did our job.
Everybody earned their paycheck. That's the bottom line.
And then the clock starts ticking like tomorrow morning or next month.

Speaker 2 You're all a bunch of losers tomorrow morning. You start all over again.

Speaker 2 That's how it goes.

Speaker 2 The wife.

Speaker 2 Oh, my God. Don't get married.

Speaker 2 We're fighting because I told she says to me, what time are you getting home? I said, what time do I usually get home anytime? Whenever whenever I get home? What do you want a time card?

Speaker 2 What am I punching in?

Speaker 2 I said when I get home, I get home and I hung up on her. So now she's pissed and she's texting.
Okay, so why do you have to bite my head off?

Speaker 2 Told you she should have married a plumber nine to five. Okay, weekends off.
Okay.

Speaker 2 He texts her back. This fight actually continues for the next few hours of her text message.

Speaker 2 Then, at 6:57, two hours before closing, one of the managers, Mike Perez, and Jason, start huddling to the desk, a little freaked out.

Speaker 2 Mike walks to Freddie's office to explain the the problem to Freddy.

Speaker 2 Their counter's wrong. They're not at 129.
Because there's an extra chip on the board. There was a chip up here that was supposed to be pulled off.
What do you mean? Went down one?

Speaker 2 Yeah, this was up there. It should have been off of there.
Because the customer switched cars, but someone put the new chip up, but didn't take the old chip off. So I'm still at 128?

Speaker 2 Freddy does know that at this moment, there is another deal being negotiated that could possibly get them back up to 129.

Speaker 2 Peter is the salesman for that one, but the deal is stuck over the price of the customer's trade-in, what they should pay for it. Go make that deal right now.

Speaker 2 Whatever it is, just make the fucking deal. But that deal is not too easy to settle.
And while they're waiting, more bad news.

Speaker 2 You remember that Red Grand Cherokee that Scott and Mike Lester each had sold to different people? And then Mike Lester's guy dropped out, and Scott got the deal, and there was the kiss.

Speaker 2 Now, Scott's guy also drops out. He doesn't want to buy tonight because he wants his mom to see the car tomorrow.
Freddie overhears Scott saying this to one of the managers.

Speaker 2 What, you you have a problem? What's the matter with it? What's the matter with, Scott?

Speaker 2 The guy wants to show his mom tomorrow the car. Originally...
What do you mean, this isn't a deal? I thought it was. But.

Speaker 2 Are you fucking kidding me?

Speaker 2 You have insurance on this car and everything?

Speaker 2 I don't even... He didn't even send it into the bank because we don't have his prior employee.
What are we doing? I thought these all went into the bank today.

Speaker 2 I asked you, all the cars have insurance and went into the bank. You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Scott's deal is dead. They're at 127 with just two hours left before closing.
I'm fucked.

Speaker 2 I just lost Scott's. I'm fucked.

Speaker 2 So now they scramble. To figure out, okay, there was Mike Lester's customer for that red Grand Cherokee.
Could they possibly give him better terms that would bring him back to the table?

Speaker 2 Freddy orders one of the managers, Mike Perez, to make that happen. Just do it.
It's going to be too late. You're going to wait a half hour longer.
It's getting later and later.

Speaker 2 I'd rather have a sure thing than not. Just fucking do do it.

Speaker 2 How much does that lose?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the only question is how much does the deal lose, not whether it loses. So Mike Paris calls Richie in finance.
Richie tells him he's in luck.

Speaker 2 The guy actually called back saying that he would agree to the terms, but okay, here's the catch. He just wants 24 hours to think about this.

Speaker 2 Mike Paris asks, okay, if we sweeten the terms, can we get him to decide right now?

Speaker 2 Rich doesn't think so. It's not going to change anything tonight.

Speaker 2 I don't, for me to pull down my pants, you don't need to.

Speaker 2 But Freddie's telling me to.

Speaker 2 Literally, he's telling me to, so I need to just.

Speaker 2 Bro, whatever you need to do.

Speaker 2 But I'm telling you, if I told him it was free and the same, you're going to get the same answer anyway. 24 hours.

Speaker 2 I was lost.

Speaker 2 And then, in just six minutes, they turn it around.

Speaker 2 Rich offers a better deal to that guy on the Red Grand Cherokee after all, and yes, he takes it.

Speaker 2 And Peter's deal that was stuck over the price of the trade-in gets unstuck when the managers suck it up and pay $1,500 more for the trade-in than they think it's worth.

Speaker 2 Back to $129.

Speaker 2 Everybody seems a little stunned by what just happened when it's done.

Speaker 2 Freddie and Sal look out of the showroom from the desk like old sailors on the deck of the 19th century ship that just got thrashed around by a hurricane

Speaker 2 and also a murderous white whale. What about the thing I put over the house? Do you believe this shit, Sal? I feel like I'm back in fucking infinity.
Oh my god,

Speaker 2 this is ridiculous this month. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 It's just

Speaker 2 the month wasn't bad enough. We gotta suffer a little more at the last day of the month.
Unfucking believable. All right,

Speaker 2 me.

Speaker 2 Freddy's phone, of course, doesn't stop with the text messages through all those. Oh,

Speaker 2 goddamn.

Speaker 2 The wife, who else?

Speaker 2 I don't know what she's even fighting for.

Speaker 2 They get their bonus from Chrysler, $68,000, and because of it, the dealership ends up in the black, not the red, for the month.

Speaker 2 Jason finishes the month with 29 cars, almost twice anyone else as usual. Manny has 10, Michael 15, Scott 18.

Speaker 2 The used car side, Joe Monte's side, did not meet its goal. They were hoping for 70.
They got 57, meaning Joe Monte probably will not be getting his year-end bonus this year.

Speaker 2 And Bob T, the salesman at the bottom of the board with the lease sales this month, well, the night isn't over for Bob T. Where'd you put the key? Where'd you put the car?

Speaker 2 I got the key. Where's the car?

Speaker 2 Not long after they reach 129, a couple walks in wanting to buy a Dodge dart for their 19-year-old son.

Speaker 2 Bob T rushes them through the test drive, has the husband sit at his computer and use his phone to quickly call the insurance company, and then runs, literally runs, to get their new car prepped and inspected in the garage.

Speaker 2 Rob, is this call going tonight? She says to bring it right over to service. Yeah, but is it going or is it a paid delivery? I don't know if it's going.

Speaker 2 Who the fuck wants to take a car home at 10 o'clock at night? You still have the receipt for them?

Speaker 2 Bring them back.

Speaker 2 These guys can say what they want. This old timer, nobody works as fast as me here.

Speaker 2 You notice that?

Speaker 2 Huh? Yes or no?

Speaker 2 And with that, Bob T lands Town and Country's last sale of the month, number 130.

Speaker 2 One car past the goal of 129.

Speaker 2 Or anyway, that's what they thought that night. The next morning, when everybody comes in, they look at Chrysler's official count on the computer and according to Chrysler, no, their count was wrong.

Speaker 2 One of their sales should not have been counted in October, which means that they did not have 130 cars like they thought. They had only 129, exactly 129, which means, yes, it was Bob T.

Speaker 2 And this very last sale of the month that took them across the finish line, Bob T

Speaker 2 saved the day.

Speaker 2 Special thanks to Mark Brodleb and the entire staff at Town ⁇ Country Jeep Chrysler Dodge Ram in Levittown.

Speaker 2 In the 12 years since we first broadcast this show, almost all the staff have moved on to other dealerships, which is just the way in the car business.

Speaker 2 Jason is now the general manager at one of Town and Country's competitors, a Jeep dealership just five miles away.

Speaker 2 When I reached out to Mark yesterday, he said last month's quota was 126 cars, and just like in our show, they made it at the very last minute.

Speaker 2 Today's program was produced by Robin Simeon and myself with Alex Bloomberg, Ben Calhoun, Sarah Koenig, Miki Meek, Jonathan Manhebar, Brian Reed, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Updike.

Speaker 2 Our senior producer for this episode was Julie Snyder. Production help from B.A.
Parker and Diane Wu. Matt Tierney was our technical director for this show.

Speaker 2 Production help for this rerun from Nor Gill, Suzanne Gabber, Michael Comete, and Stone Nelson. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.

Speaker 2 Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founder, Mr. Tori Malatillo.

Speaker 2 On a vacation this month in Rome, he stood in line for three hours, three hours at the Coliseum, then gave up, went back to his hotel. At this point, the Romans will think they have won.

Speaker 2 Let them taste victory.

Speaker 2 Don't worry, they'll be back. Amira Glass, we will also be back next week with more stories of this American Live.

Speaker 8 This message comes from NPR sponsor, Capella University. With Capella's FlexPath Learning Format, you can set your own deadlines and learn on your schedule.

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