Before I ever trained a single salesperson, I sat on the other side of the desk as the customer nobody wanted to help.
I had bad credit. A sick child. A mailbox full of collection notices and a refrigerator that had finally given out. I needed a way to make a big purchase work, and I walked into a dealership hoping someone would treat me like a human being trying to solve a problem.
Instead, I became the joke. Through the glass wall of the sales office, I could hear what they called me. The roach. The credit criminal. People I had never met, laughing at a life they knew nothing about.
I sat in his car afterward and cried.
I tell this story not because it’s comfortable, but because it’s the moment that changed how I sees every single customer who has ever walked through a dealership door. Our industry has language – quiet, ugly, often said behind glass – for people before we even know their names. We label them by their credit score, their car, their clothes, before we’ve asked them a single real question about their life.
It has to stop. Not because it’s bad for business, though it certainly is. It has to stop because it’s wrong, and because every person walking onto a lot is carrying something you can’t see: a sick kid, a broken refrigerator, a year that’s been harder than they’re letting on.
My challenge is simple: treat every person like royalty. Not the ones who look like they can afford it. Every person. The customer for life isn’t built by who you decide is worth your time. It’s built by deciding nobody isn’t.
I teach this principle and the practical skills to live it out every day inside the Auto Sales Blueprint training program. [Learn more here]