I know, it is and remains a controversial subject. Should a car salesperson be delivering cars or not? I don’t think so, but there are of course nuances. In our own shop, Daan Buiting and Thymen Poortinga can’t avoid having to deliver cars. You learn by doing, but I’m not really in favor of it. If I had more shops….. I would do it differently. But in an ideal world? No. Salespeople need to hunt. The car salesperson is ultimately responsible for conversion. Other, more service-oriented staff can handle that delivery much better.

I don’t do deliveries myself. I absolutely don’t enjoy doing it — it costs me focus and it costs me energy that I’d rather spend elsewhere. And that’s despite the fact that we do rather nice deliveries! We ask for the buyer’s favorite song, in this video Adele, for example. We switch on the disco lights, put a cloth over the car, have smoke billowing out from under the car… It’s a real party… for the customer.

But as a salesperson, it doesn’t just cost you that one hour; that’s still manageable, provided you don’t schedule it on a Friday afternoon or on a Saturday (which I don’t want at our place), but it costs you the mindset, along with everything you do in the run-up to it.

I speak to a lot of salespeople who are busy arranging things, both physically and mentally, to properly prepare the delivery for their customer. They confirm that this comes at the expense of a great many potential customers, who never become customers because no one attends to them. Or with only half your energy, because your thoughts are elsewhere anyway. And so you don’t make a proposal and you don’t ask for the appointment because you’re in a hurry, since that delivery has to be done.

A delivery is a party

Now I know that a lot of people are going to say that a delivery like that is a party, and all that kind of thing, but as a salesperson you simply have to close more than 30 sales (separate processes), and that works out fine if you have a clear head for that new lead, that inbound caller via Marktplaats or that customer who walks in unannounced. Precisely the people you don’t feel like dealing with when you still have four things to arrange before the delivery can take place.

Taking delivery away

As a large dealer, I would remove delivery from the salesperson entirely. I see it as a different story, a separate discipline with a different approach. Of course the salesperson can drop by for a moment when the car is handed over. He can have a cup of coffee with the customer and wish them a safe journey. With a setup like that, he can sell twice as much. And does the salesperson need to be present to justify the customer’s investment? No, that’s not an argument for me. Kitchens are expensive too, and they’re not delivered by the salesperson, but by the fitter….