How to ensure your customers DON'T buy your product :)

Back in 2018, I set out to buy a car. I was clear about what I wanted - an SUV, Automatic Transmission, fuel-efficiency and good perf. I did some research on various brands and narrowed down to Hyundai and Jeep.

Jeep Showroom - They make me wait for about 30 minutes. A salesperson comes in a nonchalant fashion and doesn't ask me what I was looking for. Instead, he starts fast talking about how "Jeep" is the brand, it's all about prestige and all that pre-written script. He didn't ask me what I was interested in at all. Jeep's strategy seemed to be to make the customer feel depressed about their life and then tell them how a Jeep will change their life. They also tell me it's a limited edition and I have to wait 3 months to get that car.

Hyundai Showroom - As soon as I walk in I am assigned a salesperson. First, she greets me with a warm smile and then offers me some coffee. I say I am looking to buy the Creta. Here is the amazing part - she does not jump into features of Creta right away. She starts asking me about my family. She asks me about my job. She wants to empathize and understand where I am coming from. She talks about exactly the things I am interested in and how Hyundai is all about quality, she talks about how the perf of the vehicle is, she does a dive deep on the engine. She also says that I should take the lower-priced stick shift over an AT (I stuck with AT though, but I appreciated her thought behind it). Now when I asked how long will the delivery take, she said 2 weeks and I got the car within a week.

Final result - I am in love with my car.

The philosophy of a company is shown by how the sales reps talk to you. Jeep showed an arrogant philosophy, tried to sell on elitism, they didn't show that they really care. Hyundai, on the other hand, showed humility, respect and empathy and that is what really matters. Once you connect with the philosophy of a company, the product will align, the product is the outcome of the company values.

If you want to ensure that your customers don't buy what you have, just follow what the folks' at Jeep showroom did - don't understand your customer, have a one size fits all sales pitch, don't be agile and efficient about your process and you'll in time have no one buying your product. The converse holds true too.

PS: I don't mean to generalize how Jeep is, this is one experience I had with a showroom in Mysuru, it perhaps is different in other places and I might be the exception to the rule.