Why Car Dealers Keep Calling You and How to Make It Stop
Dealer websites often send a barrage of calls your way if you give them your contact info. Here’s the simple, respectful way to shut it down without burning bridges.
Maybe you just moved to a new city and don’t know many people. Maybe you and your boyfriend just broke up and you’re not quite ready for the dating scene. Maybe your spouse passed away and you’re looking for companionship.
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Don’t despair! I have the solution. Go to a local car dealership’s website and give them your name, email, and phone number. Within five minutes—if it takes that long—you'll have 500 new friends just dying to meet you. All of them will be car salespeople, who make excellent friends ... that is, if you buy a car from them.
What’s the No. 1 thing that aggravates people when they start shopping for cars online? The sudden deluge of phone calls, texts, and emails they get after they go to a dealer’s website and give up their contact information. “I had no idea everybody in the tri-state area was going to start calling me,” one frustrated woman told me. “All I did was click on a car.”
In fairness, you have to do a little more than just “click on a car” to get so many phone calls. You have to give them your information somehow—even if you didn’t mean to get any calls. But this is the perception of most customers. Either they forgot they gave the dealership their info, or they didn’t realize it would result in a salesperson trying to contact them. So just to be clear, if you give a car dealership your information, they will contact you. Quickly. It’s amazing to me that so many people don’t realize this.
How Your Info Gets Collected
The most common way your information gets collected is simple—you give it to them. Many dealerships require you to provide a valid driver’s license and telephone number before allowing you to test drive a car. If you’ve bought a car from a dealership in the past or tried to buy one there, they have your contact information. If you’ve ever serviced your car there, they have your information. And if you go to their website and start clicking around, you may end up in a conversation with an attractive young guy or gal wearing a headset, who is there to answer all your questions.
I’m sorry to break it to you folks seeking new friends, but he or she is almost certainly an AI bot these days. And he or she will more than likely pass your data along to the dealer’s sales department, which will almost certainly result in that sudden torrent of texts, emails, and sales calls you didn’t expect.
Let’s say you’re curious about the value of your trade-in. Many dealer websites offer trade-in evaluators, often sponsored by third-party companies such as Edmunds or KBB. Some of these ask for your basic information. Filling it out may create what’s called a lead. Some dealer websites also have pop-ups that appear to require your information before you can look at their inventory. I emphasize “appear to” because if you look for the “X” or the tiny print at the bottom of the page, you can usually find a way to close out of it without giving them anything.
Finally, never fill out a credit application on a dealer website unless you’re ready to buy. First of all, it will ding your credit. Second, you’ll suddenly find yourself at the top of a car salesperson’s Best Friend list.
Avoiding the Deluge
The average customer thinks, “If I just ignore them, they’ll go away.” But anyone who believes that doesn’t understand the psychology of salespeople. If you won’t pick up the phone and talk to me or return my messages, I’m not deterred. I take it as a challenge. I ask myself, “Why on earth did this person give us their phone number if they didn’t want any phone calls?” So I’m going to call you more, not less. Again and again, until I get ahold of you.
There’s an old saying in the car business, “Call ’em until they buy or die.” This means exactly what it appears to mean. My job is to call you until you buy a car or drop dead. I’ve even heard sales managers say it’s a compliment if a customer calls to complain about a particular salesperson calling them all the time. That means that person is doing their job.
Here’s how you end it. Pick up the phone and talk to me, like I’m a human being. Or return my call if I leave a voicemail. Or reply to my text or email—my first text or email, not my 157th. If you take a few minutes to explain that you were just browsing and had no idea you were going to get all these phone calls, I’ll stop. And so will most salespeople, because you’ve shown some respect. Or we might ask, “Is it OK with you if I check back with you in [two weeks or a month] to see if things have changed?” (You might have heard ignoring spam calls will cause them to stop, so you’re reluctant to respond to an unsolicited sales call. But at least some research suggests this conventional wisdom is inaccurate. If you’re concerned that answering unknown numbers might lead to a deluge of scam attempts, you can probably rest assured that isn’t the case.)
Why are salespeople so stubborn, or so stupid, to keep contacting someone who obviously doesn’t want to be contacted? It’s a good question. There are three reasons. One, the fact that you went to a dealer’s website and clicked on a car shows you're interested in buying a car, even if you don’t consciously realize it, or you’re at least starting to think about it. I don’t believe anybody goes to a dealer’s website for recreational purposes. Two, sales is a numbers game. The more people I contact, the greater my chances of selling a car, even if they don’t respond to me right away. Three, salespeople know that customers are paying attention, even when they’re not communicating.
I learned this lesson years ago when a couple showed up at my dealership to buy a car and acted as if they knew me. I couldn’t place their faces, and their last name didn’t ring a bell, so they explained that I had been calling them periodically for the last year and leaving polite messages. They were impressed by my persistence, so when it came time to buy, who did they come to? Me.
To recap, be very careful who you give your personal information to. And if you get a salesperson who is too persistent, who just won’t go away even after you’ve asked them to stop, call the dealership and ask to speak to the general manager. You’ll lose a friend, but the calls will stop!