Introduction

Phil and Regina walk into a car dealership and instantly feel the sharks swimming around them.

Merle, a middle-aged salesman with bad teeth and a greasy combover, meanders up, cigarette in hand.

“Help you?” Merle asks, sizing up his next victims in a way that seems anything but helpful.

“Well, I hope so,” Phil responds. “We’re looking for a safe, reliable car for my wife. Something fuel efficient. We’re leaning toward a used four-door sedan.”

Merle nods as he blows smoke out the corner of his mouth. “How much you wanna spend?”

“We want our payments to be as low as possible,” says Regina. “Paying three hundred dollars a month or less would be ideal.”

“Well, I’ve got just what you’re looking for! Gotta keep the little lady happy, right?” he says as he elbows Phil and winks at Regina.

Merle abruptly turns and walks toward the exit. Phil looks at Regina and shrugs. “I guess we’re following him,” he whispers as they both turn and walk out the door.

Outside, Merle strolls past a few rows of used four-door sedans and stops in front of a brand-new $50,000 SUV. He looks back at Phil and Regina with a wide grin and points his cigarette hand toward the vehicle. “Nice car, huh?”

“Uh, it’s a nice car,” Phil replies, “but that’s not what we’re looking for.”

“Oh, come on. Let’s take this beauty for a spin. You’ll love it!”

“No, really. I’m sure this is out of our budget. What would the monthly payments be?”

“Oh, we could make it work. Definitely get you down to four hundred or five hundred dollars a month.”

“What?!” Phil asks, trying to control his frustration. “That’s not what we said. Maybe we could go back and look at some of the sedans we passed. Those might be closer to our price range.”

While Phil was talking, Merle opened the driver’s door, and he’s now waving Regina toward the front seat. “This car has all the bells and whistles! And it will keep the little lady safe. Come on, honey, let’s take it for a drive.”

Phil’s jaw tightens. “As I told you, this is not what we’re looking for.”

But Merle is already walking toward the building. “Just sit tight. I’ll be right back with the keys.”

Regina looks at Phil and says, “Let’s go. I’m not giving this guy our business.”

“I’m with you. Let’s try the other place on Main Street.”

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

Although this is a fictional account, it’s not too far from what some people have experienced or envision happening at a dealership. For many people, car buying is an agonizing, stressful ordeal. They worry about being ripped off. They don’t feel prepared to negotiate. They don’t know anyone in the car industry who can offer advice or tips, so they feel alone. In truth, many people would prefer jury duty or getting a root canal over going to a dealership to buy a car.

The good news is that car buying doesn’t have to be this way! You can buy a car without being stressed out and without paying more than you want to. It’s possible to find a dealership where the salespeople actually listen to you and help you find the best car for you.

How do I know this? Because I’ve been helping people buy cars with minimal stress for more than twenty years at my family’s dealerships. I’m going to share what I’ve learned so you can choose a dealership that meets your needs and understand how to buy the car you want on your terms.

Cars Are in My Blood

In the early 1900s, my mom’s grandfather, Charles Fisher, and his older brother started the Fisher Body Company in Detroit, Michigan. Eventually all seven Fisher brothers worked for the company, which was the first to build the closed-body vehicle—even before Ford. From the 1920s through the 1970s, Fisher Body supplied closed bodies to General Motors for all of its vehicles, making over 40 million bodies during that time.

My dad’s dad worked for General Motors at the Omaha plant in the late 1940s and was promoted to the Chevrolet division in Detroit soon after my father was born. My grandfather died when my dad was fourteen, and my dad started working at General Motors shortly after. My grandfather’s friends got Dad an after-school and summer job in the mailroom.

After high school, Dad traveled to Cullman, Alabama, where he was supposed to attend seminary. However, he was in love with a girl back in Detroit—my mom—and he never finished. Instead, Dad attended Michigan State University and after graduation, he attended General Motors Institute (GMI) in Flint, Michigan After district manager stints for Chevrolet in Phoenix, Arizona, and Planview, Texas, my dad transferred to Toledo, Ohio, where I was born.

Dad worked for a local Chevrolet dealer and moved up quickly. The owners had my dad go check out another dealership that was up for sale. After Dad gathered all the information, he took it to the owners, and they decided they weren’t interested in buying the dealership. But my dad was. He borrowed money, got a line of credit, and took out a loan. On August 1, 1979, at age thirty-two, my dad bought his first dealership: Taylor Buick in downtown Toledo.

I started “working” at my dad’s dealership when I was around six years old. A couple Saturdays a month, I went into work with my dad and did little jobs around the dealership: I pulled weeds, polished brass, picked up cigarette butts, and swept the floors. When I got into junior high and high school, I washed cars, and during the summer I helped move cars and reseal the blacktop lot. One summer I even painted the whole dealership.

After college, I landed my first full-time job as a salesperson at our Buick/Isuzu dealership. I learned the ropes from the older salesmen, who didn’t let me get away with sloppy work just because of my PhD (Papa Has a Dealership). One time after I didn’t follow the right process, Bill Cassidy, an older salesman who had worked with my dad for years, told me, “I don’t care whose kid you are. If you ever do that again, you won’t be working here.” I didn’t do it again.

I sold cars for quite a while. In August 1998, I helped launch our newly acquired Kia franchise as one of the senior salesmen. We sold Kias on the used car lot connected to our Cadillac store in downtown Toledo.

Fast-forward to January 1, 2000. We opened a brand-new Cadillac dealership on the Central Avenue Strip, also known as Automobile Row. With the opening of that store, we no longer needed our satellite Cadillac store in the suburbs. We turned that store into Taylor Imports, where we sold Kia, Isuzu, and Daewoo. I started running Taylor Imports in early 2000. There were just four of us working at this store, and we struggled to sell cars, to put it mildly. We didn’t even have our own finance person, porter, or receptionist on-site; they were all downtown at one of our other locations.

In 2001, we had an opportunity to lease an old Chinese restaurant building that had been converted into a used car lot. The building was closer to the rest of the dealerships on the Central Avenue Strip, but we were not on the strip. We had a gravel lot and an old building that definitely looked more like a Chinese restaurant than a dealership. Taylor Imports was sort of the laughingstock of the local car-selling world.

I talked to someone from an ad agency who shared a simple pitch he’d used with other Kia dealers. It asked three questions: “Do you have a job? Do you have a hundred and ninety-nine dollars? Do you want a new car?” They hired voice impersonators to do radio ads using voices such as Bill Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin Powers, Mike Tyson, and anyone else who was making the news headlines.

“We’re killing it with Kia dealers across the country,” the guy told me. “All I need from you is a commitment for a three-week radio buy at ten thousand dollars a week, and we’ll make you one of the largest Kia dealers in the country.”

I told him it sounded great. I saw this as an opportunity to do something different, to really pave my own way with the Taylor Imports dealership.

My dad didn’t agree. “You’re crazy,” he told me. “That’s thirty thousand dollars in advertising. You stick to your budget of two hundred dollars a car.” We were selling about thirty cars a month, so our budget amounted to $4,500 for the same three-week period.

For seven months I kept going back to my dad with this idea, telling him we had to try something different. Finally, he agreed.

In our first spot, we used a Bill Clinton voice impersonator to introduce the all-new Kia Rio. It even included something...