In this segment, the speaker recounts taking over a BMW dealership that was underperforming against a nearby competitor. While the competitor blamed lower prices for higher sales, the speaker’s team redesigned the buying experience by automating test drives and removing price from the decision process, focusing instead on customer psychology and perception. By making the purchase feel effortless and ensuring customers felt seen and valued, the dealership’s gross profit per vehicle rose by $500‑$600 above market averages, and unit sales jumped from a deficit of 20 cars per month to a surplus of 150 cars per month. The speaker emphasizes that perceived disadvantages (e.g., being a Midwest dealer) can be reframed as advantages when the experience and mindset are aligned, turning price into a non‑object when customers perceive high value and importance.
Chapters
Well, I've seen that in the sales department too though, Hoagie, in the sense like when I took over a BMW store, the BMW dealership 9, you know, 9.5 miles away down the freeway was selling more cars than us. And everybody in the dealership was convinced that it was because the prices were lower, right? Meanwhile, we couldn't get cars. Like you didn't, we could sell more cars than we could get. But the mindset was, oh, we got to be competitive on price. And what we did is we designed a system where the test drive was happening automatically. We were taking price off the table. Like, you know, it was all psychology, just like we do in service, but we were taking away decision-making. People perceived that it was the easiest buying experience they've ever had. And our grosses were continually $500 or $600 on the front. Higher than the market. And we were selling, you know, we went from losing to that dealership by 20 cars a month to beating them by 150 cars a month. And it had absolutely nothing to do with volume. It had to do with the experience. It was all psychology. It was perception. That makes sense. And it was, you know, the things that we thought were our disadvantage were actually our advantage, which we see a lot too, right? Like somebody will say like, oh, well, we're, we're just a dealership in the Midwest. And it's like, oh, so you sell a lot of trucks? Yeah. Okay. Well, I'd rather have a dealership that sells a lot of trucks than a dealership that sells a bunch of Toyotas, like cars. Right. So the, you know, the advantage is there's always an advantage there, but nobody sees it because, you know, they can't read the label of the jar they're in, basically. But I think on the front end, it's exactly the same. Gross is a state of mind. And if you focus on the customer experience, people, when, you know, they challenge the price because they don't feel value, they don't feel seen, they don't feel important. When they feel seen and they feel important, price is less the object.
