Over on Blogher, harleychick wants to know about women and car dealerships. Boy, do I have some stories to tell after the past week. But rather than blather, I’m going to give my top 10 advice items to car dealers:

1. Don’t BS me
2. Don’t pressure me
3. Don’t assume I haven’t done my homework
4. Don’t patronize me
5. Let me BROWSE
6. Listen to what I’m asking and what I’m telling you I want. Don’t waste my time trying to talk me out of it. It’s my money and my decision, whether you agree with me or not.
7. When I walk onto the lot with my husband, don’t treat me like I’m not there. Assume I’m part of the whole package. Talk to us both. Look me in the eye.
8. If there’s a neat feature that you think we should see, show it to us. We might like it and we might not.
9. Start from the assumption that if you do right by us, we’ll be repeat customers and tell our friends. That way you’ll be careful to really work on showing us what will fit our needs and budget.
10. BE HONEST. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t try to dodge it. Say you don’t know but you’ll find out.

Last Friday we had the best and worst of salesmen all in one night. The Toyota salesman was awful; the Honda salesman was so good that we will probably go back and buy one, and possibly two cars from him.

The difference? The Toyota salesman did just about everything negative on that list. The Honda salesman was exactly the opposite. No BS, no pressure, but he did show us some features we didn’t know about, and basically steered us toward other cars that might have fit our needs better but were a bit less money than the ones we thought we wanted to look at. He asked me questions directly, and when we told him that we wanted time to consider, he just gave us his card, took our names but not our phone number and left us alone.

He will get a sale, a mention, and a link when we decide what we’re doing.

PS to HarleyChick — I don’t really care if what gender the salesperson is as long as they’re following these guidelines….

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