Just recently we decided to trade in our 13 year old V8 Commodore on a 2010 Beetle.  Tatum’s always wanted one and we thought it would make THE perfect first car for our older girls in a few years time…they seem to think so too.  The whole experience gave us a great lesson in the importance of creating personal connection when you are selling something to someone.

We have a small, local car yard about 1500m  from our house and they regularly have VW beetles in there (they aren’t online otherwise we would have linked you up to them) .  After much eyeballing we decided that it was time to make the switch from the thirsty V8 to an economical little turbo diesel…albeit one that draws a bit of attention.

We wandered into the car yard and were greeted by a gentleman with 57 years of car sales behind him.  We doubt he was a day under 75 and he would have had to try REALLY hard to talk us out of buying the car but, instead, spent plenty of time talking us into all the the reasons the car we liked would be a GREAT purchase.

Anyway…we went into the office (AKA transportable hut/donga) with him while he set about making us a trade in deal.  This is where the whole experience became very quaint and Tatum kinda wanted to take photos because it was like a throwback to the 90s.  We were half disappointed he didn’t offer us a cup of tea.

Our salesman pulled out his flip up address book, it looked kinda like this and you can get this one on etsy if you want one…

Then he flipped through a card holder, he was trying to find a phone number for a bloke to talk about the price for our trade in.  He explained that the phone call was going to cost him a couple of crayfish and a bottle of red wine.  We were wondering if there was an invite for dinner heading our way…

Next he picks up the phone that was attached to the fax machine and made his phone call to verify the amount he was offering us as a trade-in, we suspect he was actually selling the trade in to the fella on the other end of the phone.  Our minds were just boggling at the way he went about doing business.  Tatum kind of wanted to take a picture of it all but that wouldn’t have been the right way to go.

I mean, with mobile phone in hand the whole exercise would have required at least ten minutes less of small talk and faffing about.  It definitely highlighted how much our phones make business easier for us…which is something they do in SO many ways.

Now… there is a point coming here.  The thing is, this was a local business we were dealing with.  We had walked in needing to be convinced NOT to buy that car.  However, had we walked in needing to be convinced it would have been VERY hard to walk away not wanting to buy it because it was all such a great, authentic experience.

Our salesman told us stories and spent time asking questions and being genuinely interested.  As locals we wanted to invest in his business as much, if not more, than he wanted to sell to us.  We made a personal connection and it really highlighted how important personal connection is in selecting how and where we do business with all people.  The thing is, for all of us, our business’ online presence allows us to make those personal connections with people long before they ever step through the door.

Have you made a great connection with a local business online before you actually used their services?  We would love to hear about it.

PS: When Steven went back to fill in the paperwork later in the day our salesman asked him what he did.
He explained we help local businesses with their online marketing and our salesman asked ‘Is Facebook evil?’ to which Steven responded ‘No, it’s really not that bad’.