Vroom. Vroom.

I just recently bought a new car. An experience I wasn’t totally looking forward to. Jokes aside, regarding the reluctance to let the moths free from my wallet, it was more about having a good time shopping and staying in control. Like everyone, I enjoying spending money on items that bring me joy and no, I’m not married to my high definition LCD with the Foxtel sports package. It just seems that way.

Car buying is a different endeavour altogether and requires more thought than those impulse buys we talk about over dinner, or is that just my wife talking about shoes? For starters the landscape is littered with options once you have decided on a budget and then there is the final change over number to be satisfied with. As stated previously, I’m always looking to be surprised by remarkable and that extra effort required making me feel comfortable, important and relaxed when making big dollar decisions.

So off we go in Boris the Bora (a good name, you’ll agree for a VW) to check out the 3 marques we had decided on.

I was determined to buy a car before the weekend was over, so I was interested in the radar of the sales people we would encounter. It would be a new car so I was at least avoiding the all consuming, totally harassing and never letting me out of his sight, used car salesman. Phew!

The first dealership let me drive off in a number of cars and I was happily discounting models without so much as a tweet from the sales staff about quality, lifestyle and how good I’d look in one of their cars. Their radar wasn’t even turned on.

The next stop was the best stop of the weekend. It’s always fun to encounter youth, nervous energy and a wanting to please attitude wrapped around a great product. Young Ben (yes his real name) had it figured out and knew he was working at the right place, selling the right product to the right people. Yet with all that behind him, he took nothing for granted and went out of his way to make us feel in control and comfortable with our decision. Interesting how much better we react in stressful situations (spending large is stressful) when respect and control are given and not taken.

In today’s competitive environment, it’s difficult to pick and chose who will buy your product. Everyone is looking all the time, sometimes they just need to be reminded of that and a good relationship, sometimes longterm, allows you to ask the difficult questions. That’s hard work and requires more commitment than most want to sign up for. Ben had signed up early.

Suffice to say the last stop suffered under the expectations already exceeded at the previous stop. So much so, that even though the deal was likely to be better for my moth eaten wallet, I was already sold on Ben.

Of course I took another drive the following day, just to satisfy my tough (stop laughing) executive, never let anyone under your guard, nothing surprises me exterior. It was too late, the decision had been made.

We all know the rarity of a remarkable service experience as the world we live in becomes a commoditised, middle of the road, vanilla. How much fun was it, to find a rocky road, sprinkled with your favourite topping, suits me down to the ground service experience?

Now I can get home even faster to that high definition LCD with the Foxtel sports package.

Thanks Ben.