What car dealership sales games reveal about business, pricing, and long-term trust
I’ve spent more time than I care to admit listening to recorded phone calls between car buyers and dealerships.
If you’ve never heard one, it’s almost performance art.
You call in and get the “internet sales specialist.” They sound confident. Polished. Helpful.
They cannot give you a price.
But they can get your name. Your phone number. Your email. Your zip code. Possibly your blood type.
You push a little harder.
Now you’re transferred to a “sales consultant.”
The sales consultant sounds more authoritative. They also cannot give you a straight number. But they can absolutely tell you they can beat any other dealer.
You push again.
Now it’s the sales manager.
Or someone claiming to be the sales manager.
Now we’ve reached the final boss level of negotiation theater.
And still, no clean number.
Just friction.
Just delay.
Just layers of artificial authority.
I’ve watched a lot of content from Tomi Mikula at Delivrd, where he records these calls and calmly dissects the shenanigans. The fascinating part isn’t that dealerships play games.
It’s how structured the games are.
This isn’t disorganization.
This is design.
The hand-offs.
The pauses.
The “let me check with my manager.”
The refusal to give pricing over the phone.
The “do you have other quotes so we can beat them?”
It’s a system built around leverage.
And once you hear it enough, you realize something uncomfortable.
This mindset exists far beyond car dealerships.
The Great Authority Illusion
One of the things that fascinates me is the ladder of authority.
First contact: internet sales.
Second contact: sales rep.
Third contact: sales manager.
Each layer gives the impression of increasing power. Yet somehow, no one can simply provide a transparent number.
It’s a time tax.
They don’t mind running you around the showroom for three hours.
They don’t mind holding your keys “for appraisal” while you wait.
They don’t mind friction.
Because in that system, your time is not the scarce resource.
The deal is.
Now imagine running your business that way.
Imagine telling your clients:
“We can’t give you pricing until you sit here for three hours.”
“We’ll need to transfer you to three different departments.”
“We don’t want to be undercut, but we’d love to undercut our competitors.”
You wouldn’t last long.
I wouldn’t last long.
And yet this model persists because it can extract maximum margin from a single transaction.
Which brings me to something I tell my team constantly:
You don’t have to retire off every deal.
I’ve Bought Over 100 Vehicles
Over the years of running companies, managing fleets, and operating across multiple states, I’ve purchased more than 100 vehicles.
I understand margin.
I understand overhead.
I understand that dealerships need to make money.
What I don’t understand is pretending your customer’s time has no value.
Not long ago, I bought a new SUV.
I knew exactly what I wanted. Trim. Color. Options. I had done my research. I wasn’t shopping emotionally. I wasn’t confused. I wasn’t trying to squeeze someone for the last dollar.
I simply wanted the vehicle.
They had it on the lot.
And from the moment I walked in, it was friction.
The internet rep handed me off to a sales rep. The sales rep needed a manager. The manager needed to “work numbers.” My time apparently had no value.
I wasn’t asking for magic. I was asking for clarity.
Instead, I got the usual dance.
The pause while someone “ran numbers.”
The mysterious adjustments.
The hesitation to commit to simple terms.
The suggestion that if I just stayed a little longer, they could “make something happen.”
I’ll be honest. I wanted the vehicle. It was sitting right there.
But at some point, the principle outweighed the product.
I stood up and walked out.
Thirty minutes down the road, I walked into another dealership.
Different tone. Different energy.
I said something simple.
“I’m not here for games. Here’s my down payment check. Here’s what I can do. Can you help me?”
They didn’t have the vehicle on their lot.
Instead of stalling, they said, “Let us get it for you.”
We made the deal in under an hour.
It was clean. Direct. Professional.
They even saved me money.
The next day, the SUV arrived.
It rolled off the truck with a license plate frame still attached from the dealership they had traded with.
It was the first dealership.
The one that wouldn’t work with me.
The one that insisted on friction.
The one that tried to maximize the moment.
They had the car the entire time.
They just didn’t have the mindset.
That license plate frame said more about business than any negotiation ever could.
One dealership tried to retire off the deal.
The other wanted to earn it.
Guess which one I’ll go back to.
The Fear of Being Undercut
Here’s another pattern.
Many dealers refuse to provide pricing over the phone because they don’t want to be undercut by another dealership.
Fair enough.
But then they open the call with:
“Do you have quotes from other dealers? We can beat them.”
Think about that for a second.
They don’t want to be undercut.
But they’re perfectly comfortable undercutting someone else.
That contradiction tells you everything about the integrity framework of an organization.
If your competitive advantage depends on opacity, you have a structural weakness.
Transparency is uncomfortable for businesses that rely on games.
But transparency scales.
Games do not.
I’ve Probably Left Money on the Table
Let me be candid.
I know for a fact I charge less than some competitors.
I’ve seen contracts where consultants demand $100,000 retainers for work I charge $50,000 for.
I’ve seen proposals where someone is billing $10,000 more than we do for nearly identical scope.
My web designer charges me fairly. I charge my clients fairly. We both make money. And we both stay in business.
Do I think I could push pricing higher?
Probably.
Have I left money on the table over the years?
Without question.
But here’s what I’ve never had to do:
Hide fees.
Create artificial friction.
Insert fake authority layers.
Exhaust a client into agreement.
Because I understand something that took years to learn.
Enterprise value is built on repeat business, not one oversized invoice.
The Short-Term Margin Addiction
There is a difference between healthy margin and extraction.
Healthy margin sustains payroll, innovation, and growth.
Extraction maximizes this quarter and complicates the next five.
When a company becomes addicted to maximizing every deal, several things happen.
Sales pushes harder than delivery can support.
Finance protects short-term numbers at the expense of retention.
Operations absorbs chaos created upstream.
And slowly, trust erodes.
Inside the company and outside of it.
I’ve stepped into businesses after acquisitions where revenue looked impressive and margins looked strong.
But churn was high.
Referrals were low.
Employee morale was fragile.
Because the system rewarded squeezing instead of serving.
The Internal Dealership
This is where the article stops being about cars.
Many organizations build internal dealership dynamics.
An employee needs three approvals for a simple decision.
Departments withhold information to maintain leverage.
Pricing models are intentionally complex to create flexibility in negotiation.
Sales promises something operations must scramble to fulfill.
It’s the same authority ladder.
It’s the same theater.
And it creates the same fatigue.
Except now it’s your team feeling it.
The Long Game Always Wins
You can inflate a contract once.
Or you can build a reputation that makes future contracts easier.
You can exhaust a customer into signing.
Or you can earn a relationship where they sign without friction.
You can hide pricing to protect margin.
Or you can build a model so strong that transparency becomes your advantage.
I’ve bought enough vehicles to know that if I ran my companies the way many dealerships run theirs, I would not still be here.
Not in consulting.
Not in operations.
Not in business at all.
Because long-term businesses are built on trust velocity.
Trust lowers acquisition cost.
Trust shortens sales cycles.
Trust increases lifetime value.
Trust reduces churn.
You can’t measure it neatly on a single invoice.
But it shows up in enterprise value.
Audit your games.
Not your revenue.
Not your marketing funnel.
Your games.
Where do you insert friction that adds no value?
Where do you protect ego instead of clarity?
Where do you reward extraction instead of retention?
If your pricing strategy depends on confusion, you have a weak model.
If your margins depend on exhausting customers, you have a fragile model.
If your growth depends on winning every negotiation, you don’t have a brand.
You have a hustle.
And hustles burn out.
The companies that last do something deceptively simple.
They price fairly.
They communicate clearly.
They remove theater.
They don’t try to retire off every deal.
They build something people come back to.
That’s the real margin.
That’s the real leverage.
That’s the long game.
Ryan Gartrell has spent more than two decades building and fixing companies across construction, logistics, security, and consulting. He believes most businesses don’t have a revenue problem. They have a structural trust problem. He writes about leadership, pricing integrity, and building companies that last.
