orlandos2k

My brother is in IT, and he buys about 5 million dollars of computers a year. He seems all kinds of sales people, some of them are car nuts and drive M, and AMG and some of them just dont care about cars and drive accords and camrys but have $200k boats. To me its like some one stated above, its not what car they drive but how they take care of it.

s2kpdx01

Some people don't care about cars and view them as toasters or things they 'have' to own so judging their ability to sell by the car they drive is RE-TARD-ED. Exactly, what I would expect from NuncoStr8...dude is a clown.

what the ****? yeah, that's the criteria for how you do layoffs.....

Penforhire

My company's 401K financial manager shows up in a newer 911. I think we're paying him too much.

Zoomie

i just couldnt live like that, flashing money or a nice car around so that people know i am doing well. i love my S, but sometimes it makes me self conscious that people think it is a very expensive car. i got it because i enjoy it. period.

manuelisfun

I think he has a good point. How do people feel when they go to an expensive jewelry or even eyeglass store and are attended by people dressed really nicely (shirts and ties, suits, etc)? That they are nice places and of "high quality". I mean, yeah sure, they can go and inspect the product and really be scientific about its quality, but for the average person, "the packaging" will have an influence on their perception.

By a similar token, why do girls like men with nice cars? (I know, not all girls, but that's a separate discussion). I mean, logically it doesn't make sense, because it means he will be more wasteful about his money right?

I don't think he means extreme stupid displays of wealth either, but while a Camry is a good car, is just somewhat bland IMO.

ShifterKart

Ha ha.. um NO

I don't know where you work to get this impression but that is not how layoffs work. The individuals that make they layoff decisions rarely know what car you drive or what your payments are. Often they don't work at the company (aka Bob from Office Space) but are instead "Management Consultants".

Maybe you are talking about a small firm with a small close knit sales force, then maybe they know about you. Even then the layoff conversation rarely includes things like "well he bought a great car so we know he is trying hard". Instead the decisions usually revolve around performance and sales history.

I only offer this because I am a Management Consultant for one of the large firms and I have been a Bob from Office Space. I rarely know anything about the people I identify to leave, instead I look at historical performance (e.g sales history), current salary vs. average, and management reviews.

In fairness I think your point, lost as it may be, is that your image is important in professional world. There I agree but where my opinion differs is that this image is not developed through the amount of money you spend. Instead I think it is how you treat people and if you have a professional appearance. I would rather have someone walk into my office that is neat and clean in $20 Target Chinos than sloppy and ripped $300 True Religion Jeans. This goes to having a clean car, Camry or BMW; but and most of all they should be treating me well and providing fair prices and/or great performance. If they do that their performance will probably be decent, this will be the reason they will not get laid off, not if they stretched their payments.

I for one would rather a sales person showed up in a nice clean white Camry than a flashy M5.

budgy

I don't think its a bad thing to drive a nice car. If I saw a car salesman show up in a $70,000 car I would assume the guy is a good salesman, hopefully he wont act desperate like all the other ones I seem to meet.

On the other hand no one wants to deal with a snob. Or even someone they might *think* is a snob. I sell some very high end mattresses and bedding in my own family business, I have also worked in some low end big chain furniture stores. Ironically at the low end store they talked all the time about how you should always wear a suit and have a nice watch, and how important dress is to your presentation. Not that I disagree about dress being important but you don't want to look like some big shot. I took some of these habits with me into our family business where we have a smaller much more intimate approach, our showroom looks fantastic and everything is CLEAN unlike the furniture stores I have worked in the past.

What I have noticed is that when I used to wear suits in the newer settings people were somewhat put off by this and I had a much higher number of people come in to my showroom with the guard on and more hesitant to talk to me. Now I just wear nice clothing, sweaters with nice dress pants or maybe even blue jeans (which works well since we work the warehouse as well) and no one even cares. What matters to someone when they are dropping $10,000 on a mattress and some sheets is that the product is immaculate and the store looks good, my attitude is far more important in my presentation than the clothing I got on or the car I drive to work.

manuelisfun

I want to add a point that when one of my friends hired a DJ to train (and this was an expensive entertainment services company, albeit a very good one) part of the hiring process was actually to interview somewhat "off site" to basically "weed out" the people who didn't get to the place because they didn't have a car and also commitment to get there. The other thing is that he also looked at what car they drove, and he expected at least something that was clean and decent. Why? Because in high end events such as weddings and such, he didn't want his DJs to arrive in dirty, beaten up cars, as he cared about the event's and his company's image, because as you may guess, this is how he gets a lot of referrals from satisfied clients.

dammitjim

Holy hell.

exb00st

A vehicle is just one (maybe the first) thing that people use to base an impression off of you. As previously mentioned, there are other important factors to base this opinion on, like how they communicate or present, etc. It's silly to base an ENTIRE opinion on someone on one thing -- that's the root of the problem with this. All you have is anecdotal evidence until you are really familiar with them. I know it's human to judge, but often it's better to do it later than sooner.